Evaluation Analysis of Whitbread World Sail Boat Race Case Study

In the world of project management, some projects offer flexibility with its time duration, however the one involving this race lacks that luxury. In the case of Whitbread World Sail race, the project manager, Bjorn Ericksen, is challenged to meet the deadline with a fixed budget. The objective of the project is to build a top-of-the-line boat with the latest technology capable of winning the race, while finding and training a crew for the race. The entire project must be completed in 45 weeks (255 days) and cost no more than $3.2 million. The calculations of the initial proposal showed that the project would take 50 weeks and a total cost of $2,990,000. Although the project’s estimated cost is under budget by $210,000, it does not allow for any flexibility related to the finishing date due to the start date of the race. Because of the latter, an extra analysis is necessary to revise the time and cost, thus this new approach should use the crash approach to gain time in the project. The crash cost will add a total of $1,620,000 to the $3,200,000 budget, making the total cost $4,820,000 while eliminating the excess time, bringing the duration of the project to 42 weeks (250 days). However, this is not the best approach since it increases the cost to 50% (1,620,000/3,200,000) X 100. In this case, Bjorn and his team must identify specific project tasks to crash in order to comply as much as possible with the baseline cost. Selecting tasks from the critical path is the best option to reduce time. After analyzing the Gantt chart, the team should decide to crash task A and B, which are the design process and the building of the hull, respectively. By crashing this activity early in the project, it allows several other activities to start sooner by creating a positive domino effect. In addition, another task that should be crashed will be selecting the crewmembers from 6 to 5 weeks and maintenance training from 10 to 9 weeks.
With the new approach, the project will meet

References: Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2011). Project management: The managerial process. (5th Edition, p. 332). New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.