Case scenario-New Fire Ltd

The hospital and factory work is very much based on traditional plumbing work but on a large scale. The company adds value by looking after the whole project. The ship work requires the project team to work away from home. The work has to be done at the quickest speed possible in order to reduce the time the ship will be in dock. In order to keep the gangs busy during off-peak times they have taken on less specialised work, such as general cleaning an repainting of large installations. This work is obtained through general advertising in the trade press and is not closely monitored.

Project management issues

The project managers each seek to have the best designers and engineers on their jobs. This can make training an issue as less experienced staff need to shadow more experienced staff. This is seen as a drain on the project managers’ overworked resources. The ship work is the most complex to manage due to the time factor. Design work can’t start until the designer has been aboard ship and the most experienced engineers have to be used to meet the tight deadlines. As such, the company tries to limit this type of work to off-peak times when there are more people to chose from.

Design issues

Design basically covers everything that’s not related to standard project management. The designers do the following:

 plan the projects

 identify the materials to be used

 produce the tender

 hand over to the project manager.

There are only a few competitors in this industry, so the success rate with tenders has been relatively high. New Fire usually wins 50 per cent of the tenders it submits, which means that designers can spend up to 50 per cent of their time on tenders that are not accepted.