Contractual Issues
SEC was awarded competed for the Orion Shield Project in hopes that it would become a successful R&D effort of $500M spread over twenty years. As the winner of the phase 1 project they were awarded the project with a fixed budget of $2.2M over 10-months. This type of contract would be identified as a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract. This means that Gary would have no flexibility of the project costs if the price on any of the components increases. This implies that Gary and SEC would assume any risk, if cost of the good or services increases and is more than originally calculated for (Schwalbe, 2009, p.185). This would prove to be problematic for Gary as no additional funding would be made available even though the change …show more content…
A more successful matrix should allow the project manager to have discretion over the project and its resources as well as have a strong influence on developing the budget to carry out the project. As it stands, the balance matrix does not do this (PMBOK, 2008, p. 30). Additionally, Gary felt the burden of not being able to staff his project—instead relying on his organization and the functional managers. The matrix requires the project manager to illicit the assistance of the functional managers to staff the project by utilizing personnel within their respective divisions (Schwalbe, 2009, p. 225). This requirement within the matrix was the caused Gary to have key engineering employees to the Orion Project. During this staffing process, Mr. Allison showed a complete lack of negotiating skills. In any case, Mr. Larsen, Director of Engineering, should have had oversight of the glaring issues at all times. The oversight would have ensured that any critical needs of Gary’s or his team would have been handled accordingly. Schwalbe explains that without the commitment of senior management, many projects will fail (p. 77). Gary was not receiving the support of his senior management and their lack of focus on the staffing issue caused issues with the production process—which ironically was their
SEC was awarded competed for the Orion Shield Project in hopes that it would become a successful R&D effort of $500M spread over twenty years. As the winner of the phase 1 project they were awarded the project with a fixed budget of $2.2M over 10-months. This type of contract would be identified as a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract. This means that Gary would have no flexibility of the project costs if the price on any of the components increases. This implies that Gary and SEC would assume any risk, if cost of the good or services increases and is more than originally calculated for (Schwalbe, 2009, p.185). This would prove to be problematic for Gary as no additional funding would be made available even though the change …show more content…
A more successful matrix should allow the project manager to have discretion over the project and its resources as well as have a strong influence on developing the budget to carry out the project. As it stands, the balance matrix does not do this (PMBOK, 2008, p. 30). Additionally, Gary felt the burden of not being able to staff his project—instead relying on his organization and the functional managers. The matrix requires the project manager to illicit the assistance of the functional managers to staff the project by utilizing personnel within their respective divisions (Schwalbe, 2009, p. 225). This requirement within the matrix was the caused Gary to have key engineering employees to the Orion Project. During this staffing process, Mr. Allison showed a complete lack of negotiating skills. In any case, Mr. Larsen, Director of Engineering, should have had oversight of the glaring issues at all times. The oversight would have ensured that any critical needs of Gary’s or his team would have been handled accordingly. Schwalbe explains that without the commitment of senior management, many projects will fail (p. 77). Gary was not receiving the support of his senior management and their lack of focus on the staffing issue caused issues with the production process—which ironically was their