DEVELOPING PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS BY ROLE PLAYING

INTRODUCTION

As their first job, many graduates become project managers on construction projects. In this role, they are often called upon to evaluate problems and report to upper management. These evaluations are both written and oral and can cover a variety of topics.

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville has developed a course that puts the students in typical situations that they will face on construction projects. The professor assumes the role of top management and the students assume the role of the project manager. The students (project manager) are faced with typical project management problems that they must scope out, evaluate, and present recommendations in both written and oral form to the professor (top management). The students are given three separate types of assignments that model circumstances that are likely to occur on his/her first job.

COURSE DETAILS

The course entitled Construction Quality Control is a senior elective class taught every other year. The course is team taught by the authors to allow the students to have at least two opinions on how to handle assignments.

 Both of the authors are active as consultants, thus several of the assignments come from problems they have worked on. The authors also have found that the area contractors and consulting engineers are willing to share reports, plans and specifications, provided the names and locations are removed. In our opinions, using real case histories (or as close as possible) provides the necessary realism to the class.

TYPICAL ASSIGNMENTS

The first assignment is to introduce the students to typical quality control problems. The students are presented with the plans and specifications for a small construction project and are asked to assume that the work is being subcontracted. As project managers, they are asked what inspection and quality control programs they should conduct so there is assurance that the subcontractor has done the work correctly. Each student is given a different part of the project (i.e., plumbing, concrete flatwork, roofing or painting).

This assignment exposes the students to several realities. They come to realize that several standards are available to test and document the quality of materials; workmanship is much harder to define and evaluate. Usually workmanship is considered acceptable if it meets industry standards. Unfortunately, few agree to what the industry standards are, thus conflicts occur. The students will also realize that several areas of construction are scheduled concurrently, and as project managers, they cannot witness every aspect of the construction nor can they test every element.

The students orally present to their fellow project managers (other students in the class) how they plan to establish their quality control procedures and how much time they plan to invest in these procedures. Spirited discussions result as the students wrestle with the ideas of how much inspection and quality control is needed and how to use test procedures to control quality and workmanship. The students complete their assignments with written memos to their supervisor (professor) identifying their recommendations.

The second assignment addresses a complex legal issue involving a construction failure. The students are given several conflicting evaluations and depositions. The project managers (the students) are to serve as advisors to upper management and to recommend what additional experts may be needed to complete the investigation. The students also have to recommend how to resolve the conflicting evaluations, and what legal defense is available for each company. Ideally, the students realize how to complete an evaluation, develop ways of resolving technical conflicts, and discover that the legal profession does not evaluate a technical problem in the same way as does the contractor. It is also surprising to the students that experts can evaluate the facts differently and that technical conflicts do exist. On this assignment, the students present to their supervisor (professor) a written and an oral report describing their findings.

 The third assignment involves trouble shooting a problem on a project site. The students are given the following information:

1.      A consultant has been retained to investigate a problem on your job site and his/her report is enclosed.

2. You are preparing a report to your supervisor that answers the following:

a)      Exactly what is the problem?

b)     What caused the problem?

c)      Who or what is responsible?

d)     What should the company do about the problem?

e)      Does the company need to change procedures so that this problem will not happen on other projects?

 The students find that most consultants' reports do not answer all the questions. Many times the consultant does not have all the facts, or is asked to answer very specific problems; thus their reports are not complete nor do they evaluate all of the options. (When using these reports, the faculty have to be creative in supplementing details of the problem so that the students will have enough information to evaluate the project.) The students discover that not all problems are a result of bad construction. In many instances, a problem results from poor design, lack of maintenance by the owner, unrealistic expectations of the owner or designer, subcontractors' errors, and/or acts of God. The project manager must therefore analyze the problem and determine responsibility. Only then can the company correctly respond and develop a plan of how to resolve the problem.

The students orally present their findings at a project manager meeting (the class). The written memo to the supervisor (professor) will include the students' recommendations from their research and oral presentations/discussions.

CONCLUSION

This is senior elective course and has followed the theme of several other courses in requiring written reports. The written reports skills were generally satisfactory because of the students' experience in writing. The students' verbal skills have not been required in as many courses, thus the verbal skills needed considerable improvement. The professors did notice a definite improvement in the students' verbal skills by the end of the course.

Probably the most important element of the course is forcing the students into real-world situations where they learn techniques of recognizing a problem, evaluating potential solutions, and making recommendations of how to solve the problem. It is our opinion that this type of course can be beneficial to the students by showing them the real world in a learning situation where the consequence of a mistake is less critical and inexpensive to correct than on an actual jobsite.