Case Study 10.1 - Project Scheduling at Blanque Cheque Construction - 1

10.1 - Project Scheduling at Blanque Cheque Construction - Case Study Example A project manager may make use of the below approaches to estimate how long a project will last, rather than basing it on how long he is pressured to make it last. The expert opinion uses the consensus method to arrive at an estimate. The project manager will engage the services of at least three experts who have an understanding of the type of project to be undertaken or have managed similar projects before (Kerzner 6). After a briefing by the project manager on the project requirements, the experts discuss it among themselves and each submits their own separate estimates according to their understanding. Each produces a task list containing effort estimates for each task. The project manager then hands back a list of the estimates to the experts without revealing to which one of them each belongs. He asks the experts to consider the risks and estimates of the others’ results and recalculate their work. The experts then discuss the project to determine if any assumptions or issues have changed after the last discussion. After studying the combined estimates, the experts revise their estimates and submit the results independently again. If the discrepancies are still not practical, the project manager hands the results back again, or invites more experts. The aim is to make the difference between the lowest and the highest estimates as low as possible. The cycle may be repeated severally until most of the results are in or close to agreement. Once in agreement, an average of the experts’ estimates is used as the project duration. However, rather than spending much time on the estimation procedure, the project manager may use the results of several experts in the early stages. For example, if three experts determined the estimate as 2000 hours and one estimated at 4000 hours, he may need to ignore the overestimated duration but with the knowledge that he bears the risk of the duration accepted actually doubling. Past history is one of