Project Plan for Whitboard Sailboat Race
Essay title: Project Plan for Whitboard Sailboat Race
Project Plan for Whitbread World Sailboat Race
This paper describes the project plan for Bjorn Erickson to design and equip his country’s sailboat entry into the Whitbread Sailboat race. It was found that the project plan had met the budget requirements but had not met the timeline requirements. Reducing the timeline without budget is a difficult matter as usually decreasing the timeline costs money. We will show in this paper how time requirements can be lowered without affecting costs. We will additionally explain the risks associated with these changes. The last portion of this paper will explain how projects are audited and closed and how the audit can help future projects with lessons learned. To begin, we will discuss the strategy for this project.
Bjorn Ericksen Project Strategy Analysis
Bjorn Erickson is tasked with designing and outfitting his country’s entry into the Whitbread World Sailboat Race. His entry will be racing against 14 other countries that will be trying to out-design and race each other in a race that goes around the world and competes from September to May of the next year (Dalton, 1998). In this paper we will be discussing ways to reduce the length of this project without compromising the quality. The original project plan of the project was too lengthy and did not have money to spare so reductions were made to ensure the project was completed on time. The next section describes how these reductions were analyzed and what the results were.
Plan to Reduce Project Duration
Table 1
Optimal Solution Implementation Plan
Action Item Deliverable
Duration
Start Date
End Date
Who is Responsible
Design of Hull, Deck, Mast, and accessories
3weeks
1-Sep-07
22-Sep-07
Karin
Select Crew
6 weeks
1-Sep-07
13-Oct-07
Trygve
Secure Housing
3 weeks
1-Sep-07
22-Sep-07
Trygve
Hull construction
12 weeks
22-Sep-07
16-Dec-07
Karin
Mast order
8 weeks
13-Oct-07
8-Dec-07
Karin
Seven sails order
6 weeks
13-Oct-07
24-Nov-07
Karin
Accessories order
15 weeks
13-Oct-07
26-Jan-08
Karin
Select Crew Equipment
2 weeks
13-Oct-07
27-Oct-07
Trygve
Routine Sail and Maintenance
15 weeks
13-Oct-07
26-Jan-08
Trygve
Order Crew Equipment
5 weeks
27-Oct-07
1-Dec-07
Trygve
Ballast tank install
2 weeks
16-Dec-07
30-Dec-07
Karin
Special sealant for hull
3 weeks
5-Jan-08
26-Jan-08
Karin
Build deck
5 weeks
30-Dec-07
2-Feb-08
Karin
Mast and sails installation
2 weeks,
23-Feb-08
9-Mar-08
Karin
Accessories Installation
6 weeks
23-Feb-08
5-Apr-08
Karin
Crew maintenance Training
10 weeks
2-Feb-08
12-Apr-08
Trygve
Sea Test
5 weeks
5-Apr-08
10-May-08
Trygve
Initial Sail Training
6 weeks
12-Apr-08
24-May-08
Trygve
regular sea training
7 weeks
24-May-08
12-Jul-08
Trygve
The first thing looked at on the implementation plan was crash costs and if they could help reduce time and still remain within budget. Using times and costs on the scenario the budget is right on target with direct and indirect costs. Without crashing the length of time on the project is 50 weeks versus the mandatory 45 weeks. Within these boundaries, crashing is not an option unless costs are reduced elsewhere. While considering the crashing scenario a critical path for the project was developed to find out where time could be reduced to have an impact on the project. The critical path was a basis for all the solutions that were considered. The following tasks were considered critical tasks:
Design of Hull, Deck, Mast, and accessories
Hull construction
Ballast tank install
Build deck
Crew maintenance Training
Initial Sail Training
Regular sea training
The next thing that was considered was adding additional resources. This option