The annual “Munch” food and drink festival will take place in Swan Valley, Perth, and Margaret River in November 2023. Munch transforms each area into an epicurean hub of culinary delights; where world-class chefs meet the finest Australian produce, award-winning wine flights and one-of-a-kind fun ‘foodie’ delights. More than 50 food and wine celebrities are expected to descend on Western Australia to create spectacular dinners, one-off unforgettable dining experiences in stunning locations, and share their knowledge and experiences with an estimated 25,000 visitors.

Quality Restaurant Association (QRA)

Anna is the promotions manager for the “Quality Restaurant Association” (QRA). QRA is a small commercial company supported by subscription fees from independent restaurants based in Western Australia. QRA coordinates promotions and marketing campaigns on behalf of QRA members to encourage more people to eat in QRA restaurants. QRA represents high end restaurants in Western Australia and has a track record of increasing diner numbers and profits for member restaurants. QRA has a loyal following on social media where it promotes member restaurants. QRA is a minor sponsor for the main Munch event. Anna knows you are an expert in project scheduling, and she has asked you to plan her project.

The Project

Anna has been given permission by the QRA Executive Board to create a coffee table book to be placed in rooms of upmarket hotels that are likely to accommodate guests for the Munch event. A coffee table book is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table in the rooms and lounges of the upmarket hotels. The book is intended to inspire conversation about the food in a selection of around 30 QRA restaurants in the Munch event areas of Western Australia. The book will mainly contain appetising pictures of the food on offer, together with a few inspirational comments from chefs and details of the restaurant where the food is available. The book will be provided free to the upmarket hotels on condition that they are displayed in the best rooms and lounge areas.

QRA is based in a small administrative office in Sutton Street, Mandurah. Anna will take responsibility for producing and distributing the coffee table book along with the other two members of her team. The skills of the team are as follows.

• Anna – is very experienced in dealing with marketing and promotion for QRA. She has excellent administrative and editorial skills. Anna has a company car provided by QRA.
• Betsy – is QRA’s marketing specialist and is extremely competent with stakeholder engagement and writing excellent commercial articles. She has produced numerous pamphlets, magazines and online articles for QRA including Instagram, Twitter and Tik-Tok. She has a WA driving licence and is authorised to drive QRA vehicles.
• Cara – is QRA’s marketing assistant and is an experienced food photographer. She has a portable foodphotographykitconsistingofcamera,filters,lightbox,smallLEDlampsandtripod. Cara does not hold a driving licence.

As QRA is a small organisation, the budget for the coffee table book is limited. The book will need to be printed and distributed to the chosen upmarket hotels by Monday 30 October 2023. Anna has created similar coffee table books for previous Munch events. The books generate significant additional income for QRA restaurants featured in the book. Costs are kept to a minimum by producing the book in house and then getting it printed at a commercial printer based in Joondalup. Each copy costs $8 to print. The printed copies will be collected by car and then distributed by QRA to the upmarket hotels by the QRA project team.

Anna has approached you and has asked you to create a detailed plan for the project for the production and distribution of the QRA coffee table book. At this stage the Executive Board of QRA wants to know how much the project will cost and when the work will be completed.

This is a significant undertaking for Anna’s team. They will need to travel to several QRA restaurants to take photos and talk to chefs. She estimates that 1000 copies of the book will be printed and distributed.

Assume it is now Monday 17 April 2023. You need to complete your detailed project planning activities by Monday 22

May 2023. The QRA Executive Board is meeting on Monday 29 May 2023. At that Executive Board meeting, a final decision will be made about whether to proceed with the project. If the project is approved, the expectation is that it will be completed in 150 calendar days and that the coffee table books will be with the hotels by Monday 30 October

2023. You know that this is a big project for Anna and that the Executive Board has high expectations. You want to be sure you meet Anna’s expectations and get the Executive Board to approve the budget that Anna will need for this project. However, they will only do that if they are confident that Anna has a detailed plan for how she will get it all done.

Schedule Planning Activities

Prepare a written plan in Microsoft Word and associated technical scheduling plans (you are strongly advised to use Microsoft Project) for the Executive Board. You must:

1. Establish the project objective and make a list of your assumptions about the project.

2. Develop a work breakdown structure.
3. Prepare a list of the specific activities that need to be performed to accomplish the project objective.

4. For each activity, assign the person who will be responsible.
5. Create a network diagram that shows the sequence and dependent relationships of all the activities.

6. Develop an estimated duration for each activity.

7. Using a project start time of 0 and a required project completion time of 150 calendar days (or 30 October 2023), calculate the earliest start, earliest finish, latest start, and latest finish times and total slack/float for each activity. If your calculations result in a project schedule with negative total slack/float, revise the project scope, activity estimated durations, and/or sequence or dependent relationships among activities to arrive at an acceptable baseline schedule for completing the project within 150 calendar days (or by 30 October 2023). Describe any revisions you make in the written report.

8. Determine the critical path and identify the activities that make up the critical path.

9. Produce a bar chart (Gantt chart) and extract it into Microsoft Word. This should be based on the earliest start and earliest finish times from the schedule in item 7.

10. Using the responsibility assignments outlined in item 4 and the baseline schedule you developed in item 7, develop a resource requirements table.

11. Using the schedule above, estimate the cost for each activity. Project team salaries are already budgeted for, but this excludes overtime. Use the figures here as a starting point -

https://intranet.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/993268/Professional-Employee-Salaries- Oct2022.pdf Assume that Anna is H7, Betsy is H5 and Cara is H4.

12. Determine the total budgeted cost for the project.

13. Prepare a budgeted cost by period table and a cumulative budgeted cost curve for the project and present it in Microsoft Word.