Owner’s Organization Project Management Maturity

The general problems that the construction owners are facing nowadays are:

1. The lack of the modern project management knowledge: what they have about construction project management almost is just the fragmentary knowledge collected from the requirements, instructions in government legal documents, from the short training cost, from working experience. Hence, the use of that knowledge is usually not effective.

2. The use of a project management system which just built on the concept just to meet the Government requirements: for many owners, especially the state owned organizations, their main consideration is just how to meet Government requirements. They have not paid enough attention of how to use the investment money in most effective and efficient ways.

3. The lack of a system of procedures and instructions for continuously measuring, evaluating the performance of project, project staff; collecting, storing lesson learned and making convenient access for project staff; and planning and implementing the improvements.

 

Le Quang Khanh made a case study aimed to:

1. assess the organization project management maturity of an stated owned enterprise on the role of project owner, analyze what it has and what it has not in comparison with the modern project management theory.

2. propose recommendations for project management improvement.

Conclusion

This study has demonstrated an intensive exploration into the current status of an owner construction project management system. Each management process has been described, assessed, analyzed basing on the definitions, requirements of modern project management processes established by PMI in PMBOK Guide (2008) and OPM3(2003).

The assessment has found that: although the assessed company applied nearly all processes of project management, the maturity level of these processes in the company are still rather low. Company is at the first steps of project management maturity ladders. Reference to OPM3 (PMI, 2003), the Company project management maturity level is at about the standardization stage. There are many process need to be standardized; many procedures, guidelines need to be established in order to help the company improve its project management maturity, develop the company competence.   

Following are some main problems of the company in project management system:

1. Many processes are not standardized: performed basing only on the experience, practice; there are no standard documented procedures, instructions/guidelines to conduct. Many useful tools and techniques are not applied during project management processes because of the lack of the modern project management knowledge in project staff.

2. The planning processes are not well implemented. There is no specific project management plan, project scope, or project quality plan for each project. The project control and execution activities of project team members are almost unplanned, basing on experience. 

3. There are no standards, procedures, no formal performance system to measure, evaluate the degree of success and failure of each process, phase or project, the performance of project team members. Therefore there is no steady foundation to plan for project management performance improvements.

4. There is a formal process for assessing, auditing the existing procedures, instructions and suggesting, implementing improvements (included in ISO9001 quality system). However, because of the limit of the staff knowledge and skill about the modern project management, there are not many effective improvements as expected.

5. There are no procedures or instructions about collecting information of the contractors/suppliers, the project issues, lessons learned…to keep in a convenient place (like project management office) for analyzing and using in future project management. Therefore, there is also no formal historical information and lessons learned knowledge databases system. All the project records, after the project completion, are kept in the store.

Recommendations for the assessed company and other state owned companies, in general, on the role of owner

 

There should be more training on modern construction project management for the company staff. The training content include (but are not limited to) the knowledge/skills of project management for individual, for organization; the experience in organizing and managing a project management organization, the existing effective systems of construction management procedures and instruction of international project management groups. The staff need to be trained are: the top management for having far more vision, more correct evaluation about the importance and effectiveness of building a standard project management system; the  middle management and the project  team member to be more effective in managing projects and composing the necessary procedures and instructions:

1. Company should pay more attention on the planning processes; make all the management plans before carry out management activities.

2. Company should improve the formal system of procedures and instructions to standardize all the project management processes in the company. The guidelines about the applied range of each process are also needed.  This help to keep the consistency of quality and increase the effectiveness of management processes;

3. Company should improve and increase the effectiveness of ISO9001 assessing and auditing processes by using the competent auditors who are professional in construction project management, training the project staff to be good and innovative self-auditors;

4. Company should establish and apply the formal standards, tools, guidelines for measuring, evaluating the success, failure of project goals in order to collect experience and lessons learned for future investments;

5. Company should build a small project management office/center where the project management staff can easily access to the historical information and lessons learned of all past projects; refer to the modern project management tools and techniques. And besides, Company should build the procedure, instruction for collecting, storing those data. These works will be very useful for the future project management of the project staff, especially the new comers.

 

Recommendations for further study

Further study needs to be carried out to have more comprehensive assessment of state owned project management organizations and give more detailed recommendations for competency development of this type of project management organization.

Abstract

Vietnam is the developing country which is booming economic and the new medium classification increasing rapidly. The movement of people from rural region to urban region is growing up every year. The population growing is 2% a year that is compressing of Housing Supply for social need. The entire above figure is good reason for real estate business in Vietnam. However in order to success in property business the Feasibility study stage is most important factor should be consideration.

The subject of this study is analysis the method & effectiveness of feasibility study in Apartment Project. Base on theory and actual project the problem statement occurring in FS will be identified such as: Incorrect assumption , misunderstand the Demand of Market, cost & revenue estimate is not match reality, time schedule planning is not practice, forecasting of cash flow is wrong, mistake in term of FS calculation technical, lack of information in term of information of land. According the literature review the object study is summarized as Framework of FS in Apartment Project. To study the application of the framework in project case. To find the problem in FS for Apartment Project. To proposal the solution base on theory.

With the real project Carina Plaza the analyze of the comparison between theory and the actual activity is show up the different and causing of it. The method of cost estimate is concentrate to study according the theory and project case. The revenue estimate is also access careful to ensure the catch flow management always is positive and project is archive.

The final report specifies the most important factor to impact the FS and a successful of project in medium apartment. The FS should be conducted by the people who are integrate knowledge such as: construction knowledge, financing, marketing, communication.