THE MANDATE

In addition to her work at ARUP as an Urban Plan Designer (being a qualified architect and engineer, with a professional BSc + MSc in both subjects plus an MA that included urban planning and design, as part of her real estate and land development studies), Cristina also had the opportunity to cover a project manager role for the design development of the masterplan she worked on.

In her PMO role she had to measure progress against the baseline plan of financial and human resources deployment, according to schedule in order to ensure a time-bound delivery of the promised outcomes to the clients. She also had to brief and project manage her colleagues who were not part of her core team and were providing outsourced services, with a cap on the number of hours they could bill on her project: CGIs producers, 3D digital modellers, landscape advisors, civil and traffic engineers, environmental sustainability advisors and one graphic designer.

THE WORK DELIVERY

Cristina monitored daily the work done by the team, comparing it to the expected work according to schedule, to see if the design project was on track or if it needed to be re-baselined. She also triangulated the resources utilisation data with the progress on the actions to complete. Therefore, the use of resources’ billed hours on the project was measured not according to expected use by date, but according to the proportion of completed work, to check if the project was running a bit overtime and intervene if so.

She supported in this way decision making, such as, for example, the allocation of additional resources if this was necessary to avoid eventual delays in the project timely delivery or drops in work quality. This was especially important when during an urban design development project the project director was on holiday for half of the time, and therefore the work was likely to face some delays, while waiting for approval, causing the risk of detrimental impact to the ARUP's client relationship.

Cristina also briefed her colleagues in the engineering and in the 3D models departments, explaining what work was expected from them, specifying deadlines and milestones, and being the first point of contact for information about the project, also providing project material such as the latest design development files, the cartography and many other documents received from the client, to contextualise the site.



THE RESULT

All due work was delivered ahead of time and below budget, realising a higher profit margin as the project was sold for a lump sum.