The course aims at developing the knowledge necessary to apply the basic Project Management techniques and tools to a complex project. The course deals with the general aspects of project planning and control and such techniques and tools are applied to typical engineering & contracting projects. The course will enable the student to take part effectively in a project team during the development of an industrial project.

At the end of the course the student will be able to:

• apply a range of tool for the project planning and control.
• understand the usefulness of different approaches in specific situation
• identify and manage the scope of a project at different levels of detail
• identify and classify the main stakeholders and risks involved in a project

Project and Project Management: Repetitive and non repetitive processes. Project: features, types, success factors, performance indicators, stakeholders. Project life cycle. Operational, managerial and organizational processes. Project, program and portfolio management. International Standards. Project Management Body of Knowledge. Project Management System.

Scope planning and control: Work Breakdown Structure. Rules and logics for building the project WBS. Work package. Standardization of WP. Scope control.

Time management: Network analysis, early and late schedule, total float. Activity duration and resource allocation. Resource scheduling. Uncertainty management. PERT approach. Schedule control. Physical and economical progress. S curves.

Cost management: cost classification, cost estimating, cost baseline, cost control. Project cash flow.

Earned Value Management: integrated control of project time and cost. Project performance. Estimate to complete. Final performance of the project.

Project risk analysis and management: identification of threats and opportunities, classification, assessment and identification and implementation of response actions. Quantitative analysis of project risks. Simulation. Project robustness and flexibility.

Stakeholder management: identification, classification and management.

No particular background is necessary, except for an open minded approach to cope with problems that are mainly managerial (and not technical as the students are used to see)

Final course evaluation is based on a weghted avarage of an individual written test and the evaluation of a project work (developed in teams during the course). The individual written test aims at verifying the capability of the student to apply project planning and control tools and techniques and to understand the usefulness of different approaches in specific situation, since its is based on both practical (quantitative) and theoretical (qualitative) questions. The project work aims at evaluating the capability to work in team and apply the same tools and techniques to a real case proposed by the gropu in order to let the team to identify and manage the scope of a project at different levels of detail and to identify and classify the main stakeholders and risks involved in a project.