Project Plan for Whitboard Sailboat Race

Project Plan for Whitbread World Sailboat Race

This paper describes the project plan for Bjorn Erickson to design and equip his country's sailboat entry into the Whitbread Sailboat race. It was found that the project plan had met the budget requirements but had not met the timeline requirements. Reducing the timeline without budget is a difficult matter as usually decreasing the timeline costs money. We will show in this paper how time requirements can be lowered without affecting costs. We will additionally explain the risks associated with these changes. The last portion of this paper will explain how projects are audited and closed and how the audit can help future projects with lessons learned. To begin, we will discuss the strategy for this project.

Bjorn Ericksen Project Strategy Analysis

Bjorn Erickson is tasked with designing and outfitting his country's entry into the Whitbread World Sailboat Race. His entry will be racing against 14 other countries that will be trying to out-design and race each other in a race that goes around the world and competes from September to May of the next year (Dalton, 1998). In this paper we will be discussing ways to reduce the length of this project without compromising the quality. The original project plan of the project was too lengthy and did not have money to spare so reductions were made to ensure the project was completed on time. The next section describes how these reductions were analyzed and what the results were.

Plan to Reduce Project Duration

Table 1

Optimal Solution Implementation Plan

Action Item Deliverable Duration Start Date End Date Who is Responsible

Design of Hull, Deck, Mast, and accessories 3weeks 1-Sep-07 22-Sep-07 Karin

Select Crew 6 weeks 1-Sep-07 13-Oct-07 Trygve

Secure Housing 3 weeks 1-Sep-07 22-Sep-07 Trygve

Hull construction 12 weeks 22-Sep-07 16-Dec-07 Karin

Mast order 8 weeks 13-Oct-07 8-Dec-07 Karin

Seven sails order 6 weeks 13-Oct-07 24-Nov-07 Karin

Accessories order 15 weeks 13-Oct-07 26-Jan-08 Karin

Select Crew Equipment 2 weeks 13-Oct-07 27-Oct-07 Trygve

Routine Sail and Maintenance 15 weeks 13-Oct-07 26-Jan-08 Trygve

Order Crew Equipment 5 weeks 27-Oct-07 1-Dec-07 Trygve

Ballast tank install 2 weeks 16-Dec-07 30-Dec-07 Karin

Special sealant for hull 3 weeks 5-Jan-08 26-Jan-08 Karin

Build deck 5 weeks 30-Dec-07 2-Feb-08 Karin

Mast and sails installation 2 weeks, 23-Feb-08 9-Mar-08 Karin

Accessories Installation 6 weeks 23-Feb-08 5-Apr-08 Karin

Crew maintenance Training 10 weeks 2-Feb-08 12-Apr-08 Trygve

Sea Test 5 weeks 5-Apr-08 10-May-08 Trygve

Initial Sail Training 6 weeks 12-Apr-08 24-May-08 Trygve

regular sea training 7 weeks 24-May-08 12-Jul-08 Trygve

The first thing looked at on the implementation plan was crash costs and if they could help reduce time and still remain within budget. Using times and costs on the scenario the budget is right on target with direct and indirect costs. Without crashing the length of time on the project is 50 weeks versus the mandatory 45 weeks. Within these boundaries, crashing is not an option unless costs are reduced elsewhere. While considering the crashing scenario a critical path for the project was developed to find out where time could be reduced to have an impact on the project. The critical path was a basis for all the solutions that were considered. The following tasks were considered critical tasks:

* Design of Hull, Deck, Mast, and accessories

* Hull construction

* Ballast tank install

* Build deck

* Crew maintenance Training

* Initial Sail Training

* Regular sea training

The next thing that was considered was adding additional resources. This option was not taken due to funding being unavailable and coordination of adding new members would require additional time that is not available. Another option considered was to outsource some of the project work. This option was also not taken since this would add more time to find the outsourcing option that is not available for this project.

Another option that will be taken will be to schedule overtime for Karin and Trygve. They are both salaried workers and should be able to work additional time on critical path items. Unfortunately none of the critical path items contains action items for them to complete specifically. Both parties are managing the project and are not performing critical tasks for the project. Adding overtime for other workers will not work since they are hourly workers and will add costs to the project. An option that can also be considered is to compromise quality. This will not be considered since quality is a necessity in this type of environment.

One more way to improve the time for completion of a project is fast tracking. This is adjusting the end of task with the beginning of another task. This is where we will gain two weeks on the project. We will combine initial sail training with regular sea training and reduce the time by two weeks. This will help reduce the overall project time by two weeks and will not cost the project additional funds. The risk of this is the training of the crew will be shortened but the Trygve can ensure the tasks are completed that are necessary to ensure the crew is trained well. This can be done by initially selecting crew members that are experienced in this kind of racing so the training can be shortened.

One last way to shorten task times is to reduce the project time to create the design. Reduction in the design time from 6 to 3 weeks can change the overall project length to the desired 45 weeks. This change will require extra time by the design team and should include both Kirin