PROJECT DUCKS UNLIMITED

Project Ducks Unlimited: Budget Issue



Project Ducks Unlimited: Budget Issue

Introduction

Established in 1937, Ducks unlimited, Inc. (DU) has conserved nearly 13 million acres thanks to contributions from more than a million supporters across the continent. Guided by science and dedicated to program efficiency, DU works toward the vision of wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever. Ducks Unlimited is the world's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving North America's waterfowl habitat (Ducks Unlimited, 2011).

Founded in 1937 to save the waterfowl population during a North American drought also referred to as the dust bowl, Ducks Unlimited claims to be the world's leader in wetlands and waterfowl conservation. In short its core mission is habitat conservation and it vision is to preserve wetlands and waterfowl for generations to come (Ducks Unlimited, 2011).

Ducks Unlimited will host its Keystone Conference in Charlottesville, NC, twenty one months from now. Two chapter members from each state in the US separated into ten different teams will work virtually on individual projects to be presented at the conference. These teams will not travel until the actual conference. An overall budget of 1.2 million dollars was allocated for this project. However, the budget has now been reduced from $1,200,000 to $280,000.

1.Create a new WBS using the new budgeting parameters.

Work Breakdown Structure

Work Breakdown Structure is an effective tool in project management. It allows determining what work must be performed for the project, and establishing a unified framework for these studies. The structure of the partition of work allows the project participants and all interested parties to achieve a clear picture of the finished product, and all of the work required to create this product (Dennis, 2010).

Once conference, hotel, transportation, vendor and keynote speaker arrangements have been made, information should be given to each chapter for their planning purposes and so they can begin deciding how to select the two chapter members from each state. The states should be split into regions and the teams formed. There should be a single point of contact at Ducks Unlimited for each regional team to report into. The allocated budget of each team will also be reduced accordingly to adjust the total project budget. Most conference venues book well in advance. With the Charlottesville, NC location picked, the immediate focus should be on securing the dates for the event. Ideally, the conference venue will be close if not the same location as the hotel. Other items such as sound systems, projectors, cameras, should be taken into consideration when planning the venue as some locations provide these items as part of a package.

Since there are fifty states in the US, there will be a total of one hundred chapter members to work on the conference projects. Since the plan is to split these members into ten teams, that would make ten teams of ten. Ideally since there are multiple chapters per state, members from each state should be from different chapters. Additionally, the ten groups should be defined by ...