Project management could be majorly indicated as the core practice to initiate, plan, proper accomplishment, control as well as closure of the team work to subsequently achieve every specified objective and goal and thus meeting the respective success criterion within the specified time (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The project is the significant temporary endeavour, which is eventually designed to produce any exclusive product, result and even service with the definite beginning or ending points. These projects are time constrained or budget constrained and is hence undertaken for meeting the respective the goals and bringing added value and beneficial changes (Burke, 2013).
The functional activities are three types in any project, which are repetitive, semi permanent and permanent for producing the services and products (Marchewka, 2014). The proper management of the production approaches subsequently needs the proper development of the distinctive technical skills as well as management strategies. According to Larson, Gray, Danlin, Honig and Bacarini (2014), the major issue of the project management is achieving all the required goals with the constraints. This following essay outlines a brief discussion on the case study of Blue Circle Cement. It is a popular organization in the United Kingdom and the case study mainly focuses on the changes that occurred in the Cauldon Works of this organization. This essay provides a proper understanding of the organization with relevant details. A detailed literature review is also done for this specific organization.
Blue Circle Cement is one of the major organizations in the United Kingdom that produces and supplies cement (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016). The overall country’s requirement of cement is solely met by this particular organization of Blue Circle Cement. Various changes took place in the Cauldon Works of Blue Circle Cement in Staffordshire. All the changes were then mirrored within the similar change programme at Dunbar in Scotland (Walker, 2015). This organization took the decision to develop the cultures within the business unit, which will be at the respective primary edge of these best work practices, productivity and labour relation. These three factors were required for Blue Circle Cement to further employ in all of their business units in the country (Harrison & Lock, 2017). The respective change program included the radical overhaul of the reward systems, company cultures and working practices. As a result, a much flexible and multi skilled workforce was gained to work on the annualized hour contract. This contract eliminated the overtime and the high productivity as well as low unit cost is reflected in bottom line in Blue Circle Cement (Mir & Pinnington, 2014). The specific program enabled management about the employee relations helped in moving from the adversarial culture of “them and us” to “win / win” situation after involving the employees and sharing of goals.
In Cauldon Cement Works, the hourly paid workers as well as the other staffs were getting extremely lower wages and were working with higher overtime level (Heagney, 2016). The working week with extra 60 hours were common and the restrictive working practice is the principle with the strict demarcation within craft and amongst the craft workers and processes. They even provided additional payments for the overtime or adverse conditions (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). However, this made the productivity extremely lower even the amount of the supervision was quite higher. Due to the radical changes, a new future vision was needed and hence Blue Circle Cement had discussion with trade unions. The major fundamentals of the new visions were the improved skills for the entities with the decreasing of the job grades, introducing simpler pay structures with the proper eradication of paid overtimes and even reduced manning levels and reduction of total labour costs (Leach, 2014). Project management would be the most effective and efficient solution for solving these types of issues in Blue Circle Cement. A proper plan of project management is highly required in this case and this would help them in reducing the issues easily and promptly. Moreover, involvement of leadership is also needed here (Verzuh, 2015).
Importance of Project Plan in Blue Circle Cement
Blue Circle Cement was suffering from major issues regarding the employee structure and the changes that they have brought in their organizational sector of Cauldon. The workers were working for overtime and were getting proper payments (Hwang & Ng, 2013). However, in spite of the high supervision, the overall productivity was lower and conflicts were common. The changes were regarded with much bargaining. For the new vision implementation, they made a new stable income plan with the help of project planning. According to Pemsel and Wiewiora (2013), the project management plan is the approved as well as formal document, which is responsible for defining the procedure, how the entire project is being executed, controlled or monitored. This type of plan is the significant summary or even the detailed document, which includes the baselines, any other planning document and subsidiary management plan. Kerzner (2018), stated that the major purpose of this type of document is providing the subsequent comprehensive baselines of what are to be achieved by the specified project and how this could be achieved.
As per Beringer, Jonas and Kock (2013), the people, who should be involved in this project and the how the project would be measured and reported are also documented in the project plan. It is one of the important and significant requirement and that must be utilized as the reference for the decision that is made on the project and even for the clarifications that are required for the unclear areas as stated by Binder (2016). Since, the plan consists of all the details and information regarding the project and the organization, it becomes quite easier for the project members and clients to understand each and every requirement or change within that particular project.
This organization of Blue Circle Cement made a new stable income plan for its employees for creating an entirely new environment on the basis of trust and thus ensuring them to provide a secured income as commented by Martinelli and Milosevic (2016). This stable plan of income was subsequently made on the basis of the premises that the employees or workers were to be waged for exactly 2250 hours in one year. It is the proper breakdown of 2028 hours that is being worked for about the seven day shift system as well as the bank of more than 222 flexible hours that have to be completed only when there are distinct operational needs. This particular system was completed on the basis of fixed constant salaries (Kerzner, 2017). With the effectiveness of project planning, Blue Circle Cement was able to solve the problems of their business. As a result, their cement productions have incremented from 330,000 tonnes in the year of 1985 to 750,000 tonnes in the year of 1990. As per Schwalbe (2015), thus, project plans were proven to be extremely effective and efficient for this particular organization of Blue Circle Cement.
This is the next significant approach of Blue Circle Cement is the total quality management. According to Beringer, Jonas and Kock (2013), this is yet another important and noteworthy approach that helped the organization to resolve their issues regarding the changes that have been brought in the organization. The total quality management comprises of the organizational wide efforts for installing as well as making the permanent environment, in which the employees could improvise the ability for the purpose of providing the on demand services and products, which customers would find the specific value (Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2013). The total quality management majorly focuses on the department of production. Since, Blue Circle Cement produces and supplies cement, this total quality approach was extremely important for them to resolve their existing issues. Mir and Pinnington (2014), stated that the production department is obligated to improve the major operations and the organizational management focuses on the fact that the executives are subsequently obligated to properly manage or control the quality by funding, staffing, training or goal setting.
The total quality management approach seeks for improving the performance as well as quality that would meet or exceed the customer expectations. Fleming and Koppelman (2016) stated that, the client could achieve this approach by the integration of all quality related functionalities or procedures within the organization. The total quality management checks the overall quality measures that are utilized by the organization including the management of quality design or development, improvement of quality, assurance of quality, maintenance as well as control of quality and many others (Harrison & Lock, 2017). Each and every quality measure is to be undertaken at every level and hence all the employees are involved eventually. Blue Circle Cement has involved various principles of this total quality approach in their business.
The executive management is the first principle that act as the major driver for the total quality management and creates the environment for ensuring the success. As per Kerzner and Kerzner (2017), training is yet another important principle that was provided to all the employees and hourly paid workers of Blue Circle Cement to understand the importance of total quality approach. The next significant principle of TQM is decision making. They decided to focus on their organizational operations and undertake the relevant decisions regarding the quality or measurements. Continuous improvement is the fourth vital principle of their total quality management (Larson et al., 2014). Blue Circle Cement must continuously work towards the improvement of their quality procedures and production of their business. Moreover, the company culture was also checked and the employees got the ability of working together as a team for improving the quality. The utilization of proper methodology as well as tools also ensured that the issues faced due to the changes in Blue Circle Cement could be easily identified, measured and responded consistently (Walker, 2015). The next subsequent and significant principle of the total quality approach is the involvement of employees. The respective employees or workers must be majorly encouraged for being proactive in the identification as well as addressing of the quality related issues. Blue Circle Cement solely believed that the expenses of introducing the total quality management provide much better benefit than the usual ones (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016).
Since, there was no widely agreed upon approach in Blue Circle Cement, this total quality management has drawn every previously developed techniques and tools regarding quality control (Nicholas & Steyn, 2017). The total quality management is the specific structured approach to the total organizational management. The overall focus of this process is improving the quality of the organizational outputs with the continuous improvement of the internal practices. Blue Circle Cement was able to improve their business operations with this specific approach. The wasteful practices were eliminated and required improvements were made. As per Leach (2014), the quality needed both power and responsibility for the betterment of several organizational business operations. Blue Circle Cement had developed ther staircase of the approach of total quality. The first step was identification of the barriers to involve and thus the predominant culture of “Them and Us” was eradicated.
A common vision was developed and thus the managers as well as employees required to share a specific vision (Hwang & Ng, 2013). In Blue Circle Cement, the common vision was done on the basis of building the high skilled as well as flexible work force. The third step in this staircase was to develop the plan regarding integrated working. The people were informed about the changes in the organization and the total quality concept was developed according to Beringer, Jonas and Kock (2013). The sixth step of this total quality staircase is to build the supportive structure. Moreover, the facilitators were developed for helping in the process. There was flow of empowerment as well and the workforce was improved. The procedure of the continuous improvisement is the series of their improvised teams that are empowered with the “do it”. Blue Circle Cement even focused on their customers for improving the business operations and continuous improvement was checked properly (Martinelli & Milosevic, 2016).
Blue Circle Cement has made some of the most relevant changes within their businesses. They have taken around two and a half years for researching, negotiating, carrying out the training and finally implementing new approaches for team working. The newer equipment, newer working practices as well as technologies have improved the overall efficiency and productivity of Cauldon and finally they could recognize the output or performance measures (Schwalbe, 2015). They made Cauldon one of the top most performing cement’s plants within the UK. The cement productions hence were incremented from 330,000 tonnes to around 750,000 tonnes. Moreover, the work force had also fallen from the number of 548 to 311. This continuous improvement, which data have eventually resulted within the work force and was further decreased to 223 with the respective corresponding increment within the productivities of this organization. They made the plan after following proper leadership skills within the organization as stated by Binder (2016). The organizational management has maintained leadership skills and hence removal of the issues was much easier for them.
These new working practices were completely self financing for Blue Circle Cement with decreased staff levels, incremented output one employee and decreased unit labour expenses. Hence, the employees could gain high wages in respect to each of them working on the average of eight hours in one week. According to Martinelli and Milosevic (2016), the incremented skills as well as flexibility of the employees eventually produced more efficient and effective work force in the ability of completing the jobs in a better manner. With the increase in varieties and challenges within jobs as well as the presence of the team working development, subsequently incremented the employee involvements and job satisfaction in their jobs (Binder, 2016). Thus, the work commitment and morale are improved in the Blue Circle Cement with project management skills.
Conclusion
Therefore, from this above discussion, conclusion could be drawn that the project management would be the noteworthy application of the skills, tools, techniques as well as knowledge to the respective project activities for the purpose of meeting several project requirements. The major processes of project management are initiation, plan, and execution, monitoring or controlling and finally closing of that specific project. There are ten core knowledge areas of project management, which are the integration, scope, budget, time, quality, procurements, risk management, communications, human resources and finally stakeholder management. This type of project management is majorly concerned with the bringing of unique focus for the resources, schedule and goals of every project. The value of the focus is eventually proved by the worldwide or rapid growth of the project management. It is the simplified method to organize every activity related to the project along with the parts. The major purpose of this project might range from the development of new product to the service launch. The above essay has clearly described the entire case study of Blue Circle Cement, which is a popular and significant organization in the UK. The relevance of project management to this case study is also provided in the essay. Moreover, a proper literature review is done after researching from several sources. Critical analysis is done within the literature review and proper arguments are also provided in the above given essay.
References
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