South Australia Constructors (SAC) is a medium-sized construction company headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia. The company was founded by John Samuelson following his return from WWII.
John basically built a strong South Australian company noted for highly motivated employees and good customer relations. During the last two decades, his son, Fred, expanded operations into Perth in West Australia, Melbourne in Victoria, and Sydney, in New South Wales. Fred solidified a strong presence throughout Australia and reinforced the company’s “give it a go” culture.
The firm has stayed in the family and the founder’s grandson, Ian Samuelson, has recently taken the helm. Ian decided to take the company offshore because he believed that there were significant opportunities for growth in the Asian market. The first contract SAC obtained was in China – a lump-sum construction project near Shanghai with a bonus/penalty clause based on making a rather tight schedule. In negotiating the contract, Ian relied primarily on information provided by the client and by the commercial attaché from the Australian Consulate in Shanghai.
To take charge of the project, Ian turned to his most experienced Project Manager, Mike Johnson, who had been one of Fred’s key senior managers for many years. Mike quickly put together a small team of experienced SAC Construction Superintendents and relocated to the job site. At the same time, SAC’s home office in Adelaide was recruiting Assistant Superintendents and Foremen in Australia and New Zealand to fill out the supervisory team. A number of the new employees had recently immigrated from South Africa or the United Kingdom, and had not worked for SAC before.
Through contact with China’s commercial attaché in Australia, Mike was able to hire a local assistant who spoke Chinese. He delegated to this assistant the task of hiring a small recruiting staff for the project. English language ability was made a requirement for all recruiters, since no one on the supervisory team spoke Chinese. In a relatively short period of time, the project was staffed to the point that site preparation work could begin. Mike arranged accommodations for the staff through the client organization and was assured that the accommodations they had arranged were appropriate for Mike’s expatriate superintendents. They also found accommodations for the other expatriates on the team.
Mike soon began to receive complaints about the quarters being small, dilapidated furnishings, poor quality food, etc. Some of the expatriates had no hesitation in making derogatory comments about their accommodations within earshot of client representatives and local hires. After two months, the project was behind schedule, and client representatives were politely asking about progress. Mike assured them that the delays were normal at the beginning of a project and that the work would soon be caught up to schedule.
Mike discussed the schedule with his Superintendents, who he considered his key management team. He explored a number of issues. He asked if the Chinese employees were adequately skilled. The Superintendents told him that the local recruiters had assured them that all of the craftspeople had been trade-tested and had the necessary skills. He asked if the local employees understood the urgency of a situation in which a bonus/penalty clause for the company was based on the schedule. The Superintendents told him that this had been explained to each group of employees through a translator and that all of the employees had nodded vigorously, indicating that they understood the importance of making schedule. He asked if SAC values had been explained to the employees and if they understood them. “Are they willing to put their hands up and take on a task – really give it a go,” he asked. “Do they understand that’s how we do things?” Again, the Superintendents assured him that this had been explained to employees by their expatriate Foremen, through their translators, and that all of the employees had indicated that they understood the SAC values.
After hearing what the Superintendents had to say, Mike thought things might improve. After all, it was a new project with people who weren’t yet used to working together. But after another month, there was further slippage on the schedule and Mike received an urgent request from Ian for an analysis describing how the company came to the current situation, along with a plan detailing what Mike intended to do to get the project back on track.
As Mike set at his desk pondering Ian’s request, he realized that his time was limited. Ian would expect a reply sooner rather than later. He knew he would have to come up some specific corrective actions for this issue in order to satisfy Ian and the client.
Assignment Requirements:
MUST HAVE THESE FIVE SECTIONS:
1. Issue/ Consequences:
In this section I would expect to see the issue clearly identified (not the causes) and the consequences if that issue is not resolved clearly spelled out.
2. Underlying Causes:
In this section I would expect to see your analysis concerning the underlying causes of the issue identified above. I expect your analysis method to be identified as well (e.g. Fishbone, Modified SWOT, other) with graphics as appropriate.
Alternatives & Chosen Solution
In this section I would expect to see possible alternatives that would deal with the causes identified above as well as your chosen solution. I would expect to see some method of comparative analysis (e.g. pros and cons or cost/benefit) again with graphics as appropriate, (normally a table) that allows one to see easily and clearly why you perceive your chosen solution(s) to be superior to the other identified alternatives.
3. Implementation Plan
In this section I would expect to see an implementation action plan, laid out on a Gantttype chart, that shows all the what, when, and who items associated with the implementation of the activities associated with the chosen solution identified above. You need to go into detail here.
4. Evaluation
In this section, I would expect to see an evaluation metric identified that will tell you whether or not the implementation of your chosen solution was successful in dealing with the identified issue.
Additional Comments: Note how each section flows logically into the next. After identifying the issue, we move to possible causes and selecting those most probable; then we look at possible alternatives for dealing with these causes and eliminating the issue and we choose those we consider to be the best; next we lay out exactly how we propose to implement this chosen solution(s); and finally,
we identify an evaluation metric that will tell us whether or not implementation of the solutions worked.
