If you had to put together a plan to manage an architectural project, what would you include? Your goals include being on time (schedule), on budget (cost), and error free (quality) - what plan elements will help you reach all three goals?
When we consider schedule we normally create a Gantt chart that shows major efforts and milestones, culminating in that date that shows "documents 100% complete". Cost is a two-headed beast, for we need to be aware not only of the cost of the building, but of our own costs in creating the design and the documents. Quality is typically assured by checking the work during the course of assembling the documents, especially near the end date when detail references go through final coordination.
But this is not enough. Not included in the above is scope definition, or a breakdown of the work to be accomplished. Also not included is a communications plan that shows how information is to be shared among all the parties, and who needs to review and approve the progress of the work. The Project Management Institute recognizes a number of knowledge areas that constitute a project management plan - below is a short description of each.
Integration Management: creation of the project charter, stakeholder lists, and description of processes for integrating changes to the project.
Scope Management: defines the scope of work for the project, and breaks down the tasks required to complete the project.
Time Management: assigns priorities to the tasks defined under scope management and schedules the sequence for completing them.
Cost Management: estimating the costs and determining the budget for the project, and also monitoring expenditures to ensure that the budget is met.
Quality Management: identifying quality requirements and standards, and the procedures to be used to meet those requirements.
Human Resource Management: identifying and selecting staff for the project, based on scope, tasks, and the ability of the individual to complete the tasks.
Communications Management: identifying the various stakeholders in a project, and determining how information will flow from one party to another.
Risk Management: identifying the elements that create risk in a project, and creating means of mitigating (or accepting) that risk
Procurement Management: identifying the items that need to be procured for the project and identifying potential sources.
Integration management of all these areas is a necessary part - the choices made under Human Resource management will affect the project schedule as well as the project cost and project quality. Procurement seems to be a strange item for an architectural project, as we don't actually buy anything - but we do specify, establish minimum standards and acceptable alternatives - everything except write the purchase order.
If a change is introduced to the project while is it underway, this project management plan can show to the client the impact of the change. The change may modify the scope statements, alter the work breakdown structure, impact the priorities of the tasks, extend the schedule, increase the costs, and add a new item to the risk analysis register. With a PM plan such as this, those changes can be easily shown to the client who may not understand the impact of his request.
The elements of the plan are not new or unusual to architectural projects - we all have had discussions on how drawings will be shared (communication plan), who will work on the project (HR plan), what the major deliverable dates are (time management plan), and can it be done for a profit (cost management plan)? This approach formalizes the PM plan and makes the project manager ferret out the full scope of the project before beginning. That alone should result in the project that runs smoother and has fewer surprises in its execution.