Project Management Institute's Project of the Year Award - Essay Example

Project Management Institute’s Project of the Year Award 1. Summary of how the project manager or team exhibited exceptional and ethical project management practices. The official website of the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project of the Year (POY) Award reveals that the organization envisions recognizing and acknowledging the exemplary contribution of nominated project teams in terms of noteworthiness, relevance and adherence to specified standards of their respective projects. As explicitly indicated, “the PMI Project of the Year (POY) Award recognizes the accomplishments of a project and the involved project team for superior performance and execution of exemplary project management” (Project Management Institute, 2011).

In this regard, the winner for 2010 POY Award was the National Ignition Facility Project was deemed to be “managed by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (and) was the largest ever scientific construction project completed by the U.S. Department of Energy, resulting in the world's largest and most energetic laser system. The design and project commissioning were accomplished by a worldwide collaboration among governments, academia, and many industrial partners. It will serve a broad scientific community exploring new technologies in energy production and new frontiers in astrophysics, materials science, and nuclear science” (YouTube, 2010).

The project team exhibited exceptional and ethical project management practice by complying and adhering to the foundation standards and consistent with the evaluation criteria, to wit: “(1) met or exceeded Owner/Client’s needs as evidenced by a letter from the Owner/Client; (2) met or improved on budget and schedule performance when compared with original established budget and schedule goals; (3) demonstrated originality and uniqueness of applied project management techniques, including innovative application of practices/methods; (4) exhibited technical aspects and advancement of the project management profession through effective application of the nine PMBOK® Knowledge Areas: (5) demonstrated complexity and challenges of the project and unusual conditions, issues, and barriers requiring special management team action and performance; and (6) identified Risks and established plans to overcome them” (PMI, 2010).

In this regard, the National Ignition Facility Project envisioned focusing on nuclear fusion that is harnessed to create limitless and carbon free energy. The project was reported to help scientists create nuclear fusion in the laboratory setting. Accordingly, through collaborative efforts of government, academia and industry, the project was revealed to have been instrumental in fuelling innovation that enabled the establishment of the largest and highest energy laser and the largest optical instrument ever. 2. Discuss the role of the project manager or team, the organizational setting, the recipient’s approach to project integration management, and obstacles that had the potential of adversely impacting the triple constraint.

The project manager, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in joint efforts and collaboration with the Department of Energy, was reported to have been instrumental in the “design through commissioning (that) was accomplished by a worldwide collaboration among governments, academia, and many industrial partners. NIF provides an experimental platform for accessing