Prairie waters project essay

According to “ Prairie Waters Project Receives Project Management Prestigious 2011 PMI Project Of The Year Award” (2011), “ Its exemplary innovation and completion, two months ahead of schedule and $100 million under budget, has made it the 2011 recipient of the Project Management Institute’s prestigious PMI(R) Project of the Year Award. ” (para. 1). The Prairie Water project led by CH2M HILL was an environmentally responsible, publicly funded project to collect water for city of Aurora from the South Platte River. The project was a crucial one for the city to sustain its population with only 10 months worth of water reserve left.

The project’s goal was to increase the water supply by 20 percent. The water would be purified naturally using the river bank filtration process before going to the new state of the art purification process that would be built next to the Aurora Reservoir. “ The city of Aurora’s Prairie Waters Project clearly illustrates how project management standards and practices, properly applied, can help deliver a solution that is transformative to a community” (para 5) said Mark A. Langley, President and CEO of PMI. Project management practices followed throughout the project: The Aurora Waters project exemplified the true project management principles from the start to the end of the project. The Project Management team was dedicated to it’s true goal to complete the project within the triple constraints of budget, time, and scope.

According to PMBOK, project management best practice strives to “ balance the competing demands of scope, time, cost, quality, resources and risk to produce the specified product, service or result.” (Project Management Institute, 2011, p. 37). The project management team also performed the following actions in pursuit of this goal. * The project team stayed true to the project management process defined by PMI from project start to finish. * The project team was asked to reduce the budget by $100 million at the beginning of the project and they complied with that request. Project leaders introduced value engineering throughout the project which saved an additional $100 million in construction cost.

* The Management team was innovative about how they handled the cost and incentives for various contractors. They offered incentives to contractors to save cost and benefit the project without compromising the quality and safety. The savings were split by 50% between the contractors and the city. * The project team maintained a strong collaborative relationship between the City and CH2Mhill which helped tremendously to achieve the goals. * The “ YouTube” (2011) website Project members followed a philosophy of “ do what is right, not who is right”. On the Aurora Water project, the Project team, construction managers, designers, program managers, and contractors left their egos outside the project and worked collaboratively.

* Excellent cross-team collaboration allowed them to successfully cut the constraints of Cost and time without sacrificing the scope. Role of Project manager and the team, project integration and potential obstacles: The Aurora Water project was an extremely complex project to begin with. They had a stringent budget constraint to meet. The Project involved numerous stake holders to deal because of the 40 miles of pipe line construction and compliance with environmental agencies. Fast completion of all requirements was also a challenge that the team was faced with since the city had only 9 months of reserve water left. The project team members were consistent about performing their responsibilities and meeting project milestones.

According to “ Prairie Waters Project Receives Project Management Institute’s Prestigious 2011 PMI Project Of The Year Award” (2011), “ Eight significant stakeholder agreements, 145 land parcels and 44 permits were acquired for approval and completion of the project, which took six years to complete”. Managing 145 stake holders and keeping them informed throughout the project is an enormous task. Various parts of the project required 44 permits to satisfy various codes. Each one of these could have impacted the project schedule or caused the project timeline to slip. The triple constraints of project management are Cost, Time, and Scope.

A proper balance of these three constraints is necessary for successful project completion. Every project, regardless of size or complexity, has to deal with these constraints. The Aurora Water project was initially projected to cost $854 million dollars. Through extensive and successful use of Earned Value Management (EVM), CH2M HILL was able to slash the project cost by $200 million dollars. By fast tracking the project they were able to complete the project 2 months before the original completion date. This was almost a 25% savings from the projected cost. Without innovative ideas to share the savings or fast track the project timeline, the project’s cost could have gone over budget or resulted in fewer savings than what had achieved.

The project was completed without sacrificing the quality or reducing the scope due to smart engineering ideas. The Aurora Water project has also completed its task in the most responsible way possible. The team showed great respect for the regional communities, various regional stake holders and environment authorities in making sure that project adhered to local and regional development codes. Their dedication and compliance to the authority and codes showed a great deal ethical behavior without impacting the project schedule. According to Mark A. Langley, President and CEO of PMI, “ This project demonstrates best practice solutions that show agility and effective stakeholder engagement.”