Rudolph F. Simpson III, Instructor

This seminar presents the tools and techniques needed to meet your project objectives on schedule, to specification, and within budget. The focus is on enhancing your existing skills with advanced cost, schedule, and design control techniques. You will increase your ability to assemble project teams and make project organization decisions, establish effective cost/schedule control systems, utilize earned value and other advanced techniques to track project progress, make effective cost/schedule/performance tradeoffs, and sustain the momentum of your project.

Instructor

Rudolph F. Simpson III has over twenty years experience in project management, with expertise extending across proposal planning and management, new business development, program planning, program management, cost estimating, pricing, and personnel management. As Director, Fairchild Space & Defense Company, he was responsible for numerous government-sponsored and internal research and development projects. These programs ranged from small R&D projects to large, multimillion dollar programs involving numerous subcontractors and team members. Mr. Simpson is the founder and Principal Associate of Organizational and Management Services, a company specializing in proposal preparation and program management in industries as diverse as heavy construction, high tech, environmen-tal, operations & maintenance, and technical services. Clients include SAIC, BDM, Jackson & Tull, and Charles E. Smith. He was the Proposal Manager for the winning Shuttle Assist Payload proposal to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, and has consistently achieved high award fee scores as Program Director for NASA Programs. Mr. Simpson has managed numerous Fixed Price contracts, achieving consistently high gross margins.

What You Will Learn

• Developing the project plan and schedule-evaluating cost, schedule, and technical risks.
• Developing contract compliant work breakdown structures.
• Using earned value systems to control program cost and schedule.
• Including TQM and customer management in the program plan.
• Multi-project management-tracking and reporting on separate and interrelated projects.
• Making effective cost/schedule/performance tradeoffs.
• Evaluating and selecting computer-based project management systems.

Course Outline

1. Proposals & Contract Negotiations—Acquiring New Business — Proposal development, the proposal as a sales document. Preparing the winning proposal, interpreting the RFP/RFQ, preparing the superior technical volume, preparing a cost estimate, determining the winning price. Contract negotiations, defining deliverables, official vs unofficial replanning, contract change proposals.

2. Developing the Project Plan and Schedule — Program planning. Evaluating matrix vs project organizational structures. Responsibility Assignment Matrix. Managing an R&D/skunkworks project.

3. Developing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) — Techniques to organize the work efficiently, analyzing the statement of work (SOW), Creating a WBS compliant with contract Statement of Work(SOW). Work packages for complex projects. Using the cost account as a key management control point. Staffing.

4. Baselining the New Project — Analyzing the contract baseline, refining the end item specification, establishing the project budget, contract value, management reserve, time-phased project budget. Preparing the program plan: work breakdown structures, program schedule, responsibility assignment matrix. Networks vs GANNT charts, interim & end item deliveries, planning activities and milestones.

5. Organizing the Project — Teaming partners. Subcontract management, establishing the technical baseline, subcontract specifications. Organizing multiple projects, managing schedule conflicts, allocating labor resources.

6. Staffing the Project — Project organization, the program management office, managing within a matrix organization. Interviewing and hiring personnel.

7. Directing the Workflow — Development of work packages, effective cost/schedule integration, managing multiple work packages. Concurrent engineering, maintaining configuration control. Parts and material manage-ment, managing long lead procurements. Major subcontractor management.

8. Controlling the Project — Conducting program reviews. Project documentation, requirements specification tree, as-designed vs as-built documentation. Cost and schedule control. Estimates at complete/latest revised estimate. Analyzing the network's critical path. Tracking and reporting on multiple elements. Accommodating customer changes within budget. Deviations and waivers. Monitoring the production. Correcting design deficien-cies.

9. Automated Project Management — Automating the project manage-ment process, schedule manage-ment software, Cost control software/spreadsheet products, integrating cost/schedule control. Evaluating project management software, creating project networks, resource allocation, report formats.

Tuition

Tuition for this three-day course is $1290 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com.

Register Online

Return to ATI's Schedule

Return to ATI Homepage