This case study will illustrate the life cycle of a typical project.

Background

Singh Construction, LLC is a medium$-$sized construction company located in Corona, a city in Southern California. The company$$s Chief Executive Officer is Surinder Singh, a Licensed General Contractor.

Singh Construction Company had a humble beginning. Surinder Singh started this company in $1987$ and started working on small jobs in residential building maintenance and renovation. Due to the company$$s high$-$quality work and superb customer service, it quickly gained a reputation for being one of Southern California$$s top$-$ten building maintenance companies. The company enjoyed an exponential growth during the $90$s housing boom and earned enough reputation and credibility to win large commercial construction projects.

Challenge

The company$$s growth did not come without a challenge. Its small office in Surinder Singh$$s home garage was not adequate to handle the increased volume of work. Not only did the company need a bigger main office but it needed a mobile office at the job site as well.

Project Concept and Definition

The challenge of the lack of adequate office facilities gave rise to an urgent need to find a solution to meet that challenge. To facilitate a quicker solution, the company engaged a local consulting firm, Pathlawa Consulting, which offered two possible alternatives$$one entailed expansion of the existing home office and the other was to rent an office in downtown Los Angeles. In addition, the consulting firm suggested buying a mobile trailer office for the construction site. After performing alternative analysis, the consulting firm recommended in its feasibility study report that the expansion of the existing home office would be the better of the two alternatives.

Planning

Pathlawa project manager James Xiong talked to Surinder Singh and captured his requirements for the renovation. Based on the agreed$-$upon requirements, the expansion of the existing office would include the expansion of a home office from a one$-$car garage space to a three$-$car garage space $($the entire garage$),$ installation of a dedicated air$-$conditioning unit, insulation of the

garage door, and installation of garage cabinets and office furniture. It also included setup of the local area network of one server, two desktop computers, storage array, laser printer, and a plotter $($to print construction project drawings$).$ The total cost of the renovation work was estimated to be about $$160,000$ plus $$80,000$ for the mobile trailer office. The duration of this entire project was estimated to be $10$ months. James put together a project management plan and developed a time$-$phased $($spanning over $10$ months$)$ budget that included $$20,000$ for contingencies. A fixed price contract was signed with interior design company Hi$-$Tech Designs to design the new office layout.

Execution

The actual project work pertaining to design, development, and implementation of the proposed solution was started after all baseline planning activities were completed and signed off by Hi$-$Tech Designs and Surinder Singh.

Design

Hi$-$Tech Designs completed the new office layout design in a month. It was a two$-$part design: the first part included the design of the office itself and the second part included the design of the computer local area network.

Development

The delays in the new office design approvals by the city delayed the start of development activities by two weeks. Thereafter, as the development $($construction$)$ activities ramped up$,$ more issues started to emerge. It was discovered that when the garage was closed, there was not enough natural light in the office, which Surinder Singh wanted. Thus, the scope was augmented to cut the side wall and install a window. This increase in scope resulted in an elongated project schedule and increase in project cost. The construction part of the new office was completed two months later than the planned completion date. But when the city inspector came to inspect the renovated site, he found that no permit was acquired to install a big side window into the garage. The need to get a permit for the window delayed the implementation stage.

Implementation

It took two weeks to obtain the permit for the window, which delayed implementation of the solution$$that is$,$ setup of the office furniture, installation of the computer network, and starting normal business operations from the office. The mobile office trailer was purchased as planned.

Closing

Finally, the construction work was completed and signed off by the city inspector and approved by the sponsor $($Surinder Singh$).$ The project was completed; however, actual expenditures exceeded the budget and the actual completion date exceeded the scheduled completion date. All costs pertaining to the change orders as well as to the schedule delays were charged to the Singh Construction Company$$s account. The project was closed after all bills were