Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management

13.1. The Revised Objective Statement

By scrambling hard, we managed to pull a presentation together for Ralph by the following Friday. We had even received tentative approval from the city about the expansion, with the new access of course. By the time the meeting rolled around, there really was only one option, but we figured we would show Ralph all the reasoning that had gone into our final recommendation.

Sheila, Stu, and Amanda attended the meeting to help me answer questions. At the end of half an hour, I was winding things down.

"And so, Ralph, here are the specifics. We'll expand our existing manufacturing space.We will construct a new access for Hyler Lake, and we will build a new security fence between the plant and the lake. That should cut down on our security problems. In addition, we're recommending a new payroll and inventory control system. The training programs will include some new employee initiation sessions, and we're recommending some computer simulation virtual reality training for the new machine operators. We are also recommending a new supervisory seminar around performance management, for all new supervisors. If it works well, we'll expand it to include existing supervisors as well." I paused. "Once we have your approval on the preliminary design, we'll proceed with detailing it."

Ralph was busy taking notes. Finally he looked up. "How much do you estimate the recommended option will cost?"

I took a breath. Honesty had worked well so far. "Our guesstimate ...