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Management of Public Projects

This course is about the Project Management (PM) of public projects, which are large engineering projects, often about infrastructure, with government and the public among the important stakeholders. Government will often be the client. The course covers generic PM, in a series of lectures in Q3 shared with two other PM courses, and the specifics of PM in public projects, such as the public as stakeholder, decision making in a political context, public-private partnerships and the transition phase (the deployment of the project result) of public projects.
The specific part of the course takes place in the form of weekly seminars

Subjects covered in the general PM lectures (taking place in Q3):
1 Kick-off, introduction to Project Management
2. Guest lecture on a large engineering project, such as the Delft Rail Tunnel
3. Systems Engineering and Project Management
4. Fundamentals of Planning, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality
5. Risk Management, qualitatively and quantitatively, with guest lecture
6. Project Organization and Team Work
7. Stakeholder management, with guest lecture
8. International aspects of projects
9. Contractting and Procurement
10. Decision making and Portfolio management
11. Succes criteria and success factors.
12. Summary and Q&A.

The seminar, in Q3 and Q4, will have the form of group assignments and student presentations, focusing on the specifics of Public Projects, as mentioned above.
The group assignments deal with analysing project cases and doing research in public project management.

The course aims at providing knowledge and skills for different roles in public projects, such as project manager, either within government, or within contractor working for government clients, or policy consultant, advising project managers and decision makers about public projects.

4 hours per week lecture in Q3 about general Project Management

2 hours per week in seminar form in both Q3 and Q4.
Assignment 1 (Q3): Analysing project cases, writing project plans and proposals.
Assignment 2 (Q4): Writing a research paper about a subject within Project Management, a game an project definition and stakeholder negotiations.

3 hours exam after Q3.
Evaluation of group assignment results (report, paper) and a final presentation.

Nicholas and Steyn: Project Management for Engineering, Business and Technology, fourth edition.
Additional literature references during the course.

3 hours written exam after Q3.
Evaluation of group assignment results (report after q3, paper after Q4) and a final presentation at the end of Q4.

All paper documentation.

Via Blackboard