Project Manager's Pocket Survival Guide

January 13, 2007

Posted in Small Business.

Some lessons from Project Manager’s Pocket Survival Guide:

“These projects can be  planned and scheduled with a fairly high degree of certainty about costs and time frame. An example is the competition that was held in 1983 by the Building Industry Association of San Diego to see how quickly a house could be built. This house was a conventional, single-family home, ranch-style, single-story, set upon a cement slab. Through elaborate planning, practice, and a refinement of methods, two houses were built simultaneously, and the winning team completed their house in 2 hours and 45 minutes! This included pouring the cement slab, landscaping the lawn, and installing typical amenities (such as an oven and carpeting). In other words, the house was ready to move into when it was finished.”

It goes on to describe the tight constraints, how none of the house was prefabricated, and how the strict standards of the building inspectors would factor into the difficulty of the project. But the moral of this story is clear: planning and preparation pay off.