Global Project Management: Super Prison - Essay Example

?PROJECT MANAGEMENT SUPER PRISON PROJECT INTRODUCTION Project management is the discipline of management that has gained the growing importance sincepast two decades. Simply stating project management refers to the planning project, resource organizing, stakeholders’ coordinating to achieve the simple to complex and diverse set of goal within planned resources. Project usually complete; however, the successful completion of the project is when the goal is achieved without discrepancy within defined goal and resources. Hence, scientific mechanisms are defined to aid the project managers to achieve the goal with minimum possible discrepancy. In addition, the field also provides comprehensive guideline to project managers to complete project with successfully meeting challenges (Larson and Gray, 2011). Underlying report is the critical assessment of the factor the surrounding the project management of the new Super Prison Project as announced by Ministry of Justice in England. The report assesses various aspects of the project in detail. BACKGROUND Ministry of Justice in England has announced to close down seven jails in full along with two partial closures for greater valued use of tax-payers money. The plan aims to close the old uneconomic capacity of prison for approximate saving of ?63m per year in running costs. Further, the cost of keeping the prison in new project will be half to the cost being currently incurred. The proposed Super Prison project plan is aimed to provide 2000 places in contrast to the closure of 26000 places in the prisons to be closed. It would affect the 1776 prison staff with certain percentage to be re-deployed while also appreciating voluntary elimination of redundancies. The proposed project, being 25% bigger than the UK’s currently largest prison is facing concerns. Justice Secretary states that projects intend to ensure that increased value is generated for taxpayers’ money with better rehabilitation facility than only expanded space for keeping people. However, the idea has received considerable criticism such as Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan criticized that people’s desire to have greater arrangement to keep the criminals behind the bars and new value seeking attempt shall not leave the prisoners off behind bars owing to space shortage. Howard League for Penal Reform discredited the ideas as no prospects of new building’s contribution to control crime was evident and hence considers it a mere waste of tax payers money. Mr. Grayling has also proposed the planned four new mini-prisons naming house blocks. In addition, to the proposed project that is to be followed by closure of certain jails has not achieved the favorable consensus and many others have given discrediting remarks to the idea. KEY STAGES OF THE PROJECT The project undergoes various phases from initiation to completion. The project lifecycle consists of following phases as conceptual phase, planning phase, defining and designing phase; implementation phase and conversion phase (Cleland and Gareis, 2006). MoJ has just conceptualized the plan. Time and cost factor increases as the project reaches to defining and designing. Implementation phase requires maximum time and cost as the project moves on. Therefore, while establishing Super Prison building the project will requires maximum time and efforts. This phase also increases challenges such as in case the relative of prisoners may raise voice against the shifting etc. Therefore, while implementing plan, the project along side has to undergo the phase of meeting challenges. On completion, the project is evaluated. The evaluation of the Super Prison Project will be based on the cost saving from shifting the prison in new building. In addition, it will also be evaluated if being completed within planned resources. WORK BREAK DOWN STRUCTURE The work breakdown chart outlines the plan for the project stepwise from initiation to completion. WBS benefits project to identify every detail that needs attention and hence ensures that project does not skip any detail across the board. WBS and other such plan development tools such as Critical Path Management and PERT schedules also outlines in details the time frame critical to complete of the project and activities’ dependencies, independencies as well as interdependencies (Hamilton, 2004). WBS for establishing the Super Prison has been as follows on the basis of life-cycle events: WBS for Conceptualizations Stage The conceptualization stage refers to the very initial stage of the project. The WBS of the conceptualization stage can also be considered as the proposal development stage for the project that requires to conceptually identifying the areas to be made part of the project. WBS of the Super Prison projects conceptualization stage that requires minimum time, resource and effort has been developed as follows: WBS For Planning Phase, Defining And Designing Stage This stage incurs the comparatively higher cost and time effort than previous stage. However, it has to done by critically addressing all details as this phase forms the structure of the entire project. WBS For Implementation Phase The implementation phase accounts for putting project on the physically form. Until now the aspects were dealing with the confirmation of the grounds for the project building and associated aspects to be developed. The implementation phase WBS chart includes: Conversion Phase The conversion phase deals with shifting of the prisoners to the Super Prison. This phase is also accounted for closing all contracts for building development. This phase also includes developing assessment for the successful completion of the project. The assessment can be divided in two phase; first, immediately after the completion assessing project for its completion within defined framework and available resources. In addition, to the current conversion, the phase is required be evaluated after certain time such as semi-annual for revealing actual cost saving against the projected one. WBS for all stages outline detailed outline of each phase and there are considerable components to be added as details of each component. KEY STAKEHOLDERS Consensus between the stakeholders is necessary for successfully achieving the goal of the project. Consensus among the stakeholders ensures entire resources including time and effort all directed in concurrently towards the achievement of the goal. Discrepancy among the stakeholders can cause delays, increased resource requirement to re-align to the deviated tasks performance etc (Fletcher, Guthrie, Steane, Roos, & Pike, 2003). The key stake holders of the under planning project and discussion of respective power are as follows: Prisoners (High power Low Interest) Prison staff (high Power High Interest) Ministry of Justice (High Power High Interest) Prison and prisoner Trusts (and NGOs) (High Power High Interest) Locals for the new site (Low power high Interest) All these are key stakeholders. All these have varying level of power as well as interest in the new project. Therefore, requires dealing accordingly on the basis of the following matrix: Therefore, based on the above assessment, it is important to deal differently each set of stakeholders as defined. It is not mandatory that all stakeholders play the assessed role throughout. Therefore, dealing with stakeholders has to be line with the strategy defined for the respective role. For instance, though it has been announced that staff will be redeployed however, the future deployment may affect position as well as living therefore it is expected that discrepancy from staff. Or prisoners may raise voice on replacement as affects meeting with relatives etc. RISKS One of the factors that resulted in the rise of the project management as separate domain of study was fact that project managers are required to meet the risks and challenges that arise across the project completion (Harrison and Lock, 2004). Some of the internal and external risk drivers are defined as follows: (IRM, 2002) Project manager are requires to anticipate the risks associated with the project and equip to deal with them proactively. Risk management in across the project flows in the given below flow: (SCU, 2012) Risks that are generally associated with every project and so to the underlying project are as follows (Lewis, 2006): Timely completion of the project Cost constraints Resistance from various stakeholders Timely completion of the project is critical as the MoJ intends to close the other seven prisons completely with two other partial closures. In addition, time completion of the project is also necessary with respect to the fact that time is associated with cost factor. Excess of time acquired for the project completion increases cost alongside. Therefore, for the underlying project that is aimed at saving cost of almost half in keeping every prisoner reduce the cost benefit from the cost saving. Among the core factors that are associated as risk to the project are subject to discrepancy from stakeholders. For instance, as declared that MoJ will redeploy the staff, the staff may require high salary at new location owing to the cost of living or even settling in new place. Therefore, t is important to deal with stakeholders and risks discrepancy as they may cause delay of the project thereby affecting the project efficiency. All such factors are required to be planned proactively to deal accordingly in case they arise. TEAM STRUCTURE The project having objective for developing the building for the prison that enables cost efficiency. Alongside the project being related to prison has to be designed in a way that has deep insight about the prison management mainly security of the prisoners as well as securing prisoners from the escape. In addition, prison is required to be developed as complete rehabilitation centre so that plays important role in refining the personality of the prisoners. Therefore, it requires building multifunctional team structure having representation from all defined areas. Such representation will ensure the proper adherence to the need of the building as it is long term project that cannot be rented for other purpose in case the establishment does not meet the plan. Further, any ignorance to critical factors can accuse the team of criminal charges for miss-attending the security of the locals of the new location. Therefore, team that is capable to generate the expert opinion on all critical factors is very important. OPINION The project as case had been very exciting as well as challenging. The only yet critical source of challenge originates from the factor that establishment is related to the prison development. The avenue is not open for exposure to every other person. Since crime management as well as criminals management is a comprehensive area of the study. Dealing strictly with criminals and ensuring that on completion of sentenced term criminals turn valuable citizen to society is an important area. Dealing with such matter required well trained personnel; however, the role of prison environment and building structure cannot be under estimated. Therefore, project discussed from the overall perspective has opened all such areas for consideration. For instance, establishing prison in areas increases the footsteps for criminals’ relatives as well as supporters. Therefore, entire location is to be impacted. As tourism increases the value of location such establishment is expected to have critical impact on the location as well as lives of the locals. Moreover, the project manager also have to adhere attention to the all details from variety of perspectives including security provision, legal matters, transporting of food and other requirement, rehabilitation center within cost saving design that was main aim of the project. Therefore, the project discussion to drafting of project plan outline has been extremely interesting and project itself is expected to add rare experience to the project manager’s portfolio. CONCLUSION The report herein developed has critically assessed the project of the Super Prison. Broad discussion of the project from various aspects such as stakeholders’ perspective, risks associated etc has attempted to add significant detailed outline for the work. Process stages details have also been considered with respect to lifecycle. Overall aspects discussion refers to the suitability of the project; however, the financial perspective that forms the backbone of the project has not been assessed in the above discussion. Discussion of the other aspects have been challenging and exciting for the reasons of project being concerned with prison management. Therefore, on achieving the financial feasibility project can be discussed in more detail to address the attention seeking areas. List of References Cleland, D., and Gareis, R. (2006). Global Project Management Handbook. McGraw-Hill: London. Fletcher, A., Guthrie, J., Steane, P., Roos, G., & Pike, S. (2003). ‘Mapping stakeholder perceptions for a third sector organization’. Journal of Intellectual Capital, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 505-527. Hamilton, A. (2004). Handbook of Project Management Procedures. TTL Publishing, Ltd: London. Harrison, F., and Lock, D. (2004). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Gower Publishing, Ltd: Surrey. IRM. (2002). A risk management standard. Available from http://www.theirm.org/publications/documents/Risk_Management_Standard_030820.pdf [Accessed 20 April 2013] Larson, E. W. and Gray, C. F. (2011). Project Management: The Managerial Process, 5th edition, McGraw-Hill. Lewis, R. (2006). Project Management. McGraw-Hill Professional: London. SCU. (2012). The risk management process. Available from http://www.scu.edu.au/risk_management/index.php/2/ [Accessed 20 April 2013] Read More