Introduction:
The purpose of this document is to provide a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), as guideline that describes the roles and responsibilities of the various project personnel, linking the deliverables/and or activities to resources (Heldman, 2009). The RAM will generate a realistic outline of the operations and resources required, and evaluate if the employer has enough resources for the Denver-Aurora Road Maintenance Project. By providing a RAM, deliverables will be committed to a responsible party, who will review or provide input and the relevant approval and authority.
The main considerations of this project phase are detailing the procedures that will govern the management of this project by contractors, third parties, and the employer, that is the government’s agencies or its own forces. Emphasis is laid on schedule, expenditure, change controls, and communication; project configuration administration, management, and documentation control. Other relevant elements to be covered include Quality Assurance, Competitiveness, and Safety Management. This project will adopt the design/bid/build (D/B/B) framework, which is the approved project delivery method, by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) (United States, 2013).
Construction phase:
Throughout the construction phase, the contractors, procured by the Federal Contracting Agency, together with the Agency’s own forces, will provide the machinery and the construction provisions and materials; construct the project facilities, engineer, and mount the new road infrastructure. The work will be executed in agreement with the guidelines and specifications developed during the design phases. At the highest project level, particularly in the commissioning phase, the facilities and equipment will be integrated and tested.
Capture team:
The project shall involve the Chief Project Manager, who will be in direct contact with the Federal Contracting Agency directors, the Design Consultants and the Contractor.
Role of the Federal Agency in construction:
The Agency will deploy a Chief Project Manager who will assure expedient performance during the project phases, and make timely and critical decisions on behalf of the Agency (United States, 2014). The manager will coordinate the construction phases between the consultants and the contractors, define and coordinate the right communication lines between the project parties. The Project Manager will review and make recommendations to the project delegation letter. The Manager will approve the project schedule and budget at the project initiation phase.
The Manager will have the authority to reject work, which does not conform to the contracting documents. The Manager will receive all the road engineering and drawings from the contractor, and coordinate it with the information from other contractors and transmit it to the Federal Contracting Agency (United States, 2013). The Agency will review and commend or takeover other relevant action upon the contracting documentation submittals, such as project financial data, drawings and designs. This review action will be implemented with judicious promptness to effect no delay in the contractor operations, while according sufficient time to the Federal Highway Administration and the United States Department of Transportation project review.
Role of the Design Consultant(s):
This project team describes the professional team that developed and produced the contract drawings and specifications, sealing them off with their professional engineering seal, as defined in the contracting documentation. The design consultants will be the central or single point of contact between the construction Chief Project Manager and the Contractors. This team will provide weekly updates to the Chief Project Manager for the delegation letters. Through the office of the Chief Project Manager’s office, the Design Consultants will review the project schedule and budget at the project initiation phase (Rand McNally and Company, 2013).
The following are supplementary functions of this design team: accept and respond to construction contractor Requests for Information (RFI), transferred from the Contractor to the designer through the Federal Contracting Agency. The RFI defines a request by the contractor for clarification of the road maintenance design, specifications and project implementation phases (Heldman, 2009).
The team shall further review and endorse acceptance of contractor submittals relating to the construction materials, professional standards and specifications, designs, drawings and architectural elements under the project deliverables. This process will involve change in requests and adjustments in costs and orders. The team will also make frequented visits to the project sites to guarantee that project design comply with the stipulations provided by the contracting agency (United States, 2013).
Role of the Contractor:
The contractor will cater for the appropriate road construction and maintenance processes from the initial project phase to the close-up. The successful company will provide the construction resources, ranging from construction essentials (raw materials, machinery/equipment, and labor) to professional expertise. According to the contracting submittals, the contractor will limit the project budget within the set limits, as agreed between the Federal Contracting Agency and the procurement entities. According to the Federal property and Administrative services act, section 304 (b), the contracting company will not enter into a contractual agreement whose architect/engineer services surpasses six percent of the entire project cost (United States, 2014).
The contractor will perform all the construction and maintenance work as defined by the contract drawings and specifications by employing all the resources and technical expertise within the contractor’s responsibility. Other responsibilities include obtaining the permits and jurisdictional authorizations appertaining to the project, especially where the road construction will traverse across states. Responsibilities also include developing and executing a quality control (QC) plan for project inspections and testing procedures. It also involves developing and executing a safety protocol/plan to guarantee a safe working environment, and deliver submittals described by the contract representations and specifications, such as road plans, manufacturer’s product specifications, calculations and data, and other relevant products information (Oberlender, 2014).
The contractor will update contract schedule, provide weekly and impromptu project analysis, and update reports to the Design Consultants, and copies of this information will further be availed to the Chief Project Manager’s office. The Contractor’s Project Manager, who will avail progress reports for the tasks covered, will direct these functions. The manager will also document the upcoming work, the resources demanded, and manage the pay requests. The manager will submit the RFIs to the Design Consultants, as a clarification of the project design intent, as well as the Requests for Change (RFC). The RFC is a document that officially calls for adjustments in the project implementation phases, cost and schedule management procedures (Heldman, 2009).
Responsibility Matrix summary:
The responsibility matrix defines the various responsibilities and operations, as well as the due obligations entitled to the relevant parties throughout the road construction and management phases. The main parties in this project covers the Federal Contracting Agency, as the employer; the Project Design Consultants, as the oversight body, and the Project Contractor. The criteria below have been provided for the level of responsibility during the project phases in accordance to the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) (Oberlender, 2014).
A = Approval Authority
L = Lead Responsible Party
R/R = Review and Recommend
I = Provides Input
Construction project leads:
During the project phases, the relevant parties will collate information on the project status and competence as demonstrated by the Contractor and the Design Consultants. This information will be managed in a database covering vital information on all completed projects across the United States, through an online intelligent leads and insight platform.
The Federal Contracting Agency will approve the details defining successfully completed projects, upon testing and commissioning by the employer. This information will rate the Contractor in the construction industry and the competitive edge demonstrated by the parties during the project phases, according to the international project management standards (United States, 2014). This information will be shared between the government construction agencies and other major construction players across the United States and Canada, with significant endorsements over future contracting opportunities.
References:
Heldman, K. (2009). Project Management JumpStart. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Oberlender, G. D. (2014). Project management for engineering and construction. New York: Mcgraw-Hill Education.
Rand McNally and Company. (2013). The 2013 road atlas: United States, Canada, and Mexico. Chicago, Ill: Rand McNally.
United States. (2013). Introduction to safety performance functions. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration
United States. (2014). Federal contracting, noncompetitive contracts based on urgency need additional oversight: report to congressional committees. Washington, D.C.]: United States Government Accountability Office.
