Purpose
The purpose of this procedure is to provide a guideline for developing a project team.
References
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Responsibilities
Program Manager: The Program Manager is responsible for personnel staffing assignments that are best for the program and for helping obtain services from other departments and bureaus for the project.
Project Manager (PM): The PM is responsible for the successful completion of the project.
Group Leader (GL): Depending upon the structure of the organization, GLs represent electrical, mechanical and other disciplines. The GLs are responsible for negotiating with the PM and assigning personnel to the Project Team.
Project Engineer (PE): The PE assists the PM by preparing the project plans and specifications and by meeting various project milestones.
Procedure
The best people in any organization are always in demand and often not available to work on a given project. A primary goal is to develop the best available team that can devote the time to complete the project. A good PM demonstrates a diversity of skills such as people management, toughness, empathy, responsibility, motivation, effective communication, effective conflicts/crisis management, and gains a reputation for people wanting to work on their projects.
The first step in organizing a project team is to determine the scope of the project. This will help determine the kinds of expertise required for getting a quality project built on time and within budget. This expertise, both in design and in construction, may include environmental, geotechnical, civil, structural, architectural, mechanical, instrumentation & control (I&C), real estate, electrical, traffic signal, street lighting, and many others.
The Program Manager is responsible for personnel staffing assignments that are best for the program, and will, with input from the various design group leaders, make an assignment of a project to a primary design office. Once the project scope and initial project estimate have been established, the Budget Guideline Templates (available electronically on the Bureau’s Intranet site) should be used to gain an understanding of which design disciplines will be required and a representative staffing budget for these offices. The PM should then contact the GLs of the individual groups to work out an effective scope, budget and schedule for their portion of the work, and if necessary, the project may be special budgeted to address any unique conditions.
Often times, specific team members are not available for a specific work element that needs accomplishing, and the PM may think they need to use consultants. Always check with the Program Manager and the A/E Consulting Division/Group Managers prior to deciding on whether to use a consultant. If City staff is definitely not available, the PM should then consider the use of consultants (see Chapter 6, Using Consultants). A resource list of Pre-Qualified On-Call Consultants is available in the Project Award and Control Division (PAC) and on the BOE web site (https://engineering.lacity.gov/consultants) (City Staff only). If the decision is made to use consultants, be sure to remember that City staff time and funding are still required for obtaining and managing the consultant contract.
Effective PMs should delegate responsibility properly to become successful. Two of the most common problems faced by PMs are: 1) a reluctance to delegate work to others, and 2) not remaining in control of the work once it has been delegated. The PM should work closely with the PE to overcome these problems by:
Identifying all available information about the project
Clearly defining the scope of the project
Agreeing on the level of effort (budget) required
Establishing a schedule
Setting up control mechanisms
Defining the project scope, item number 2 above, is of special importance. Decisions made at the start of a project have the greatest impact on the outcome of a project; 85% of the project impact is in the first 15% of the project. Setting up control mechanisms can also be a challenge. The team should operate with a high degree of freedom but understand that the project is under the control of the PM. The degree of control exercised will vary with the task and the degree of confidence in the person(s) performing the function. Examples of control mechanisms are: receiving copies of all correspondence, periodic reviews of the design, and identification and tracking of project milestones. The Uniform Project Reporting System should be used as a tool to manage projects.
RELATED PROCEDURES
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