Super Prison Project Management - Essay Example

? Super Prison Project Management Department Project Background A prison is a defined place where people are physically confined and deprived of a range of personal freedoms such as for free movement and socialization (Blackmon D.A., 2008). The act of imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty possibly imposed by the state for a crime committed. The history of prisons dates back to the Biblical history of Joseph in Egypt. However, it began in the 19th century in Britain and has advanced to most countries in the World. In England and Wales, the history of prisons has been that prisoners are assigned security classes when sentenced, while all prisons are provided with specific security classifications depending on the prisoners’ types and numbers recommended (Alexander M., 2012). For instance, the classifications were into category A, B, C, and D. i. Category A: Meant for those whose escape from the prisons would most likely endanger the public and national security. ii. Category B: those of no serious/ maximum security needs, however for those who needed to be highly bared from escaping the prisons. iii. Category C: convicts who own no trust from the prison administrations in case they are left in the open conditions, but are unlikely to make any escape attempts (Carlson M. and Garrett S, 1999). iv. Category D: convicts who can be reasonably trusted not to make any attempts of escaping from the prisons, and are hence provided with the privilege of an open prison. Such prisoners are subject to approval by the prison administrations and given Release On Temporary License to be able to work outside the prison and or leave for home upon passing their Full License Eligibility Date, which is usually a quarter of any sentence period (Ayers E. L., 1984). Super prison project is entitled to include among other things: religious facilities housing chaplaincy officers and other facilities for counseling; education facilities including library, with provision of adult education and continuing education opportunities; health facility; an exercise yard; a sally port; a segregation unit; a unit for vulnerable prisoners; safe cells; visiting area; a death raw; staff accommodation area; support facilities area; agriculture or industrial plant run with the convicts’ labor; a recreational area; and an administration area for prison management (Diiulio J., 1990). 2. Work Breakdown Structure This is a representation of the stakeholders’ roles in diagrammatic format (Harrison F. and Dennis L., 2004). Project management as a discipline involves planning, motivating, organizing and controlling the available resources so as to attain a specific goal; in this case the construction of the Super Prison (Young-Hoon Kwak, 2005). The stakeholders will therefore the managers of each department assigned to them. 3. Stakeholders A stakeholder is anyone involved in a project for the purpose of successful implementation of the project’s strategies. Effective implementation of this project requires composition of stakeholders who will be charged with the responsibility of foreseeing and supervising each and every activity that are undertaken (Dennis L., 2007). A number of stakeholders, each assigned specific duties will have to demonstrate their potential in undertaking the proposed functions schedule for each rank in the project management. The stake holders will include: a. Executive Sponsor The Executive Sponsor of this Super Prison development and implementation project will be the government of England, and will have the responsibilities of: owning the project and funding it directly; being responsible for the project’s benefits; providing recommended resources and key Implementation Officers to the project in a timely manner; working very closely with the Project manager to deliver the expected benefits; chairing of the Steering Committee in case called upon; approving project initiation plan, statement of project scope, project plan, and any other changes to the set plan, scope or benefits; monitoring project progress and workers involved to ensure the project is on track; giving advice to the project manager(s) on the business strategy, priorities and other business issues; being in a position to act in resolving matters faster, keeping in mind that the unresolved issues have the possibility of causing significant project crash; and guaranteeing that all the key project deliverables are correctly reviewed and approved. b. Sponsor Under the government, Ministry of Justice will be the project sponsor. As the sponsor it will be in a position to: appoint the Project manager; do consultations with the Executive Sponsor (leaders of Government) to come up with a form of contract to ensure delivery the project against any agreed terms of resources and time; take position on the steering Committee in the representation of representation of OIT; approve project initialization plan, project plan, statement of scope, and any alterations thereafter; supervise project advancement and work with the project managers to ensure the project progresses as strategized; advice the project manager on any matters regarding technological priorities; resolve any upcoming issues quickly together with both project manager and the executive sponsors; stand in for good working relationships with all other OIT groups; and provide reports to the CIO regarding all group projects. c. Project Manager In general the project manager will be concerned with ensuring successful project delivery. So as to make this come true, he/she will have to: properly manage the systematic development of the project’s initiation plan and detail the plan; make certain that the project is started as had been planned; see that all have accepted their responsibilities and are aware of the roles; inform all those involved in the project of the project’s progress; and measure project performance against set milestones, time frames, deliverables, budget and resources. d. Steering Committee This is a temporary committee set to see the success of the project. It is headed by the sponsor, and membership formed by representatives of all key stakeholder groups and the Project Manager. e. Project Coordinator This is a position set to assist the OIT Manager/ Director in organizing the project to conform to the guiding strategic plan set. 3.1. Success or failure definition for each stakeholder All functions will be carried out as stipulated above for the stakeholders. Any success will be recommended, however measures will be set in place to work out possible causes of failures and corrections made immediately. 4. Project life cycle Super prison project management plan will go through a five-tire phases of development/ project management: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/ control, and closure. a. Project Initiation This is the opening chapter of the Super Prison Project strategy which is based on the five step project life cycle. The idea of the project is critically explored and elaborated for higher understanding of its needs. Super Prison Project will be initiated by defining its reasons, economic goals and the projects feasibility, and scope. It at this phase that the project management team will be defined, early milestones identified, and early budget proposal drafted. Reasons for the project i. To ensure that the courts are a position of sending criminals to the prison so as to correctly teach them accepted ways of earning a living and living socially with others in the society. Therefore Super Prison will ensure that there are good training facilities in the heart of it to see into it that people come out of it with more education, more skills and better chances of getting employment opportunities (Michel F., 1975). ii. To create sufficient places this will be able to meet the demands of the court. iii. To establish organized facilities for women that effectively meets their gender specific requirements whilst also delivering their value for the public. Economic goals i. The Super Prison operational cost will be half that of the older jail. ii. Securing best value for money for the taxpayers. Scope The Ministry of Justice in its implementation of the new Super Prison will be able to save up to ?63 million every year in running cost and also create an assurance to the public of the enough prison places in the years to come. b. Project Planning Project planning is the second phase of the project that involves creation of the Project Management Plan which will offer guidance to the project team during project development and thereafter. All project team members will be selected based on specific skills’ requirement to aid in the successful completion of the project. Measures such as non-labor resources, risks plan, detailed action items and milestones will be defined as appropriate with regards to the projects implementation plans. c. Project Development A project development phase in a project always depends on the implementation phase. It is complete whenever the implementation phase is ready to commence. Project development phase defines the partaking of the implementation phase, by whom and when. d. Project Implementation Having ensured a comprehensible characterization of the project and a full and detailed Super Prison Project Management Plan, the project team will be then ready to undertake the involvements of the Execution phase of the project. At this particular stage, the project requirements are actually constructed and programmed. The QA process then follows after which the outcome is presented to the project team for acceptance and full implementation. If accepted, the final project is completed and declared ready for use. e. Project Closure This last phase involves releasing the completed construction site for the purpose for which it had been constructed, handing over its documentations and amendment directives if any, layout plans e.t.c. The last course of action may be to undertake some Post Implementation Review to make identifications on the levels of project success and take down any lessons learned (Vanhoucke M., 2012). 5. Risks/ potential problems of the project Super Prison Project is a very complicated project that may be faced with various challenges among which include; i. Schedule risk: This is a type of risk that is likely to crop in case the Super Prison initiative will take longer than expected. As it stands, only the difference between the operational capacity of 90, 451 and 83, 632 positions under use are available till the completion of the project (Barber L., 1993). Any slippages for any reasons in the schedule will typically increase inmates’ maintenance costs, and, possibly delay the receipt of the entire project benefits and loss of the project’s competitive advantages. ii. Performance risk: This risk that after all plans and proposals drafted on the papers, the actual on the ground may fail to produce results which are consistent with the drafted specifications (Joseph P., 2003). iii. Cost risk: As one of the biggest prison projects in the World in terms of facilities, size, population capacity targeted e.t.c., may lead to escalation of the project’s costs because of poor cost estimation accuracy and scope creep (Lewis R., 2006). iv. Other risks that may also come to play in case of weak strategies include project governance risk, strategic risks, operational risks, and risks associated with the external hazards (Larson W. and Gray F., 2011). 6. Team structure suitable This is as shown below: 7. Factors that make this project different/ exciting/ challenging This project is quite different from the other projects and more challenging because it is a new idea in under prisons that is set up with a view of considering modern technology in its development and a high level of human basic requirements considerations. As per its strategy, it will be the largest in capacity and structure, the most modern prison facility, and one that considers gender and disabilities (PMI., 2010). However, the most exciting thing is that it will run on a much lower cost, well equipped with all facilities, able to house more captives, and offer value for human life. References Alexander, Michelle (2012). New Jim Crow: The Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York. Ayers, Edward L. (1984). The Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South, New York. Barber L. (1993). The towering bureaucracy. Financial Times. 21 June. Blackmon, Douglas A. (2008). The Slavery by Another Name: Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, New York. Carlson M. and Garrett S. (1999). Prison and Jail Administration: Practice and Theory, Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Dennis Lock (2007) Project Management (9th ed.) Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2007. ISBN 0-566-08772-3 Diiulio J. (1990). The Governing Prisons: Comparative Study of Correctional Management, Simon and Schuster. Harrison F. and Dennis L. (2004). The Advanced project management: a structured approach. Gower Publishing, Ltd., p.34. Joseph Phillips (2003). PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide. McGraw-Hill Professional, p.354. Larson W. and Gray F. (2011). Project Management: The Managerial Process, 5th edition, McGraw-Hill. Lewis R. (2006). Project Management. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006. ISBN 0-07-147160-X. p.110. Michel F. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House. PMI. (2010). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge p.27-35 Vanhoucke M. (2012). Measuring the efficiency of project control using fictitious and empirical project data, International Journal of Project Management 30(2): 252–263. Young-Hoon Kwak (2005). "A brief History of Project Management". In: The story of managing projects. Elias G. Carayannis et al. (9 eds), Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. ISBN 1-56720-506-2 Read More