Introduction
This report has been prepared to analyse the importance of communication and integration management in project management. This goal requires a review of a specific project, and hence the reason behind this study’s choice of the Victorian Desalination Project as an appropriate vignette. The project commenced in May of 2007.
The justification for this selection is partly the duration of the implementation of the project as viewed against the background of the actual planned date of completion, which was 2011. Instead, the project was carried forward by more than a year as the commissioning efforts were taking place in late 2012.
So far, the project is not yet under implementation as it is subject to the stay of production imposed by the government since 2012. Although the project lagged behind time so that it was not yet commissioned by 2012, Victorian desalination project can be deployed as an important case example for analysis of communication and integration management in a successful execution of a project.
Project Background
The Victorian desalination project was aimed at augmenting water sources for both Melbourne and Geelong. The project was meant to ensure the production and supply of fresh drinking water through the aforementioned parts of the Victorian area. The commissioning phase of the project ended on the 17th December 2012. Therefore, as from 22nd December 2012, the project had been placed on standby.
This meant that it would no longer be used to produce drinking water through 2012 -2013. The commissioning was looking into the reliability, productivity, and performance of the quantity and quality of the water. The desired goal in terms of the quantity was 150 -200 billion litres of water.
The testing phase for the commissioning featured the running through of the system of 50 GL of water in different stages. Initially, all the water was emptied into the ocean for re-entry into the reservoirs. Upon the completion of the first stage, which comprised testing the first 50 GLs of water, the water was subsequently released into the network via the pipeline connects with the Cardinia reservoir.
The delivery outlets include Berwick. The specific location of the plant is the Bass Coast Wonthaggi, which was chosen after a comprehensive feasibility study that was conducted on several potential sites.
The reasons why Bass coast was favoured include its proximity to the seawater, which would ensure convenience in the collection of quality source water with little or no contaminants as well as providing a repository for the concentrated saline solution because of the free circulation of the ocean at that point, which would ensure rapid dispersion.
Stakeholders Communications Management
The main stakeholders in the Victoria Desalination Project were the communities and landowners (Stair, & Reynolds 2006, p. 56). Other than these stakeholders, since the project was being run on public-private capacity, the state as well as the private individuals involved, namely Aquasure employees and those parties representing the Department of Health also formed part of the stakeholders.
At the onset of the project, the idea was to provide an alternative solution to water shortage in Melbourne. The idea of salt-water desalination was not novel at this point because at the time, there was already an active desalination plant at Perth that was applying the reverse osmosis mechanism to obtain drinking water from ocean water (Victorian Government 2013).
However, since Perth was a pioneer, the plant there had raised some major controversies on matters of the environment. The local community was apprehensive about blindly allowing the establishment of a similar plant without any formal communication from the project team on how the project risks including those posed to the environment would be handled (Rajamanickam 2005, p. 14).
Subsequently, in 2008, the Environmental Effects Statement (EES) compiled a report that spanned more than 1600 of the 8100 technical appendices indicating that the project was safe in the long term. It engaged more than 200 researchers in over 80 specialist scientist studies in the assessment of the major project components, which included the marine structure, plant, power supply, and the pipeline.
The report indicated that the environmental fears expressed by the local communities would only be realised in the period that spanned the actual construction of the plant and not beyond (Betts 1995, p. 254). The EES also indicated that the environment would benefit further in the long term because the soil that was removed for the construction of the plant would in fact be reused in the deployment of manmade flora and fauna.
Moreover, the EES report indicated that the state would be better placed to deal with the issues that would come up during the construction by placing strict performance requirements on the Aquasure contractors during their tenure. Aquasure also had an Environmental Management Plan to assist in its compliance with the required standards. It could be held liable for noncompliance at a court of law.
Subsequently, the report by EES was published on the 20th August 2008 up to 30 September 2008. Thereafter, the members of the public that formed part of the communities that would be affected by the project were allowed to make comments and give their feedback.
They accomplished this mission with the aid of the Department of Planning and Community Development, which then facilitated the assessment of the EES report by launching a public trial that went for 15 days from the 15th October. Under review were more than 400 comments represented by 20 community groups, 5 councils, and 74 individuals.
After this hearing, the independent panel assessed the issues at hand in the light of the evidence provided and proceeded to rule that the environmental impacts feared by the majority of the public could be easily offset by compliance with the strict environmental regulatory rules put in place by the various parties including state and the contractors.
Project Management Information Systems (PMIS)
The role of a PMIS in the management of a project
The project Management Information System is the project planner. It comprises the software and hardware that are put in place by the project team to facilitate the smooth running of the project. The goal is to ensure efficient and effective project management that complies with the established deadlines as well as the budget.
Another critical role of the PMIS is to ensure the free flow of communication across the organisational hierarchies or in other words to ensure that the project team and the stakeholders are constantly on the same page. Finally, the PMIS reflects the critical path of the project, which is to say that it is responsible for charting out the shortest path that the project team ought to follow.
Project Life Cycle
Definition
The Victorian desalination project came to be as a possible solution to the water shortage that was being suffered by the majority of the Melbourne population. Consequently, the need for a solution to this problem became apparent.
To address the need, the state came up with the idea of ocean water desalination. There was a lot of water that could not be used for drinking purposes simply because it was salty despite the water shortage. Additionally, the idea of desalination was already being implemented in the pert Plant with great success.
The goal in this project was to ensure that citizens of Melbourne have a continuous supply of drinking water all year round. The possibility of meeting this goal at the onset was very real. The specific capacity needed was set at 150 billion litres of fresh water annually, which translates to 450 mega litres of water daily. This capacity can be increased to 200 billion litres if need be because the plant has this capacity.
The risks involved were primarily environmental because this plant would act in reverse osmosis to extract fresh water from salty seawater. This posed a threat to the ocean water levels, thus causing legitimate concerns to the communities around the ocean.
Moreover, the chunk of land that would be necessary for the construction of the plant would mean the dislocation of several landowners, thus giving rise to another legitimate concern. These concerns posed risks to the success of the project.
Planning
Subsequently, the next stage after the identification of the project idea was the identification of the contractors that would carry out this proposed project.
The Aquasure group won the tender. Therefore, it partnered with the state in a public-private relationship to bring to pass the idea. The project life cycle is supposed to span 100 years during which Aquasure will take charge for the first 30 years and leave the rest of the lifeline to the state once it has made its profits.
Implementation
After identifying the project team, the next phase was the selection of the site for the assembly of the plant. This process involved a review of several possible sites. In the end, four sites were shortlisted. They included the Bass coast, which won the location for the plant because of its accessibility to the Melbourne water network. Therefore, the free circulation can be accessed to dispose the saline concentrated contents.
Finally, because of this proximity, the site would be ideal for the collection of quality raw material without any contamination. The project thus became outlined as required to take a period of two years. This meant that it was to have been completed by 2011.
The critical success factors in this project and in most other projects included time, scope, and costs (Anandarajan, & Wen 1998, p. 126). The matter of scope received adequate attention. It was the best-performing critical factor because the plant had the capacity to produce 200 billion litres annually at the point of closure.
Project Integration Management
Project integration management refers to the process of merging or marrying the various system components of a project to ensure that they are working in tandem and as per the original plan. The magnitude of this role falls on the shoulders of the project manager whose role is to ensure that all parties to the project do work in harmony to bring out the best or optimum results (Cleland, & Gareis 2006, p. 209).
This task is difficult in the face of a large project such as the Victorian desalination project that involved the state and private parties as well as other stakeholders including local communities and landowners. This overview is general for all parties that made up the project system. At that level, the project managers were the primary forces behind decision-making.
This process usually requires input from the lower levels of functional managers and the like (Pons 2008, p. 88). However, as indicated in the previous project analysis report, a critical problem that was encountered by those in charge was an acute shortage of information up the levels, which is a primary problem that is encountered when there is a hierarchical matrix at play as was the case in this project (Sayles 1976, p. 9).
The problem in this scenario stems from the conflict between coordination and functionality. People in the lower posts that happen to be functional posts are not always comfortable taking orders.
On the contrary, those in management or coordination posts need their (lower level people) help to make any decisions (Cleland, & Yilliam 1975, p. 237). There is a lot of information that flows down the tiers, but little that goes back up the ladder. This brings the overall confusion and ineffective decision-making.
After having analysed the power balance problem, it becomes critical to suggest possible solutions that can align the functional as well as the coordination managers. The solution is in the creation of a level of permanence in the position of project manager.
This means that although the project manager is in fact almost equal to the functional mangers, it is prudent to raise the bar for project managers in that they should have a longer tenure as well as a higher title. However, the title is necessary if they are to coordinate the functionality managers dealing with various other systems of the project (Archibald 1977, p. 66).
This in effect shall mean that the project manager pulls all strings while the rest of the project team plays to his tune, thus creating harmony in the working environment.
Project Monitoring and Change Control
The project got underway. There were the scheduled annual reports that were delivered in a timely manner in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 (VG 2013). The project was carried forward to 2012 but this was not too bad because an allowance of one year had been calculated into the time or duration of the project.
It also started a little later than anticipated due to all the resistance that was launched by the special groups in the affected communities. By November 2012, commissioning of the project had gotten underway to test the reliability, productivity, and performance of the project. The project was found to be in mint condition. It was thus issued a Commercial Acceptance approval and later a Reliability Testing Finalisation.
The project went under standby mode in 2012 to 2013 for the government and the contractor to finalise the project. However, this situation is just a temporary injunction because the project was certified to be in a position to produce 200 billion litres annually prior to going into standby (Packendorff 1995, p. 323).
One of the potential areas of change needed in this project could have had to do with the critical success factor of scheduling or time. The project was supposed to have been complete by 2011. However, it ran until the end of 2012.
As the project manager, perhaps one of the things that could have assisted in keeping the schedule would have been the implementation of monitoring as a parallel activity as opposed to a final activity (Jung 2008, p. 43). Such monitoring would have revealed the risk of delay in project completion, thus triggering control of the project by the project manager. Such control could have taken various forms.
However, the most obvious one would perhaps be the running of parallel activities, which initially would have happened subsequently in order to save time. It is also safe to postulate that there were perhaps some additional budgetary implications of the project that for instance required the extension of contractors’ terms of hire and the like since the project ran for an extra year.
The project manager could have discovered such eventualities earlier on in the project and perhaps provided for extra job descriptions in hiring. Alternatively, even though it became apparent much later, hiring in-house help from the working contractors as opposed to hiring external consultants could have avoided the budgetary constraints.
Finally, the capacity of 200 billion litres production annually was not settled on in the initial plan for the project (VG 2013). It only became feasible after the project had undergone the preliminary stages of implementation. To manage such a vast change in the plan would require extensive monitoring and control skills to be deployed by the project manager.
However, most project managers are usually trained to expect such critical changes towards the completion of the project because the client has been pleased with the quality of work done that far and that he would like to cash in on the apparent expertise of the project team (Hides, Irani, & Sharp 2000, p. 419).
Subsequently, the manager would have to incorporate the new plans into the initial project design including the budget, schedule, and the scope of the project and/or present the new amalgamated plan to his superiors.
The extensiveness of this project would warrant the engagement of external monitoring assistants to maintain an independent perspective of progress on the ground. Such monitoring measures would have to be carried out regularly, perhaps on a quarterly basis, to ensure consistency in reporting.
Project Closure
At the close of the implementation phase, the project was closed although nothing formal happened. The project managers compiled a performance report for the stakeholders in which they again engaged the aid of the EEC. The plant was officially handed over to the Aquasure group for takeover.
The state declared a standby for one year (2012 / 2013) after which it can then begin to contract for fresh water supplies with the ceiling capacity of 200 billion litres annually. This contract with Aquasure ensured that the private entity would have the controlling g rights over the plant for the first thirty years. The state will then take over for the rest of the life of the project plan.
As such, the first stage of the creation of the plant is complete. However, since the project was very vast, it does not suffice to declare it as having been closed safely, especially considering that it has an approximated lifespan of 100 years. As the project ensues, there will be a continued need for review especially concerning environmental sustainability (Turner, & Muller 2003, p. 5).
This project can only thrive as long as stakeholders are contented. Presently, the primary concerns lodged by the stakeholders gravitate around environmental sustainability.
Consequently, to secure the project’s future, the parties to the deal have to ensure that they comply with the environmental requirement spelt out in their performance requirements. A post completion review may be executed in comparison with the project plan to ensure that all the set out objectives were met.
Conclusion
This paper has presented a conclusive analysis of the Victorian desalination project that began in May 2007 ending in December 2012. The key parties of the project were the state of Australia and Aquasure.
The deal was that Aquasure and the State of Australia would partner in the construction of a desalination plant located at the Bass Coast, whose venue was preferred due to its unique characteristics in the light of the project (Melbourne Water 2007).
These characteristics include its proximity to the free circulation of the open ocean, which means that the saline concentrated contents could be disposed in a manner that is sustainable to the environment. Secondly, this proximity also ensured that there would be direct access to quality source water free from contamination during transport.
Thirdly, this coast was the most convenient to access because of the Melbourne metropolitan water network. The related project was extensive in its scope, time, and budget. The anticipated completion date was set for 2011. However, it ended up being completed in December 2012.
Among other things, this analysis has briefly touched on the project management information systems. It has discussed stakeholder communication management, integrated management, and the steps necessary for project completion.
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