Summary

Planning, designing and executing a capital project is a complex undertaking. Change is inevitable throughout the process, but must be controlled to ensure the project parameters (cost, schedule, quality and safety) remain in control. Changes have many impacts, including interrupting the sequence of planned work, rework, delays, schedule slippage and cost escalation. Any of these impacts have the potential to generate claims and result in litigation.

This course offers participants the opportunity to learn how to apply best practices in scope control and change management developed by the Construction Industry Institute (CII). Scope control is introduced as a preventative process, starting in front end planning, that ensures discipline in changing the scope during project execution. The change management process is introduced to manage all changes that occur on a project.

Interactive workshops are used to provide participants with a practical opportunity to apply the scope control and change management practices introduced in this course.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course participants will be able to:

• Describe the impact that scope control and change management have on project success.
• Implement scope control and change management processes on individual projects.
• Apply selected tools and techniques to effectively control scope and manage project changes on large and small capital projects, including industrial, infrastructure and building projects.

Who Should Attend

This course targets project stakeholders who can impact project cost and schedule.  Past attendees include Program Managers, Project Managers, Design Managers, Designers, Construction Managers, Technical Managers, Project Estimators and Schedulers Business Unit leaders, Site Supervisors, Project Finance personnel, Operations leaders, Contract Administrators, Maintenance Managers, Risk specialists, Procurement professionals, Materials Supervisors, Quality specialists, Legal, Project Controls analysts , Engineers and Planners, Information Commercial Managers, Cost Engineers, Quantity Surveyors, Health & Safety professionals and others.

Course Outline

Introduction

• Overview of course objectives and agenda
• Interactive exercise – participants will complete a poll on critical issues causing changes in their organization.
• Introduction to scope control and change management
• Research results showing criticality of scope control and change management
• Sources of project change & impact on projects
• Interactive exercise – participants will use interactive polling to vote on the most likely impact of real-life project change scenarios

Scope Control

• Importance of scope control
• Scope development and the project life cycle
• Baseline for project scope
• Distinguishing between desirable and undesirable scope changes
• Drivers of discretionary scope change
• Practices with the greatest impact on control of project scope

Workshop 1 – Scope Control

• Interactive exercise – using a case study, participants will work in small groups to develop plans, identify critical scope control issues and report results back to the group.

Change Management

• Introduction to project change management
• Principles of an effective change management process
  • Promote a balanced change culture
  • Recognizing change
  • Evaluate change
  • Implement change
  • Continuously improve from lessons learned
• Case study – managing project change

Monitoring Change

• Documenting and collecting data to manage change
• Change control document templates
• Consistency in reporting on change
• Common change management metrics
• Interactive exercise – using a case study, participants will work in small groups to identify critical change management issues and report results back to the group.

Workshop 2 – Change Management

• Interactive exercise – using a case study, participants will work in small groups to identify critical change management issues and report results back to the group.

Summary

• Participants will apply course learning to complete a self-assessment of their organization’s level of implementation of scope control and change management practices.
• Self-assessment results will be used to prioritize areas for improvement.
• Review the tools and techniques to effectively control scope and manage project changes on projects
• Discuss important “take-aways”
• Conduct course evaluation

Course Instructor

Sandra MacGillivray, MBA, PMP

Sandra is the Managing Director for Valency Inc., a provider of project readiness solutions that reduce risk for organizations that manage a large portfolio of capital projects.  She is a Registered Education Provider (REP) with the Construction Industry Institute (CII), a Project Management Professional (PMP), and a PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP) with over 15 years of project management experience.  Sandra is a past research team member with the Construction Industry Institute on front end planning, risk management and portfolio management. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Waterloo and a Master in Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Certificate

A certificate of completion will be issued to those who attend and complete the course. The course is conducted by Valency, a Registered Education Provider for the Construction Industry Institute (CII).  Those who complete the course will earn 7 Professional Development Hour (PDH) credits.