On Project Managers vantage view, provide a comprehensive summary and opinion driven insights of the construction problem stated below.

The client was an independent record company that intended to set up an interactive Web site where visitors could search its catalogue, listen to tracks from new and recent releases, download audio files and read interviews with artists and news about the company. An in-house team had been set up to plan and implement the project, but after a year they had made scant progress and had little to show except notes of meetings with Internet consultants and initial ideas about developing an Internet marketing strategy and designing the site. The managing director called in management consultants to review the teams work and determine what needed to be done to develop the site and bring it into operation. The work specification they were given was brief just one paragraph! and to the point: What are the technical options? Should we manage the site ourselves or use an external service? Which option will serve the company best? What are the cost implications? How soon can we have a professionally designed site up and running? What steps do we need to take to implement it? He asked the consultants to give him answers within a month. Following a rapid and intensive program of research, analysis and evaluation, the consultants identified a preferred option, drew up a table of cost data, outlined an implementation plan and sent in their report exactly four weeks after starting work. The MDs initial reaction was silence. Then an e-mail came in from his office: Why havent you given me what I asked for? I wanted all the options costed, and I need that information in a comparative table showing bottom-line figures for all cost elements of each option.

The consultants looked again at the wording of the work specification. That innocent-sounding phrase What are the cost implications? signified more than they had thought. They had assumed that the preferred option would be identified on technical grounds, and that what they then had to do was to cost only the development and implementation of that one option. Because even that task was quite a challenge in the limited time available, they had not conceived that the client would require cost information for the other options too. If the specification had been thought through in detail and phrased more carefully (and at somewhat greater length!), and if the consultants had asked for confirmation of their assumptions, there might have been less room for misinterpretation. Over the ensuing weeks, a further exchange of correspondence brought the content of the report closer in line with the MDs expectations. The consultants report was accepted and their invoice approved for payment. It later transpired that the requirement to cost every option was a point insisted on by the companys board, which had not been given an opportunity to see the work specification.