A St. Louis retailer was in need of a large capital expansion project. The project was to provide a large ambient warehouse facility, large refrigerated warehouse facility, transportation offices, and fleet maintenance facility.  The project covered the contracting for Design and Construction of the facility, the change management to incorporate the new facility into the business of the client company, and complete the transition of the business from the existing facilities to the new facility.

 

The Global Project Management Group (GPMG) was engaged in October 2014 as the “owner’s representative” to provide the project management for the large capital expansion project. 

 

The project was the first of its kind at the retailer and was led by a GPMG PMP project manager and GPMG support team from start to finish.  The budget was established at $115 million, the schedule set, and a Project Charter written that clearly identified the high-level objectives and established the commitment level of the major stakeholders.  The project came in on schedule and under budget.  GPMG established a Project Office to provide the project management structure for this project as there were no established project procedures within the retailer for projects of this magnitude and complexity.  GPMG utilized the Project Office to develop and manage the following:

 

• Project Charter and Project Scope

• Project Scope Change Control

• Project SharePoint Site / Document Repository

• Contract Review Processes

• Budget Baseline, Budget Tracking, and Change Management

• Executive and Steering Committee Stakeholder Review Boards

• Project Status Reporting (Traffic Light updates, schedule updates, and budget review)

• Project Schedule and Updating Processes

  • Project Team Subgroups: Construction, Accounting, Procurement, Information Systems Infrastructure, Information Systems Applications, Legal, Human Resources, and Operations

• Project Management

• Project Communications

• Action Item Logs

• Risk and Issues Management

• Project Close-Out and Final Project Report

 

The Project Office was responsible for establishing and controlling the overall project scope, developing integrated departmental tasks lists, integrated schedule, and managing project execution.  The project planning, execution, and closure phases were managed via multiple paths through the project team subgroups.  Each group created plans, worked their tasks through execution, and implemented their portions of the scope to create a complete result for this effort. The groups provided continuous updates to the Project Office to ensure the scope, budget, and schedule were completed as expected.