Project Management

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: COMMUNITY GARDEN PROJECT

The case study for this assignment is the development of a new community garden in the town of Ashford, England. The garden will be located in a vacant lot on the corner of Main Street and Elm Street. The garden will be open to all members of the community and will provide a place for people to relax, exercise, and grow their own food.

The project team for the community garden consists of ?ve people. The project manager is responsible for overall project planning and control. The landscape architect is responsible for designing the garden. The contractor is responsible for building the garden. The volunteers are responsible for maintaining the garden.

The ?rst step in project planning is to de?ne the project scope. The project scope de?nes the work that will be included in the project. The project scope statement for the community garden is as follows:

• The garden will be located on a vacant lot on the corner of Main Street and Elm Street.
• The garden will be open to all members of the community.
• The garden will be a place for people to relax, exercise, and grow their own food.
• The garden will be built using sustainable materials.
• Volunteers will maintain the garden.

The project schedule for the community garden is as follows:

Phase 1: Acquire land
Phase 2: Design Garden
Phase 3: Build a garden
Phase 4: Plant Garden
Phase 5: Open Garden to the public

Additional Information:
In addition to the information provided above, here are some additional details about the case study:

A local government grant is funding the project.

The project is expected to take 10 months to complete. The project start date is 10 February 2023
The project has a budget of £75,000.
The project is expected to benefit the community by providing a place for people to relax, exercise, and grow their own food.

ASSIGNMENT QUESTION

Create a project schedule, cost and allocate resources. Ensure that the dependencies are established, and make sure a Start-to-Start relationship is used in this project. Decompose the phases into a maximum of 20 activities. State all assumptions made.

You are 6 months into the project but are currently 2 weeks behind schedule. What is the current cost variance on this project? Show that tracking has taken place.

Create a new copy of the standard calendar (perhaps called by your name) and allocate it as the default calendar for your project. It should include the following dates, where relevant, as non-working days:

Year 2023:
13 Feb 15 Apr 18 Apr 02 May 02 Jun 13 Jul
30 Aug 20 Dec 22 Dec
25 Dec
26 Dec

How does this affect the project schedule?

Assessment Guidelines:

You may ?nd detailed assessment criteria in your BA6052QA Module Booklet on WebLearn.

Your work should be clear, precise, coherent and well-presented. You should show a clear understanding of how your analysis and conclusions are dependent upon any underlying assumptions required or employed by you. You should show a clear
integration of knowledge from other modules where appropriate.

Make sure that you fully explain and justify any steps taken at each stage, particularly regarding the clashes, the use and effect of your calendar, the allocation of ?xed costs to the project and your tracking. For the tracking, carefully document the tasks where actual and planned costs and/or durations diverge.

Detail fully and explain any cost and/or time variances so produced.

Please avoid collusion:

It is expected that each student will allocate resources to tasks differently from
every other student so that your clashes, total costs and scenarios used in tracking are all unique to you.

You may help each other work out scenarios, but the eventual write-up and scenarios must be your own and different from every other student's.

Screenshots and computer printout:

Any screenshots (or computer printouts) should be given a clear interpretation and analysis and placed in the body of your text. Since the marking is now done ‘online', please do not put these images in the form of an appendix. With screenshots in an ‘online' submission, it is far easier for your examiners if they are in the body of the text (where needed and referred to).

We thank you for your co-operation in these two matters.