Management & Leadership Flashcards
(8 cards)
How were you able to establish whether a person was competent?
Checking their CV for the following:
- Experience and knowledge in the field
- Academic qualifications
- Professional accreditation i.e. Chartered, Supervising Engineer, All Reservoir Panel Engineer
How were you able to maintain programme and budgets
Upper Lliedi MITIOS is a project I’ve been project managing in which monitoring costs and programme is more critical.
I held weekly meetings with the delivery team to discuss current activities, upcoming activities, and potential risks to programme and project costs. Risks were notified as EWNs and CE.
I submitted Clause 32 programmes and forecasts to the Client on a monthly basis.
What is the difference between and manager and a leader
A manager is someone who maintains process and keeps the project moving forward i.e. monitoring programme, spend, delivery.
A leader is someone who guides others, developing their abilities. They are creative and influence more innovative/efficient ways of doing things.
How did you ensure effective management of your project?
Mott MacDonald has its own internal governance process called STEP which describes the processes required to run an effective Mott MacDonald project.
The STEP process provides the basis information for:
- Conducting monthly project control meetings
- Completing a project plan of work
- Assessing information security, project safety, project sustainability, conflicts of interest and risk of bribery, profitability, health & safety, contingency requirements
These processes are regularly reviewed to ensure effective management is maintained.
How did your prepare your programmes
For the EA Panel Engineer Services project, it was only the Reservoir Safety Management Plan development that had a defined programme. I prepared this on Excel by first speaking to the different delivery leads contributing to distribute the tasks and resources between our January start date and the June completion date set by the Client.
For Upper Lliedi MITIOS, the programme is more complex so I’ve prepared the Clause 31 and Clause 32 programmes on Microsoft Project - easier to track changes.
How did you maintain a healthy working environment amongst your team.
I held regular team catch up meetings to discuss current workload and the progress of deliverables. This could then flag whether anyone was under significant stress or needed more support.
Listening to others and taking on feedback I think is important to creating a healthy working environment.
After taking on some feedback from a summer intern I de-facto line managed I had more regular one-one catch ups with graduates to discuss in things in greater detail if they were struggling, or discuss items they may not have been comfortable to discuss in a group setting.
How did you deal with risks and opportunities
For the EA Panel Engineer services, given it was an Option E, the Client relationship was good enough such that minor increases above estimate for a task instruction were not poorly received so long as it didn’t exceed the £10k ceiling per TI. Opportunities were small, but the EA did get on board with us selecting panel engineers more local to sites to reduce travel emissions even if that meant a slight increase to programme.
For Upper Lliedi MITIOS, risks were notified through the EWN and CE process e.g. lack of survey data causing a delay to programme, and the need for us to produce a survey spec (new scope item). I found an opportunity to start certain scope items ahead of programme as they weren’t part of the project’s critical path.
Can you provide an example of a management challenge you’ve had to deal with, and how did you overcome this.
Lincs reservoir had quite tight deadlines to deliver a series of drawdown disposal workshop presentations. I used the support available from graduates to delegate the various tasks between to ensure we met these deadlines. I made sure I provided enough time to provide support to the graduates when required. You can see in report that I received good feedback from the Client for these workshop presentations so I think that challenge was well overcome.
I had another project where I was working with our CAD technician team in India. Challenge with this was working on different time zones so there was little opportunity for spoken word/screen sharing support. I had to adapt my written communication to be much clearer in my instructions and make sure my written English could translate well when spoken as a second language.
