Question One
A Statement of Work happens to be an extremely influential document that has to be constantly updated and used when it comes to the foundation a project; therefore it gets written in the project initiation stage (Taylor 7). For the reason, as the mayor of Calcutta, I have to come up with a statement of work for the Metro subway project thereby promoting efficient, as well as creative means for embarking on this project. I will have to coordinate meetings with the stakeholders so as to improve the statement of work in accordance to not only the size, but also the intricacy of the project, as well as my knowledge concerning the topic, thereby getting their approval (Taylor 15). Thus, my statement of work will contain firstly, an executive summary that gives a short summary on the project’s aim, background, scope and a high-level project plan; secondly, the project’s objectives as per the SMART objectives i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time specific; thirdly, the scope that is an extension of the executive summary though it is in details (Martin 31); fourthly, a listing of deliverables that get produced during the project; fifth is the section that deals with project assumptions, there are various unknown issues when planning the project that constitute a risk hence the need for listing the identified risks in the project; and lastly is a list of the stakeholders of the project. Once all the stakeholders approve my statement of work, I can now embark on planning the project in an efficient and creative manner (Martin 47).
Question Two
There are various challenges that face any construction company during project initiation (Weisfeld 41), Metro project faced countless challenges since its inceptions; although some of these challenges were as a result of poorly formulated project scope, the majority of the challenges were due being unlucky. As a result of poorly formulated project scope, construction started in the middle of Calcutta that is a city; the project managers decided to start digging inside the city by tunneling down and then digging both routes simultaneously rather than beginning at one end. This led to the crises with soil removal thereby resulting in the rise, in heavy equipment transportation. On the other hand, there are a various challenges that tend to arise due to being unlucky (Weisfeld 45), in the case of the Metro project they included:
1. Poor funding;
2. The project managers of Metro project could not exclusively possess the site considering that the project was taking place in the middle of the city and life could not be put on hold due to the project. As a result, there was an endless conflict between upholding routine traffic flows, as well as creating adequate buffers for paving the way to Metro construction;
3. It was impossible totally diverting traffic away from the roads considering the overcrowding of Calcutta city hence there was no space for creating a diversion.
4. As a result of lack of a master plan of the location responsible for revealing the position of underground utilities, as well as cable lines, there was continuous disruption of work since crews constantly hit the underground lines so the workers had to wait for undertaking of repairs on the infrastructure;
5. The shop owners within the site had to be given view, as well as an approach to their shops considering that they had vehemently objected the project until the meeting of their demands took place;
6. The Metro Company had to provide its employees with an enormous social umbrella that included housing, medical centers and schools in order to maintain them.
Work Cited:
Martin, Michael G. Delivering Project Excellence With the Statement of Work. Atlanta : Management Concepts, 2010.
Taylor, James. Project Scheduling and Cost Control: Planning, Monitoring and Controlling the Baseline. New Jersey: J. Ross Publishing, 2007.
Weisfeld, Matt. The Object-Oriented Thought Process. Ohio: Sams Publishing, 2004.
