4 Graham Smith is Operations Director of Catering Food Services (CFS) a ￡1·5 billion UK ba

Question

4 Graham Smith is Operations Director of Catering Food Services (CFS) a ￡1·5 billion UK based distributor of foods to

professional catering organisations. It has 30 trading units spread across the country from which it can supply a

complete range of fresh, chilled and frozen food products. Its customers range from major fast food chains, catering

services for the armed forces down to individual restaurants and cafes. Wholesale food distribution is very much a

price driven service, in which it is very difficult to differentiate CFS’s service from its competitors.

Graham is very aware of the Government’s growing interest in promoting good corporate environmental practices and

encouraging companies to achieve the international quality standard for environmentally responsible operations. CFS

operates a fleet of 1,000 lorries and each lorry produces the equivalent of its own weight in pollutants over the course

of a year without the installation of expensive pollution control systems. Graham is also aware that his larger

customers are looking to their distributors to become more environmentally responsible and the ‘greening’ of their

supply chain is becoming a real issue. Unfortunately his concern with developing a company-wide environmental

management strategy is not shared by his fellow managers responsible for the key distribution functions including

purchasing, logistics, warehousing and transportation. They argued that time spent on corporate responsibility issues

was time wasted and simply added to costs.

Graham has decided to propose the appointment of a project manager to develop and implement a company

environmental strategy including the achievement of the international quality standard. The person appointed must

have the necessary project management skills to see the project through to successful conclusion.

You have been appointed project manager for CFS’s ‘environmentally aware’ project.

Required:

(a) What are the key project management skills that are necessary in achieving company-wide commitment in

CFS to achieve the desired environmental strategy? (15 marks)

Answer 1

正确答案：

(a) Simply defined, a project is ‘activity that has a start, a middle and an end and consumes resources’ – it is therefore a discrete
activity aimed at achieving a specific objective or range of objectives. Graham is intent on using the ‘environmentally aware’
project to achieve a specific objective – the attainment of the international environmental standard. He is, however, aware
that there are a number of internal stakeholders inside the company who question the significance of such a project.
Externally, he can point to significant stakeholders, including customers and government who are looking for CFS to become
more environmentally aware. The project is likely to have strategic and not simply operational or administrative significance
and the person appointed into the role of project manager, ideally, should have both the traditional skills associated with
project management plus those of strategic management. Grundy and Brown list the traditional project management
techniques as:

Clearly, the project manager must have the technical project management skills, being able to manage the project through its
life cycle, which involves defining the project in terms of project objectives and scope as defined by time, cost and quality.
Planning the project in terms of breaking the overall project down into separate activities, estimating the resources required
and linking activities to resources in terms of time and priorities. Implementing the plan, including reviewing the progress in
meeting time and cost objectives and taking corrective action where and when necessary. Finally, reviewing the outcomes of
the project in terms of what was delivered to the customer and the extent to which client expectations were met.
The strategic nature of the project means that the project manager must have significant leadership skills, not only of the
project team, who are likely to come from different functions and parts of the company, but also influential stakeholders inside
and outside the company. This implies they should have good ‘political’ and communication skills as the project is of strategic
significance to the company. The ability to show how this particular project fits with the overall strategy of the firm is
important. The project is an important part in the achievement of the company strategy and in CFS’s case may help it
differentiate itself from its competitors. However, the project manager must recognise that there will be resistance from existing
managers reluctant to see resources committed to projects outside of the traditional value chain of the company. Certainly,
the project manager for the ‘environmentally aware’ project will themselves need to be aware of the external environmental
pressures prompting the firm to set itself specific environmental objectives and be able to link into supportive networks and
alliances. Finally, Grundy and Brown argue that the project manager will be the key to reviewing and learning from the project,
assessing whether defined objectives were achieved, the effectiveness or otherwise of the implementation process and how
key stakeholders were managed. The danger is that projects are seen as ‘one-off’ rather than contributing to the knowledge
and learning of the organisation. There may be a significant ‘learning curve’ that the firm has to go down and look tocontinuously improve its project management process.