General
- Polices and procedures for project initiation, planning, procurement planning, execution and performance reporting should be clearly documented and communicated.
Initiation
- Project managers should be identified and assigned early in project planning, but not later than at the start of project execution.
- Contractual requirements should be analysed and, where significant, catered for in the project planning stage.
Planning
- Formally approved project plans should be used to manage and control project execution.
- Project plans include the following:
– Definition of objectives, scope and boundaries
– Allocation of responsibilities and authorities
– Work breakdown structure (tasks)
– Cost estimated
– Performance measurement baselines or schedule and cost
– Key risks, and responses to mitigate them
– Milestones, checkpoints and approvals
– Technical documentation, such as requirements, specifications and designs
– Project quality plan
– Adequacy of insurance coverage
– Documentation or reference to relevant standards
- Standard checklists of required steps for project monitoring should be available and used.
- Applicable delegation of authority guides should be used to document project approval requirements.
- Cost contingency reserves should be determined at project inception.
- All contractual agreements entered into should be reviewed by the Functional Manager prior to commencement of the projects.
Procurement Planning
- Standard documents such as bid documents, purchase orders and contracts should be used.
- Standard terms and conditions in the purchasing documents should have been explicitly approved by Divisional Manager.
- Terms and conditions appearing in the purchase documents should be updated annually in order for account changes in the business environment to be taken into.
- Procurement bid documents should have been structured to facilitate accurate and complete responses from vendors by including:
– Statement of work
– Statement of desired form of response
– Copy of model contract
- Explicit criteria should have been defined to evaluate vendor proposals:
– Demonstrated understanding of need
– Overall or lifecycle cost of product or service (not just lowest price)
– Technical and managerial capabilities
– Financial capacity needed to fulfil the contract
Execution
- There should be a work authorisation system to ensure that work is performed at the right time and correct sequence.
- Approvals to proceed at each appropriate stages of the project should be documented.
- Status review meetings should be held weekly and documented.
- Project records and information should be stored in a manner that facilitates easy retrieval. Such records should include:
– Project management software and data
– Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems and files
– Engineering and technical drawings
– Minutes of status review and/or other project meetings
– Correspondence and memos
– Reports and schedules
– Variation order requests
- Contract variations (approved and unapproved) should be communicated through appropriate project planning and procurement process and plans updated accordingly.
Performance Reporting
- Schedules meetings should be held monthly to assess project status.
- Action items and accountabilities arising from meetings should be documented and followed up by the relevant project managers.
- Budgeted project milestones and costs versus actual costs should be monitored and reported to the Functional Manager throughout every major project phase.
- Project milestones and costs in excess of budgeted timeframes and amounts should be required to be approved by Department Senior Management.
Closing
- A final set of indexed records should be assembled and archived.
- There should be a mechanism for capturing, documenting and communicating the lessons learned in projects (post implementation review).
Segregation of Duties
- There should be segregation of duties between the following functions:
– Approving authority for project commencement
– Approval of project requisitions
– Receipt of goods and services
Delegation of Authority (DOA)
- The documented DOA should cover the authority to:
– Project requisitions
– Exceptions to competitive bidding and tendering requirements
– Exceptions to approved project contract terms and conditions
– Procurement of stocks required for the project
– Approval of vendor and sub-contractor invoices