Project Management
Project Management
Project management is the discipline of delivering the contracted scope on schedule, within fee and budget, and at the required quality. Key concepts include the owner-architect agreement and scope definition, work plans, staffing and consultant coordination, schedules (Gantt, critical path method, milestones), budgets and fee tracking, risk registers, communication protocols, quality assurance/quality control, and change control. Delivery methods (design-bid-build, design-build, CM at risk, integrated project delivery) change the architect's role and risk. Earned value, percent complete, and schedule variance are useful tracking tools.
Traps: candidates confuse crashing (adding resources, usually costing money) with fast-tracking (overlapping activities, usually increasing risk). The critical path is the longest duration path; only activities on it have zero total float. Adding staff to a task does not always shorten it. Another trap is treating every owner request as an included service; changes in scope need written authorization and fee adjustment. Contractor means and methods are not the architect's responsibility.
Worked example: an activity has early start 8, duration 6 (early finish 14), late start 11, late finish 17. Total float = late start − early start = 3 days. If it slips 4 days, it delays project completion by 1 day. Rule of thumb: manage the critical path and near-critical float; do not consume float without documenting schedule impact.