Project Planning

Definition   

A project tells a story, and every project must begin with planning, it required details and managed to complete a project of any caliber. Our textbook, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) (2013) tells us that the planning process develops the project management plan and the project documents that will be used to carry out the project.

Discussion

Project planning is a very crucial activity that the managers perform on a day to day basis. The thread discusses the various means and ways through which the corporations and organizations incorporate the practices of project planning and how they use the business models.  In the project management lifecycle, it is the most crucial because it determines how the project rolls on. It is instrumental in managing time and resources, at the same time it ensures that the project team always reads from a similar page. When the projects are efficiently run with a proper plan, then success is guaranteed.

The construction of project planning is quite complicated as a result of several reasons. The complexity can be viewed as the difficulty that comes about with grasping the interconnectedness between the different variables and the complicated features which are entailed in the design. Dynamism is any implication of the regular changes to the scope of the project, the objectives, and the schedules. Uncertainty is another issue which could contribute to the inadequate project planning as much as uniqueness is also a factor to seriously consider in the process of project development (Rotimi, 2015). The inability to cope with the characteristics effectively also contributes to the difficulty in project planning.

Successful completion of complex projects in industrial environments requires that careful planning and collaboration is put in place. Successful completion of a given project depends much on the cooperation of various departments and the individuals in an environment which encourages clear planning and the availability of the resources that is required. For the rarely performed procedures that are complex, the competence and the knowledge that is needed for preparation as well as mitigating the risks linked with the project can be spread across the various parts of the organization (Balfe, 2017). Getting the knowledge and using it accordingly is very useful.

The project planning phase also aids in determining the environmental impacts of the project on the buildings. These should be thoroughly assessed at the period of project planning as it has a lot of influence on the whole project. Building and construction significantly impact the environment. There should be more effective environmental management in the operations phase of the project, much of which is put in place at the project planning phase. The environmental impact assessment should be done before the project is embarked on as it will help determine what factors to take off as the project is starting. The manager should be able to accurately and efficiently estimate the environmental impacts (Jeong, 2015). Planning is, therefore, a crucial stage of the project development lifecycle.

References

Project Management Institute. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide). Newtown Square, Pa: Project Management Institute.

Balfe, N., Leva, M. C., Ciarapica-Alunni, C., & O’Mahoney, S. (2017). Total project planning: Integration of task analysis, safety analysis and optimisation techniques. Safety Science, 100, 216-224. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2016.10.014

Rotimi, J. O. B., & Ramanayaka, C. D. D. (2015). Reflective practice and technical rationality in construction project planning. Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, 32(4), 301-315. doi:10.1080/10286608.2015.1092523

Jeong, K., Ji, C., Koo, C., Hong, T., & Park, H. S. (2015). A model for predicting the environmental impacts of educational facilities in the project planning phase. Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, 538-549. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.01.027