Project Manager's Weekly (Summary Edition)

The Crane Project from start to finish has been an enjoyable, but somewhat turbulent experience. With the disappearance of a group member to contend with, it made the task that much more difficult. We managed to pull something together in the end - and might I say quite a good 'something'. We decided to delegate the work left by the missing member to evenly spread to workload between us, which paid dividends as it gave each member of the group a better insight into other areas of the project and helped us gain a better understanding of the overall task at hand. In order to analyse the project ive split things into 4 main groups :

1. The Maintainence of the Blog

This was mostly spearheaded by myself with weekly updates ongoing throughout the project. The general upkeed of the blog was well organised and although we did not disclose the goings-on of every meeting, the main objectives of each meeting we're posted onto the blog. Eventhough we do not have as many single post numbers as some other groups, we feel this is exemplary of the saying ' Quality Not Quantity' and that the posts that we have uploaded are very relevant and straight to the point with no need for hundreds of download images from google or waffled copy and pasted information everywhere.

2. The presentation

The group presentation went extremely well and I thought that our group set the bar at a high standard being one of the first groups to present its tender. We answered questions directly and gave good answers to what may have been viewed by onlookers as potential short-comings in the design. In hinsight I would have liked to organise maybe one more practise session of the whole presentation as the interchanges from person to person were not the smoothest, but never-the-less the presentation was a success. I think what helped was the fact that we had a very innovative and original design but it was also solid in its approach and technique, and therefore provided us with a strong base on which to present our case. I feel the price that we came in at was very competitive and the concept was reasonably strong. This means that at a 20% reduction at wholesale value, for 100 units the price was:

(1339.99 *0.8) *100 =

£107,120

This is very affordable to NGO's and is well below some of the other groups where even 10 units would have cost this amount.

3. The Group

The group tended to work well together and had quite regular interaction. We managed to distribute work well with no member feeling overwhelmed with his/her workload and I think everyone understood their position in the group and the project as a whole. From a personal standpoint I tried to give direction when possible but was also like an 'assistant' to everyone, helping out in every area from design to finance and stress analysis. I think the project was a success and I walk away having learned a great deal, and with very few negatives.

4. The Improvements

If I had the chance to do certain things again here is a list of what they would include:
- Improved communication between all members of the group. As often it seemed that other group members were constantly meeting and working on the project and others were not.

- Allow people to choose their own group. I feel in situations like these, allowing students to choose their own group would help them flourish as they would be more comfortable and know the limitations of their group members. Of course you could argue that the whole point of the exercise is to work with people from a range of backgrounds you may not have worked with before, and quite a valid point it is.

- More structure. I feel that sometimes it was unclear as to what exactly needed to be done due to the lack of information given to us throughout the task. I think a few more structured deadlines set by Dr thompson for things such as, finance calculations etc would have probably provided more direction in times of uncertainty, although we did managed to gather ourselves and draw the tender to an efficient close.