MGMT 690 Week 8 DB Forum 4 Example

Discussion Board Forum 4: Thread and Replies to Group Members

MGMT 690 Capstone, Project Management, Discussion Board Forum 4 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the university's renovation and the group members' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the peer-reviewed studies, the custom text's theme and Scripture are real; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for MGMT 690.

Thread

Our state university faced a choice about its 1974 science building, a concrete laboratory block with failing ventilation and single-pane windows. Demolishing it and building new would have cost about $96 million. The board chose instead to renovate it to net zero energy, meaning the building would produce, through rooftop solar and a ground-source heat system, as much energy as it used over a year, at a cost of about $81 million. I served as the owner's project manager, and the goal changed nearly everything about how the project was managed.

First, decisions moved earlier. Laboratory ventilation is the largest energy user in a science building, so the fume hood count, air change rates and envelope design had to be settled during schematic design rather than in construction documents, and faculty had to commit to them before they were comfortable doing so. Second, commissioning, the testing of building systems, grew from the usual two weeks to four months, with a full year of energy monitoring afterward. Third, success acquired a new measure. The project would be judged not only on its $81 million budget and its twenty-six-month schedule but on whether, after a year, the energy meter read zero.

Those changes had costs that a conventional project would not have carried. The early design decisions added about two months to the design phase, and two faculty members who had wanted more fume hoods had to be persuaded that the building could not reach its target with them. The four-month commissioning period delayed occupancy by a semester, which meant temporary lab space for three research groups. As project manager, I had to explain to the provost why a project that was on budget was also, by the usual measure, late. What made the explanation possible was that the board had defined success to include energy from the start, so the extra commissioning time was part of the plan rather than a slip.

Silvius and Schipper (2014), in their review of research on sustainability in project management, concluded that taking sustainability seriously changes how projects are defined, managed and evaluated, extending attention from delivering an output to the project's wider effects. Our experience matched that: the scope now included a year of performance, and the evaluation included energy and carbon. Among the factors that project managers in the survey by Martens and Carvalho (2017) rated as central to sustainability were stakeholder management and environmental policies and resource saving. Our stakeholders multiplied, from faculty and facilities staff to the utility, the state energy office and student sustainability groups, and each needed its own communication. Huemann and Silvius (2017) argue that projects are a means of creating the future, and that managing them shapes whether development is sustainable. Renovating rather than demolishing kept about 12,000 tons of concrete out of a landfill and gave the building another fifty years.

In Genesis, the first human is placed in the garden to work it and to keep it (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Genesis 2:15). A project that keeps as well as builds treats the earth as a trust, not a supply. After a year, our meter read slightly negative: the building produced 3 percent more energy than it used.

Group: what would sustainability add to the definition of success on your current project?

Reply to Danielle

Danielle, your thread about switching your food company's yogurt cups from plastic to paperboard was a good example of sustainability entering a project through a customer's demand: the grocery chain set the deadline, and the project team followed it closely.

Martens and Carvalho (2017) found that project managers saw sustainability in terms of several factors, including the business model, stakeholders, economic advantage and environmental resource saving. Your project touches all of them, but its success criteria, as you described them, included only the changeover date and the cost per cup. If the paperboard cup leaks more often in transport, the environmental gain could be offset by wasted product, which would also hurt the grocery relationship you were trying to protect. A short pilot shipment on one distribution route would reveal the leak rate before the full changeover, and it would give your quality team data to share with the chain's buyers.

Adding two measures, damaged units per thousand shipped and the share of cups recycled in the chain's take-back program, would let the project show whether the change achieved its purpose. Who at the grocery chain could provide the take-back data, and how often would they share it?

Reply to Terrence

Terrence, your hospital's program to cut regulated medical waste by separating it from ordinary trash showed how small projects can carry large environmental effects. Your figure, a 30 percent drop in regulated waste in six months, was impressive, especially since it required changing habits on every unit at once.

Silvius and Schipper (2014) note that sustainability changes the scope of projects, pulling in effects that traditional project management would leave outside the boundary. Your project's scope ended at the hospital's loading dock, yet much of its benefit lies beyond it, in less waste trucked to an incinerator. Including those downstream effects in your final report, with the hauler's own tonnage figures, could strengthen the case for extending the program to the clinics.

Scripture speaks of the earth and its fullness as belonging to the Lord (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Psalm 24:1), which frames waste reduction as stewardship of something entrusted to us rather than owned. Your nurses' willingness to sort waste at the bedside is that stewardship in practice, and recognizing the units with the best sorting rates could keep the habit strong after the project team moves on. Could the program's next phase include the outpatient clinics, where the same sorting rules would apply?

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Huemann, M., & Silvius, G. (2017). Projects to create the future: Managing projects meets sustainable development. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1066-1070. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.04.014

Martens, M. L., & Carvalho, M. M. (2017). Key factors of sustainability in project management context: A survey exploring the project managers' perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1084-1102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.04.004

Silvius, A. J. G., & Schipper, R. P. J. (2014). Sustainability in project management: A literature review and impact analysis. Social Business, 4(1), 63-96. https://doi.org/10.1362/204440814X13948909253866