Planning, Management, And Control System For Capital Engineering Projects

Summary of the project

Heublein, Inc., develops manufactures, and markets consumer food and beverages products domestically and internationally. The capital project process of Heublein was chiefly concern with the financial justification of the project including a focus on cost benefit analysis and minimal emphasis on execution of the projects, since there were no mechanism to assure that non-financial results were achieved. As a result of these weaknesses, some major projects went over budget and optimal utilization of capital funds intensified. Responding to these factors, Heublein decided to develop and implement a Project planning, management, and control system for capital engineering Projects (PM&C). The goal of developing this system was primarily financial, in terms of keeping projects from exceeding budget and optimally allocating increasingly scarce investment funds.

A specialized expert in the project management as a consultant and an internal program manager for PM&C were selected. The ground rules of the projects were established as the PM&C would be developed internally and tailored to the needs of the groups, and directors of the engineering departments of each group were to be involved directly in both the design and implementation of the project. To ensure these ground rules, a thorough fundamental education in the basic principles of the project management was given to all involved in the system design.

Instead of defining a uniform PM&C system, to be imposed on all engineering departments by corporate mandate, the weight was put on individual systems and unique needs of each group.

Of the project management aides described in chapter 6, a hierarchical numbering system for the work breakdown structure (WBS), and an accountability matrix was used in Heublein PM&C program.

Issue:

One issue of this project