Answer

3Br House Project Charter

This report presents the benefits a project manager derives from creating a WBS, especially during the first meeting. The report also presents a detailed discussion on the steps involved in preparing a WBS. A WBS is prepared and presented in the report for building a 3-bedroom house. Project interdependencies for the 3 bedroomed house are also discussed. Lastly, costs and timelines for the different stages of the project are presented.

Benefits of Developing a Work Breakdown Structure

WBS is used in planning for and organizing a project. WBS is important in the initial meeting for several reasons. During the first meeting, the project team make a list of project deliverables, and WBS helps them organize the things they need to do in order of priority. Through WBS, the team can eliminate the things they do not need and include only tasks to be completed (Kwan & Leung, 2011). The team can therefore show project tasks in hierarchical order in regards to groups working on a specific task, organizing complete tasks, groups working on late tasks, in-progress tasks, and many more.

Through WBS, the project team can plan for each task in terms of the requirements each staff needs. The team can also plan the tasks that each staff will handle, together with the time and cost for accomplishing these tasks. Therefore, in the first meeting, the team is capable of knowing the approximate costs and time required to complete the entire project. Overall, the WBS gives a visual of what the tasks would look like, their magnitude, and everything that needs to be done, and preparing the staff by giving them an overall picture of what a completed project would look like.

The WBS helps the planning team to avoid project ambiguities and duplication. It is possible that when doing a project without a WBS, the team can fail to detail the tasks, duplicate or miss some tasks. The WBS allows the team to identify all the items and properly code them. The team can easily identify and mitigate risks involved in the project through team sharing and communication. Communication points are made on the WBS, making collaboration easy and better.

The Process for Creating the WBS

To create WBS for the 3Br house project, this report proposes distinct critical steps to follow. These include obtaining the important documentation, then identifying the project team, identify level 1 elements, breakdown the elements, create a WBS dictionary, then create a Gantt Chart. These are discussed further below:

The first step is to collect the important documents that are required for executing the project. For the 3Br house project, the important documents include Project Management Plan, Scope Statement, and Project Charter. Scope statement involves outlining the items or things that must be done to complete the project. The management plan is the project subsidiary plans.

The second step involves picking the project team. These are the people who will accomplish the tasks. The team will help in analyzing the documents and picking the project deliverables. Every team member must be picked based on merit.

The third step in creating a WBS is defining level 1 elements. Level 1 elements are the items that are required to complete the project, project scope summary. Normally, this step is referred to as 100% rule. The team must verify 100% scope. In this task, the project elements are identified for all the major phases like Initiation, Planning, Implementation, and Closing. This stage is critical, and where possible, a template of the similarly accomplished project should be used to identify these elements to ensure nothing is left out.

The fourth step is breaking down the elements identified in step three. The team, in the first meeting, discuss and breaks down the Level 1 deliverables into small lower-level items. This is normally called decomposition. The objective of breaking the Level 1 items is to make every task manageable by each individual. The task is broken down and allocated to each staff or group. The team leader asks every time whether the assigned tasks to each staff is manageable, and if all answers yes to each allotted task, then the WBS is ready to go.

The fifth task is to create the WBS dictionary. The dictionary is a description of each task in details. Every task is defined and all the required elements are indicated so that the assigned staff understand exactly what is expected of them on each task. The staff refers to the dictionary to ensure they accomplish the required standards when completing the task (Zecheru & Olaru, 2016). The dictionary describes each task, ensuring that all the information is given in details including the task risks, the milestones, boundaries, project cost, owner and many more. WBS dictionary is therefore a detail of information about the tasks and how the task needs to be done, giving more information to the staff or manager.

The sixth and last stage in making a WBS is creating the Gantt Chart. Gantt Chart is a visualization of the WBS. Gantt Charts are prepared in tools like Microsoft Project Management software. Gantt Chart shows in pictures the tasks that need to be done, the levels of priority, the timelines, costs, and more. Gantt Charts are used by the managers to help them understand tasks that have been completed, pending tasks, tasks that are to be stricken off or tasks that need alterations.

Project WBS

Building 3Br House

    1.1 Initiation
        1.1.1 Evaluation
        1.1.2 Charter

    1.2 Planning
        1.2.1 Scope statement
        1.2.2 Plan schedule
        1.2.3 Project team

        1.2.4 Budget

    1.3 Execution
        1.3.1 Lay foundation

                                1.3.1.1 Excavation

                                1.3.1.2 Concrete
        1.3.2 Build walls

        1.3.3 Build walls
        1.3.4 Exterior work

        1.3.5 Interior touches

                                1.3.5.1 Electrical

                                1.3.5.1 Plumbing

        1.3.6 Final touches

    1.4 Closing
        1.4.1 Audit
        1.4.2 Cleaning site
        1.4.3 Handover project

        1.4.3 Handover document

Project Interdependencies

There are interdependencies in our construction project. While constructing the 3br house, some tasks must be done together to save time and ensure the project is completed within the scheduled time.

In the initiating stage, all tasks will be Finish to Start. This means that project evaluation is done first, the charter is done only after the evaluation is complete. Task Charter can also be described as Start to Start, implying that it can only start after Evaluation is complete.

The planning stage also has interdependencies. The project scope has to be completed before doing a planned schedule for the project. The project team can also only be selected after the scope and plan is complete because the plan and scope define the tasks to be done, and the number of staff to complete the tasks successfully (Bilgin, et al.,2017). Budgeting is also done only after the plan and scope of the project are completed.

The execution phase also has several interdependent tasks. When doing the construction work, excavation must be completed before any other thing. Foundation is built on the pit, so excavation must be done before pouring concrete. Walls can only be built after doing the foundation. The walls must be built first before building the roof. So the order must be excavated, concrete, walls, roof, then gives permission to do the interiors and exteriors. Interiors and exteriors can be done together. Similarly, in interiors, electrical and plumbing can be done simultaneously. The final touches are the last thing to be done after everything else is done. Closing does not have interdependencies, they can be done starting from the same time after the closing stage is done.

Costs and Durations

Work Packages

In conclusion, the paper has presented a brief project charter for building a three bedroomed house. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is very useful for planning and organizing a project. The main benefits for creating a WBS include the fact that it helps the team organize their work in order of priority, it gives the team the chance to list the requirements to complete the job, it eliminates chances of ambiguities and duplication, and it helps in budgeting for everything relating to the project. In the first meeting, the WBS gives the ability to outline all the task that will be accomplished, arrange them in order of priority, budget for time and money. WBS also allows the staff to have a visual of what the entire project will entail (Brotherton et al., 2008). A WBS has been presented for building a 3 bedroomed house, with 4 main elements including initiation, planning, executing and closing. The steps in creating a WBS include documentation, identifying the team, identifying level 1 elements, breaking down these elements, creating a WBS dictionary and lastly creating the Gantt Chart. The 3Br house has been estimated to cost about $525,000 and estimated to last 128 days.