BUSI 313 Week 3 Project Section 1 Example

Relocating the Eastside Community Health Clinic: Project Definition, Estimates and Schedule

1. Project Objective

Relocate the Eastside Community Health Clinic to a renovated 8,000-square-foot building and resume full patient service within 18 weeks of project start, at a cost not to exceed $292,600, with no more than one day of closed clinic hours.

2. Scope Statement

Deliverables

• Renovated building with eight exam rooms, a laboratory and a pharmacy window.
• Working data network, phones and electronic health record access at every workstation.
• Furniture and medical equipment installed and tested.
• Occupancy and health department approvals.
• Trained staff and informed patients.

Milestones

• Lease signed and floor plan approved: end of week 3.
• Renovation complete: end of week 11.
• Inspections passed: end of week 13.
• Move and go-live: end of week 18.

Technical Requirements

• Exam rooms meet the state's clinic licensing standards for size and handwashing access.
• Network supports the existing electronic health record system without new licenses.

Limits and Exclusions

• The project does not include hiring new staff, changing clinic hours or replacing the electronic health record system.
• Parking lot resurfacing is the landlord's responsibility and is outside the project.

Customer Review

• The clinic director accepts each milestone in writing; the final walkthrough with the director and the medical lead confirms readiness before move day.

3. Work Breakdown and Estimates

Durations are most likely estimates from the facilities manager, contractor quotes and the clinic's 2019 expansion, used as a reference project. Larson and Gray (2018) recommend using past projects and expert judgment together, and research on optimism in estimates supports grounding them in comparable past work rather than in best-case plans (Flyvbjerg et al., 2002). Using the 2019 expansion as a benchmark is a way of taking the outside view, which corrects planners' habit of picturing only their own project's steps (Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993).

4. Network Schedule

Dependencies: B, C, D and I follow A; E follows B and D; F follows C and D; G follows D; H follows E and F; J follows G, H and I. The forward and backward passes give the following schedule, in weeks.

The critical path is A, D, F, H, J, totaling 18 weeks. Every other activity has slack: network design and furniture ordering can each slip seven weeks, inspections four, and patient notification ten, which gives the project manager room to smooth workloads without moving the move date. Renovation is the activity the whole move depends on: every week it slips is a week the clinic opens late. Network installation has only one week of slack, so it is a near-critical activity that the project manager will watch closely.

5. Budget and Reserve

Direct activity costs total $266,000. A contingency reserve of 10 percent, $26,600, covers identified risks such as renovation surprises in an older building, bringing the authorized budget to $292,600. The reserve is held by the project manager and released only with the director's approval, so that it is not absorbed silently into activity budgets.

6. Next Steps

This plan becomes the baseline for tracking progress. Section 2 will report status against it using earned value and will plan the project's closure. The schedule will be loaded into the clinic's project software with the baseline saved, and weekly status meetings will begin at the start of renovation.

References

Flyvbjerg, B., Holm, M. S., & Buhl, S. (2002). Underestimating costs in public works projects: Error or lie? Journal of the American Planning Association, 68(3), 279-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360208976273

Kahneman, D., & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk taking. Management Science, 39(1), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.1.17

Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2018). Project management: The managerial process (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.