MME30001 Engineering Management 1
Assignment 2
Individual Assignment
PROJECT SCHEDULING (10% of Subject Mark)
The Auditorium Construction
A prestigious university has planned to construct a 25,000-seat Auditorium for performing arts. For this purpose the university has created an in-house project team called “Auditorium
Syndicate”. This Syndicate has formally signed a contract to build this prestigious auditorium for the University and as per the contract; the construction must start by
January 1, 2018 and be completed within one year and six months (1.5 years or 18 months). The university has estimated losses of $25,000 per week of delay beyond July 1,
2019.
Eddy Baker, the project manager of the syndicate, called a planning meeting, where he expressed great satisfaction at obtaining the contract. He revealed that the syndicate could gain benefit of as much as $350,000 in total which could be distributed between the project team as bonuses if they completed the project as planned. He was confident that the project could be completed on time with an allowance made for the usual delays anticipated in such a large project. In case of delays, their bonuses will be lost to compensate for the estimated losses of $25,000 per week.
Jenifer Tom, the project team leader, agreed that in a normal year only slight delays might develop due to a shortage of labour. However, she reminded the project manager that for such a large project, the syndicate would have to use unionized employees and that the construction industry labour agreements were to expire on December 31, 2018. Past experience indicated a fifty-fifty chance of a strike.
Eddy agreed that a strike might cause a problem. Unfortunately, there was no way to change the contract. He inquired about the prospective length of a strike. Jenifer figured that such a strike would last either 8 weeks (50%