PERSONAL EVALUATION PROJECT

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

MBA

GRAFTON COLLEGE, DUBLIN

SUBMITTED TO: Mr. BRENDAN DOGGETT

SUBMITTED BY: Mr. ROSHAN MANI
STUDENT NO: GCD 2668
DATE: 25-11-2010
Word Count: 1820
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No

INTODUCTION............…………………………………………………………….3

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT……………………….….…………………...4

IMPORTANCE OF THE PROJECT TO THE COMPANY……………….……4

PROBLEMS THAT MAY ARISE………………………………………….………5

OVERVIEW OF THE NINE AREAS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT…...……5

ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTCAL PLAN………………………………….............8

WORK BREAK DOWN STURCTURE……………………………………………9

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….…..10

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..11

2
 PROPOSAL TO OPEN NEW HOUSE OF FRASER
STORE IN SWORDS

INTRODUCTION

This project aims at analysing the tools techniques and concepts which are used in the
project management and new project development. The paper deals with the project of
opening a retail store in the north of Dublin City. The store will be a part of the House
of Fraser group in UK. House of Fraser is a department store group with 62 enviable
locations across the UK and Ireland. As one of the best known names on the high
street, House of Fraser has presented customers with an unrivalled nationwide
department store for more than 150 years. The company was acquired by the Highland
consortium in November 2006 marking the beginning of an exciting new chapter in its
history. (www.houseoffraser.co.uk)

Renowned for its designer brands and exclusive collections, House of Fraser offers
luxurious items at affordable prices. From beauty essentials to home accessories, the
premium department store strives to offer its customers an enjoyable and pleasant
shopping experience. New stores are opened as a part of group’s strategy of ongoing
expansion and growth. The group carries its business through the retail stores located
as well the online shop (www.houseoffraser.co.uk) where the users can buy the
products online. The details of House of Fraser are as follows.

• 61 stores in the UK & Ireland

• 5 million sq ft selling space
• Annual sales in excess of £1.25bn
• Transactional website launched in September 2007
• Multi-channel Wedding List service launched September 2008
• 1 million account card customers

3
 • 6,500 House of Fraser staff & 10,000 concession staff

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

The objective of the project is to open a new store in Swords. Currently House of
Fraser has store in the south side of Dublin and currently trades successfully over four
floors in Dundrum Town centre. So the number of the competitors in the north of
Dublin is less when compared to the other parts of the Dublin. This is the part of the
company’s organic growth which will help to increase the revenue and create more job
opportunities. The group will open its new store in the Pavilions shopping centre in
swords where the store will become the anchor tenant. By opening a new store the
objectives of the retailer is as follows

• It will help to increase the revenue of the group by 14% reaching £3.8million
• Increase exposure to new customers, catchment area of Swords and Malahide.

IMPORTANCE OF THE PROJECT TO THE COMPANY

This project is having utmost importance because the economy is on the recovery
stage after the recessions. This project will help the company to gain the first mover
advantage in the particular location. Currently the store in Dublin is in the further
south side and situated in Dundrum where people experience problems with the traffic
and parking. As a result the people who live in the north of Dublin find it difficult to
get to the location for shopping and their needs to House of Fraser. But, after the
completion of this new store the people from the north can avoid the traffic and the
parking problems they face while they travel to the south side for shopping. This will
also contribute towards the overall growth of the company in terms of its revenue and
turn over. The advantages of the project is as follows

• Ease of access for the customers in the north of Dublin

o Metro North – link to city centre

4
 o M1 to Belfast and M50
• Good location for the handling of logistics and air travel facility as its
proximity close to airport hence reduced transport costs
o Easy access to the Dublin port through the port tunnel.
• First mover advantage in a new and prime location.
• Large population North city and north county Dublin.

PROBLEMS THAT MAY ARISE IN THE NEW PROJECT

There are various problems which have to be analysed and implemented successfully.
The potential threats that may arise are:

• Economic problems
o Upcoming severe budget – unknown taxes and increased rates
• Spending habits: Customer doesn’t pay as they did before the economic down
turn.
• Possible difficulty in finding reputed construction and engineering company to
fulfil this project. Two main building contractors gone into receivership

OVERVIEW OF NINE AREAS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

OVERVIEW OF THE CONCEPTS, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

A. Project Integration Management

This project consists of various components with various action areas or phases. This
knowledge area describes how the various components are coordinated in the project.
Project integration management will contain the project plan development, plan
execution and afterwards the integrated change control. In this stage the action plan is
subdivided in a micro form (Dunne M 2004). After due conformation from the
corporate management and preparation of the work plan, effective control mechanism

5
is adopted to maintain the high standards of the project and to ensure everything
happens in a planned manner with planned standards.

B. Project Scope Management

Scope management describes the processes required to ensure that the project includes
all the work required to complete the project in a predetermined standard and manner.
It consists of the following phases; initiation, scope planning, scope definition, scope
verification and scope change control. The success of the project depends upon how
efficiently we use the available resources and how we allocate these resources in an
appropriate manner. In this the statement of work plays a major role. Statement of
work is that captures and defines the work activities, deliverables, and time line
vendor will execute against in performance of specified work for a client (Kerzner H
2009). The different areas addressed in the statement of work is the purpose of the
project, scope of work, location of work, period of performance, deliverables
schedules, applicable standards and criteria, special requirements, type of contract or
payment methods, and miscellaneous.

C. Project Time Management.

The time duration has a large influence on the overall cost. Activity definition, activity
sequencing, activity duration estimating, schedule development and schedule control
are the main phases covered under time management. The time allocated for the
completion of this project is six months. This has to do with planning and prioritising
the work which is involved in the project. It includes the building modifications,
constructions and installation of the communication systems ad well as quality testing.
I will discuss this topic in more detail below.

D. Project Cost Management

While considering a new project, we have to evaluate the resources available to us.
The finance or the capital for the project will be limited and as project manager i have
to ensure that the project should be done with in budget. There are various aspects of
the cost management in the project. They include cost estimating, budgeting, cost and
schedule control system and cost analysis. In a project there will be a chance of

6
variances happening in each activity. It’s important to ascertain the cost of each cost as
well the possible variance which can happen. The variances can be controlled by
proper scheduling, controlling and distribution of the available resources.

E. Project Quality Management

The quality of the project depends on its successful completion with its quality and
predetermined standards. Technically the project quality management describes the
processes required to ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was
undertaken. The various phases of the quality management are quality planning,
quality assurance and quality control. Each and every step is gone through tough
quality checking measures as well. Quality standards are reviewed in a periodical
manner to ensure that all the activities completed properly and as planned.

F. Project Human Resource Management

Human resource or is important for the effective management of a project. The main
function of this particular phase is procurement of the effective human resource and
uses them appropriately. In technical terms the human resource management deals
with the effective use of the available human resources. It has the following functions
human resource planning, staff acquisition, and development of teams. The company
has to develop the human resource plan for its successful management of the human
resource. Then the company has to acquire the project team and then should develop
them in order to make them competent to be the part of the project. Effective
development and management of the project team comes in this section.
(slideshare.net)

G. Project Communication Management

Project communication management includes the work necessary to collect, store and
analyse project information. Communication management is the process of
supervising the exchange of information in upward, downward or laterally. It consists
of information distribution, performance reporting, and communication planning and
administrative closure. The project manager’s task is to co ordinate all the activities of
the project and it communicate with the whole group and thus get feed back and after

7
that he can make necessary changes to the ongoing activities if required. Also the
communication should be with the stake holders of the company. They should also
manage the stake holder expectations and report the performance.

H. Project Risk Management

Project risk management is concerned with identifying, responding and analyzing the
risks involved. It consists of risk management planning, risk response planning, risk
identification, quantitative risk analysis, qualitative risk analysis and risk monitoring
and control. It also involves the successful planning of the risk management as well as
the successful identification of the risk. It will also perform the qualitative risk
analysis. Successful monitoring and controlling of the risk also comes under effective
risk management. The common risks associate with the projects of this nature is risk
associated with the supply and price of raw materials, availability and the increase in
the price of labour. (Kerzner H 2009)

I. Project procurement management

There is different process in the procurement management. They are planning of the
procurement, conduct the procurement, and administer the procurement, finally close
the procurement. In this project they collect the valuable information and the
document from other stores where this projects and openings before did. These
documents, experience and information’s are very helpful for successively complete
this project.

ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL PLAN

TIME MANAGEMENT
For the remainder of this proposal I shall discuss the area of time management in more
detail. Time management is one of the important factors in the project. Time
management involves defining the activities in the timely manner. This involves the
breaking up of each activity and defining them by time. In other words it’s the process
of assigning time for each process for its successful completion (Kerzner H 2009). In
this project each work is broken down and allocated to specific time for its
completion. Meeting the share holders is the first stage in the work beak down. Later
they have to analyse the site and select the store design. All this work should be

8
finished in a time bound manner. All these activities are broken into the sequence for
the easy completion of the project in the timely manner. After sequencing each
activity, the resources for each activity has to be determined and analysed. They
should ensure that they have access to the resources for each work to be carried out.
The resource planning is done before estimation of the activity duration. For the
successful estimation of the activity duration they should make sure that they have the
resource for completing the task. Then they have to develop a schedule for work to be
completed like the construction of the interiors and installation of the IT systems.
After carrying out the installations, product ordering and merchandising should be
done. After that the promotions are done and the date is fixed for the store opening.
For this project a total time of 6 months is allocated. All the tasks have to be
completed in the timely manner which starts in the winter so that they launch the
opening date in the summer which is the time of mega sale.

For the effective implementation of the project and the corporate objectives requires a
plan that defines all effort to be expended, assigns responsibility to a specially
identified organizational element, and establishes schedules and budgets for the
accomplishment of the work (Kerzner H 2009) . The work break down structure is
structured in accordance with the way the work will be performed and reflects the way
in which project costs and data will be summarized and eventually reported.
Preparation of the work break down structure or (WBS) also considers other areas that
require structured data, such as scheduling, configuration management, contract
funding, and technical performance parameters.

The WBS for this project is developed as follows:

WORK BREAK DOWN STRUCTURE OF HOUSE OF FRASER

Program: New Store Construction and Opening 01-00-00

Project 1 Analytical Studies

Task 1: Meeting with the Stake Holder
Task 2: Business Plan Development
Task 3: Defining the Corporate Requirements

9
Project 2 Design and Layout 01-02-00
Task 1: Analysing the Proposed Site
Task 2: Store Designing and Lay out
Task 3: Product Processing Blue Prints

Project 3 Installation 24-04-00

Task 1: Fabrication and Modification of the Interiors
Of the Shopping Centre
Task 2: Setup of Interior and Exterior
Task 3: Quality Testing and Review

Project 4 Programme Support 25-05-00

Task 1 Staffing and Training
Task 2 Product Ordering
Task 3 Merchandising
Task 4 Marketing and Business Promotions

Project 5 Grand Opening 01-07-00

(Kerzner H 2009, Page 439)

CONCLUSION

The project passes through different phases such as planning, execution, monitoring,
controlling and finally closing. All the projects are further broken down into tasks and
is carried out according to the time allocated. This ensures the successful completion
of the project in a successful manner. Successful completion of the project is the
success of the whole project team. After the completion of the project House of Fraser
can increase the revenue from its business and increase the number of their stores.
This is a prime and new location for its business and the lack of high end shopping
centres in this area will help to drive the business. This will help the group to achieve
higher profits from its operations.

10
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Kerzner, H., (2009) Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning,

Scheduling, and Controlling, 10th ed., New York, John Wiley.
2) Dunne, M. (2004) Retailing, 6th edition, South Western, Thomson.
3) PMI - A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Project
Management Institute, Newton Square, PA 2004.
4) Leadership, beyond project management - Prudence A. Clarke, Industrial and
Commercial Training, Volume: 41 Number: 4, Year 2009 pp: 187-194,
Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
5) Layout strategies for retail operations: A case study, Seyed-Mahmoud
Aghazadeh, (2005) Layout strategies for retail operations: A case study,
Management Research News, Vol. 28 Iss: 10, pp.31 – 46
6) Project management: a quality management approach- George P. Laszlo.
Journal: The TQM Magazine, Volume: 11, Number: 3, Year: 1999, pp: 157-
160.
7) The training methodology of project management office (PMO) personnel-
Shai Rozenes, Gad Vitner. Journal: Industrial and Commercial Training,
Volume: 41 Number: 1, Year: 2009, pp: 36-42.

WEBSITES
1) http://theprojectdiva.com/project_management/retail-store-project/opening-
new-retail-store-work-breakdown-structure.html/
2) http://emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?
Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0210281002.pdf
3) http://www.charteredland.ie/pressrelease_November2007_2.htm
4) http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=946946
5) http://theprojectdiva.com/project_management/retail-store-project/opening-
new-retail-store-work-breakdown-structure.html/
6) http://www.slideshare.net/guestfe6ad/project-management-process-groups-
and-knowledge-areas
7) www.houseoffraser.co.uk

11