PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management of a Rail Industry

Project Management of a Rail Industry

Introduction

The project, which has been, chosen for this topic is the “West Coast Project” of British Airways. The analysis will be done of West Coast Project and to assess the application of Project Management in their company. The development of the rail industry project is not an easy task. It requires an extensive planning and analysis before starting this project. There are various factors, which need to, be considered while working on this project. Large numbers of workers are required for the establishment of Rail Industry. There is no doubt that Rail Industry Project is one of the most difficult projects in Transportation sector. Huge investments are even carried out on this sector for the successful completion. The project of West Coast Project has achieved level of success because of strong efforts carried out by the employees. Project Management played a crucial role in the success of the rail industry project because it helps to organize the work and employees in an appropriate way. All the details regarding the Project Management and its application in the organization will be discussed in detail, in upcoming paragraphs. (Ekstedt, 1997, pp.113-127)

Critical Analysis

Companies use project scheduling by administrators to ensure the completion of the project in time to find the proper signs of non-standard situations when they arise, and, the flexibility to redesign the project and accordingly, diagnosis in the three stages of implementation:

- Creating a business network for the project that helps to achieve their objectives.

Project analysis of the activities and events.

Sequence of activities and events.

Diagram of the project.

Estimate times for each activity. (Vance, 1995, pp.178-191) - Then they conduct Planning for the project:

Definition of the project activities in chronological order and identification of these points:

Activities and critical events.

The critical path.

The surplus account of each activity. (Marshall, 2000, pp.155-169)

- Then they adjust the project:

Assessment of control activities and follow-up:

Control times and compare them with the project plan theory.

Try as much as possible to follow the plan to be implemented.

Potential transfer of surplus to the critical activity, if possible.

Therefore, the importance of critical path method is described in the following paragraphs:

Helping managers to identify critical activities.

The expense of non-critical activities elasticity's to allow and to transfer resources to critical activities.

Identifying early and late times to the end of the project.

Calculating the final cost of the project. (Midler, 1995, pp. 363-375)

Discussion

The project of West Coast main line (West Coast Main Line, WCML) is linking London with the West Midlands, the north-west England and Scotland which is the most intensively exploited railways of Britain. However, despite the central role of WCML, its development over the past 20 years has received insufficient attention. After the privatization of British railways that accompanied them to restructure the administration of Rail track, it became in charge of the infrastructure of railways of Great Britain. It developed the project of modernization and technical renovation of ...