Determining task efficiency through The Project Management flight simulator

1. David Brown ’12, Advisor: T. Michael Toole, Ph.D., P.E. Department of Civil & Env. Engineering Bucknell University Introduction Goals In order to be an effective project manager (PM), key factors that affect efficiency and their relationships must be known. To learn what these relationships are and how to use them to the PM’s advantage, a simulator could be used. The Project Management Flight Simulator, or PMFS, is designed to accomplish that as well as give students the opportunity to apply project management skills in the virtual construction of a four story office building. The PMFS is unique in that it provides students with both the big picture and intricate challenges of project management. • Discover relationships between different factors that affect efficiency • Study outcomes of projects in reality and compare them to those produced by algorithms in the PMFS • Improve the user interface to enhance the learning experience • Create a versatile, realistic, and inexpensive model Figure 1: One small portion of the PMFS, which includes thousands of variables and multiple higher-order feedback loops. Determining task efficiency through The Project Management flight simulator Figure 2: The 33 tasks that must be completed by the user to finish the building. Items in red are on the “critical path,” which means they must be completed on-time if the project is to be completed on time. Items in blue can be delayed slightly without affecting project completion. How the PMFS works Users begin by hiring their assistant project managers (APMs). Each APM has different expertise and salaries. Time allocation is a must: users must choose how they spend their time doing five different tasks, i.e. visiting the site, working in the office, etc. Goal emphasis is next: how to balance budget, deadline, quality and safety? Users can elect to “crash” a task, i.e., work overtime to complete a critical path task faster. Run the simulation and continuously make changes in emphasis and time allocation to deal with accidents or other delays. Figure 3: Screen shots from the PMFS displaying the time and goal emphasis pane (right) and the main operations pane displaying up to date budget and goodwill values. Graph 1: (below) Displaying Cost and Schedule Performance Index Graph 2: (above) Budgeted cost of work performed and scheduled and actual cost of work performed Outcomes and Findings Citations and Bibliography Forrester, J.W. (1971).  “The counterintuitive behavior of social systems.”  Technology Review 73 (January):52-68. Rodrigues, A. G. and J. Bowers (1996).  “The role of system dynamics in project management.”  International Journal of Project Management 14(4): 213-220. Senge, P. M. (1990).  The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday/ Currency, New York. Toole, T. M. (2005).  “A Project Management Causal Loop Diagram.”  Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Conference, Association of Researchers in Construction Management, F. Khosrowshahi, Editor.  pp. 763-772.  September 2005. Williams, T.M. (1999).  “The need for new paradigms for complex projects”, International Journal of Project Management 17 (5): 269-273. Using the PMFS, the relationships highlighted to the left were produced after studying their interactions in reality. This was done through extensive testing and tweaking of the simulator’s algorithms to create likely outcomes. This applied to all aspects of the project, including determining random occurrences such as various delays like weather or absent subcontractors. Using the PMFS now allows for students and contractors alike to run realistic simulations based on their given priorities to determine what efficient practices and emphases are. It will later be used to research PM’s mental models of project management systems. Figure 4: Final relationships incorporated and confirmed by the PMFS