Depending on the quality assurance activities that the Contractor is supposed to implement, the Project Manager should:
| ● | Examine the Peer Review Report (refer to 7.4.4.1) that normally has to be attached to the Deliverable concerned and check whether all the information needed are included. |
| ● | Study the Progress Reports prepared by the Contractor and examine whether the Contractor updates regularly the Project Schedule. If the project timeline is not on track, the Project Manager has to determine why this happens and take immediate action to remedy the problem. |
| ● | Use a checklist to ensure that all the quality assurance activities defined in the Contractor’s offer (and consequently in the Contract and in the Project Kick off document (or Inception Report) are being implemented. This process helps the Project Manager to monitor what is being done well, to identify real or potential issues and to suggest ways of improvement. It is recommended to perform this process regularly during Project Execution and Control Phase and of course at the end of the project. |
The questions listed below are indicative of what the Project Manager may ask to check the consistency between what the Contractor promised and what actually performs.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESS & DELIVERABLES |
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Does the Contractor produce progress reports on the agreed intervals that contain all the recommended components from the Tender Documents? |
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Is the project scope clear in the Project Inception Report? (is it clear as to what is “in” and “out” of the scope? |
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Is the Project Schedule defined sufficiently to enable the Project Manager to monitor the task execution? |
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Was a project baseline established? |
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Is the project schedule maintained on a regular basis by the Contractor? |
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Has the Contractor prepared a Resource Plan? |
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Has the Contractor described at the Inception Report the quality standards for the project and the quality assurance and control activities he is going to perform? |
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Does the Contractor perform the quality assurance activities he is supposed to? |
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Has the contractor identify and prioritize possible risks of the project? |
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Has a mitigation plan been developed for each? |
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If any risks events have occurred to date, was the risk mitigation plan executed successfully? |
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Have all the Project Management deliverables been approved by the Project Steering Committee? |
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DELIVERABLES |
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Do the deliverables produced so far meet the Contracting Authority’s needs? |
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Do the deliverables produced so far meet the objectives set in the Project Fiche and in the Tender Documents? |
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Do the deliverables produced so far achieve the quality standards defined in the Quality Plan? |
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It should be mentioned that except from monitoring the implementation of quality assurance activities by the Contractor the Project Manager should also examine whether all the management activities planned to be implemented by the Contracting Authority’s Project Management Team in order to ensure qualitative project implementation, are actually performed. In this perspective, the Project Manager should use a similar to the above presented Checklist, consisting of questions like the one that follow.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESS |
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Have you identified and assigned the appropriate resources for the performance of project management activities? |
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Is the schedule progress being monitored regularly to ensure that the project is on track? |
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Is the resource and financial progress being monitored regularly to ensure that there are not any resource allocation problems and the project is within budget? |
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Does the project organization ensure that decisions are taken in the appropriate management level? |
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Does the Project Management Team take actions to mitigate risks? |
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Are regular project team meetings conducted? Are minutes of meeting kept and disseminated after the meeting? |
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Are there any quality review mechanisms in place? |
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Are there any quality reviews being performed according to the plan? |
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Have Change Control Process been established and applied? |
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Has an Acceptance Management Plan been established and applied? Does it describe explicitly the process to be followed to accept or reject deliverables? |
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Are all the stakeholders aware of their involvement in the project? |
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Does the Communication Plan describe the method to be used for communicating with all the stakeholders? Does it also indicate the frequency of the communication? |
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Is the Project Progress Report being reviewed by the Project Steering Committee? |
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