National Sponsor




Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd.

STEM Project Management Guide

2018
2 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

AUTHORISED AGENT
Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd.
PO Box 136
Castle Hill NSW 1765
P: 61 2 9620 9944
F: 61 2 8079 0622
E: [email protected]
W: www.rea.org.au

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This document, all its contents (including images, text, procedures) and all the components parts which go to make up this challenge
are copyright 2018 Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd. All rights reserved.

REPRODUCTION
This document may only be reproduced by schools in any of REA’s STEM Programmes including F1 in Schools, 4x4 in Schools, SUBS
in Schools, Entrepreneurs in Schools & F1 in Schools Primary School Challenge in Australia. Non-participating schools in Australia
and overseas must first seek permission from Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd. Prior to reproducing any component of this
document.
ALTERATIONS
Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd. Reserves the right to alter any component of this document without prior notice.

CONTRIBUTORS
Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd acknowledges the valuable contributions of the Department of Defence and the
Australian Institute of Project Management.
Time

CO M M

ON
TI

Management ER A
CIA LIS
Vision
MARKET

PR

ES
N

E N TAT I O
Market
P R OJ E

ENT

DATA
Key
EM

T
Success M A N AG
C

PORTFOLIO Innovation
Contact
Think
MOTIVATION

MENTORS PORTFOLIO
ON
N

CO

M
CO

LL
IO

TI

A B O R AT Step M U N I CA

I L I TY Education
YAB
Business
SK
LO
P

ILL

Business Education
EM

Project Management is a key Employability Skill

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 3

CONTENTS

PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS 4

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN 6

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN TEMPLATE 7

Project Title 7
Background 7
Objectives 7
Scope 7
Products and services 7
Deliverables 7
Time 8
Example Project Schedule 8
Procurement and Cost 9
Assumptions and Constraints 10
Guidelines and Standards 10
Project Team Roles and Responsibilities 11
Stakeholder Engagement 11
Internal Project Team Communication 12
Risk Management 12
Quality 13
Continuous Improvement 13

GLOSSARY 14

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
4 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS

1. Projects can vary in size, nature and difficulty. It can be as simple as building a garden shed to
building and launching a space craft. Regardless of your project’s size, it will have a start and
finish date, it will usually require resources (people, material and equipment), and result in the
delivery of an outcome.
2. Before starting a project you should have clear objectives. That is, a concrete statement that
describes the things your project is trying to achieve. Write it down so the objective can be
evaluated at the end to see whether it was achieved. It does not have to be long and one
technique for writing an objective is to make sure that it is SMART - Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
3. Objectives are important for three major reasons:
• They are described in business terms: Once they are accepted, they represent an agreement
between the Project Manager and the Project Sponsor (in this case your school or college
and Re-Engineering Foundation Australia). The specific deliverables of the F1 in School STEM
Challenge, 4x4 in Schools or SUBS in Schools Technology Challenges for instance, may or
may not make sense to some people. However, the objectives should be written in a way that
is understandable by team members, industry partners and the people who will judge your
project.
• They help frame the project: If you know the project
objectives, you can determine the deliverables
needed to achieve the objectives. This then helps you
nail down the overall project scope, helps you
identify risks and allows you to provide estimates on
your effort, time and cost. Once the project starts, you
will be able to see if all of the work that you identified
or are doing will in the end help you achieve your
outcome.
• They help you achieve success: At the end of the
project, you should be able to talk to people to determine whether everything expected in the
project objectives had been achieved. If all of the objectives were not fully met, you may still be
able to claim partial success.
4. The project objectives ideally should be agreed before the project starts. The outputs of the project
are based on the objectives - not the other way around. That is, you don’t agree on the outputs first
and then establish objectives to match. A key is to understand your objectives and then determine
outputs that are needed. Then structure the entire project to meet the objectives.
5. Project Management is a structured way of managing a project. It is simply applying your
knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to activities to meet a project objective. Project
Management is achieved by applying a combination of processes for initiating, planning,
execution, monitoring, controlling, and closing a project.
6. Managing a project includes:
• Identifying what you want to achieve
• Establishing clear and achievable objectives
• Balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 5

• Adapting the specifications, plans, and approach to the different expectations of the various
people involved in your project
• A Project Management Plan is the ideal tool to assist with planning and managing your project
from start to finish.
7. On completion of the project celebrate your achievement and delivery of the project.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
6 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

Your Project Management Plan should explain how you will manage your project. Depending on how big or
complicated your project is, your Project Management Plan might be a simple summary or quite long and
detailed. It might be a “stand alone” document, or it might be part of a set with other separate more detailed
plans for certain aspects of your project such as a marketing or quality management.
TIP
A common mistake is to make the plan too detailed. To avoid this, make sure your plan is a ‘what’ document
not a ‘how’ document. Describe ‘what’ will be done, by ‘whom’ and ‘when’, but don’t go into the detail of
‘how’ the work will be done.

Your Project Management Plan shows:

• How your project will be monitored and controlled
• Key stages and activities
• When key decisions will be made
• Team roles and responsibilities
• Other people involved in the project, such as industry partners
• Marketing actions.
The plan should also summarise:
• Your design and manufacturing process (including research and analysis)
• How you will test your components during development
• Track testing before competition judging
• Innovative ideas you plan to explore during development
• How you will collaborate with industry partners.
This plan will help you:
• Satisfy the rules and requirements of the competition
• Achieve your objectives
• Obtain the people, material and equipment you need
• Meet your deadlines
• Share the workload and make everyone’s responsibilities clear
• Predict and avoid problems
• Tell interested people how you are going or what help you need.
Ideally you should write your plan before the project starts to make sure you have everything you need and
your sponsors and supporters agree on how you propose to manage your project.
TIP
Some sections might not be relevant to you. Don’t be concerned if some sections of the first version don’t
contain much detail. As the project progresses you can add more detail or change the plan.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 7

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN TEMPLATE

Use this template to work out all the details of how you will do the project. You can work as a group to
brainstorm some sections, and work on some sections individually.

Project Title

Background
Briefly explain the background to your project, including a basic description of the competition, how
and why you and your school got involved.

Objectives
Explain why you are doing the project and what you hope to achieve. Your objectives should be one
sentence statements starting with the word ‘To’. For example: “To build the fastest racing car and win
the competition”.

Scope
Your scope is a list of the things you will create for the project and scope items are usually expressed as
nouns. Sometimes they are called outputs or deliverables.

Read all the competition documents carefully and make a list of all the things you need to produce, for
example:
• A design portfolio
• Examples of marketing material
• A presentation to the judges.
Discuss and agree what will be included in your scope, so everyone has a shared understanding of
what you need to deliver. You need to understand the scope to be able to work out what resources you
need and to check if you can deliver everything identified within the time frame.

TIP
If there is an item you are unsure of, make a note to check and confirm if it is in scope or out of scope.

TIP
It might be helpful to split your scope into two sub-headings, for example:
Products and services: The main things you will produce.
Deliverables: Any supporting documents and extras, such as marketing
material and presentations.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
8 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

Time
The project schedule (or time frame) is a simple, high-level summary of tasks and deadlines. It can be
created as a table using MS Word, a MS PowerPoint slide, a chart in MS Excel, or as a Gantt chart in MS
Project.

As a group:
• List all your tasks and deadlines
• Work out the best order
• Work out where you can save time by overlapping tasks.
Your deadlines are your project milestones. You do not need a start date for a milestones event, only a
finish date.

Example Project Schedule

No. Task/ Milestone Start Date Finish Date
Stage One: Establishment
1 Assemble Project Team
2 Register application with REA
3 Raise project funds
4 Identify industry partners and mentors
Stage Two: Design
5 Design F1 Race Car
6 Start design & development
Stage Three: Assembly
7 Component Manufacture Complete Milestone 1
8 Assemble prototype race car
Stage Four: Testing
9 Conduct Testing (Stage 1)
10 Conduct Testing (Stage 2)

Once you have completed your list of tasks, group them into stages. This will make it easier to plan and
manage your activities. For each task you may want to do more detailed planning. You can break down
each task into steps, and make notes about everything you need to do.
For example, Stage Four could be broken down further:
1. Write test plan
2. Do the tests
3. Fix issues
4. Re-test

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 9

5. Write test report

6. Update design documents, if required
7. Review and approve test report.

Procurement and Cost

Discuss and write down what you need money for (your budget) and how you will manage your budget.
Think about:
• What do you need money for, and how much you need?
• Who you are getting money from, how much, and any rules about what you can use it for?
• Who will keep records of spending and update your budget?
• Who will check that spending requests fit within your budget, and approve spending the
money?
Discuss and write down any events or anything you don’t know for sure yet that might affect your budget,
such as:
• Unexpected costs that arise during the project
• Possible costs linked to risks you have identified (refer to the risk section below)
• Potential differences between estimates and final costs
• Unexpected changes in the development phase.
An allowance for these in your budget, becomes your contingency. Decide how much contingency you
need based on how likely or serious the events are. Once you have listed all your costs, add 5% to 15% of
the total costs to be held in reserve. State within your budget the percentage used.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
10 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

Example Budget
Item Estimate Actual Expenditure Balance remaining
Equipment/ components
Hire of facilities
Travel expenses
Materials
Sub Total
Contingency – 10%
Total
Procurement for a project is about planning how you will buy the materials and services you need that are
identified in your budget. It can also include hiring equipment and other resources. As a group, discuss and
write down:
• Where will you get all the materials and parts you need?
• What arrangements will you make with industry partners or suppliers
to ensure parts are manufactured, tested and delivered on time?

Assumptions and Constraints

A constraint is a limit that you must work within.
An assumption is something that you are relying on being provided by others, or something that you expect
to be controlled by other people outside of your project team.
Check the competition rules, write down and discuss any assumptions and/or constraints. For example, a
constraint might be a rule about the length of the car. An assumption might be that your school will arrange
transport.

Guidelines and Standards

List all guidelines, rules or methods you will need to follow. For example, the competition rules and
specifications.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 11

Project Team Roles and Responsibilities

List the key people involved in the project team, and their responsibilities.
Role Name Responsibilities
Team Manager
Resources Manager
Manufacturing Engineer
Design Engineer
Test Manager
Graphic Designer
Other

TIP
Make sure you have included any roles that are mentioned in the rules. Add any other roles you think will be
needed.

TIP
Make sure each section of the Project Management Plan will be covered by at least one of your team roles,
for example who is responsible for monitoring and controlling the budget; who is responsible for monitoring
the schedule.

Stakeholder Engagement
List the key people (stakeholders) who will impact the success of your project. Discuss and decide how you
will engage with them to meet their needs. Consider where poor communication could lead to failure.
Stakeholders
Role Name Organisation Engagement activities
Teacher
Industry contact
Supporter/sponsor
Other

TIP
Do you need to provide progress reports or a final report? Include details in the Engagement activities
column of when reports must be provided, and what format is needed (e.g. written or verbal).

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
12 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

Internal Project Team Communication

Discuss and agree the methods you will use to ensure good communication within your team. How often
will the team meet? Where will the team meet and do the work?
TIP
Be specific- think about who, what, when, where, how and why.

Risk Management
As a group, discuss and write down what might go wrong. Work out what you could do to stop the risks
from happening, or minimise their impact (risk mitigation).
Describe how you will monitor the project risks. For example, by reviewing the register and discussing risks
at team meetings.
Risk Register
Risk Consequence Likelihood Seriousness Mitigations Responsibility
What might go What impact will How likely is it that How serious would What will you Who will ensure
wrong? this have on the this will happen? the impact be if this do to reduce the the mitigations are
project? happened? likelihood and/or actioned?
impact?
Example:
A part breaks Delay while a new Low Medium Stress test the part Test Manager
during track part is built, and in the workshop
testing we miss the before track
judging deadline testing to reduce
the likelihood

Focus your efforts on those risks that will have the greatest impact on your success, should they happen.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 13

Quality
Discuss and write down how you will make sure your outputs (what you design or make) are fit-for-
purpose and meet expectations. This section could be a table and include:
Quality Acceptance Testing and Review, Acceptance Timing Responsibilities
Criteria Assessment and Sign Off
Example: Example: Team Manager Example: Test Manager
No component Check for visible At end of first and
breakages. signs of cracking. second round of
Testing
Discuss and write down how you will control changes to your design and maintain accurate and complete
design information. You might want to create a checklist to capture design development that includes:
• The initial physical and functional design criteria including a list of physical items and their
configuration requirements
• A column to note changes
• A column to check off that the design (and changes) meets the criteria.

Continuous Improvement
Discuss and write down how you will capture the lessons learnt during your project. This could include
having team meetings at critical stages to discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and how you might
do it better for the next stage of your next project.
TIP
Discuss what advice you might give to a future entrant.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
14 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

GLOSSARY
Assumption Something that you are relying on being provided by others, or something that
you expect to be controlled by other people outside of your project team.
Budget The approved estimate for the project.
Constraint A limit that you must work within and could limit the project teams’ options.
Contingency A reserve identified within the project budget to cater for possible costs linked to
identified risks and differences between estimated and actual costs.
Deliverables Tangible work outputs such as a detailed design, working prototype, any report
developed as part of the project.
Fit-for-purpose The features by which the quality of an output is determined.
Gantt chart Horizontal bar charts that can graphically show the time relationship of tasks,
activities and resources in a project.
Likelihood (Risk) The possibility of the risk happening during the project on a scale of Low, Medium
or High.
Milestone A significant scheduled event that acts as a progress marker in the life of a
project.
Mitigations (Risk) Activities that could help reduce the likelihood of a risk occurring and/or could
reduce the impact if it does happen.
Objective A statement of the overarching reason for why the project is being undertaken.
Outcome The benefits that will be realised from the use of the project outputs.
Output The products or services delivered by the project. See also deliverable.
Procurement The approach to source the materials and services needed and identified in your
budget – this could be buying materials or hiring equipment and other resources.
Product Something that is produced which is quantifiable and can be an end item or a
component item. See also deliverable.
Project A project is a group of inter-related activities that are planned and executed in a
certain order to create a unique product/service (output) within a specific time
frame – it has a start and end date.
Project Management Project Management is a formalised and structured method of managing change.
It involves the application of your knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to
project activities to realise a project outcome.
Project Schedule Representation of the project time frame showing tasks and deadlines.
Quality The degree to which a set of characteristics fulfills requirements.
Risk Management The processes involved with identifying, analysing and responding to project risk.
Risk Register A document that records the results of the risk analysis process and is used to
monitor implementation of the identified risk mitigation activities and any changes
to the status of the risks.
Scope A clear statement of the areas of impact and boundaries of the project.
Seriousness (Risk) The level of impact to the project if the risk happens on a scale of Low, Medium or
High.
Stage A major segment of a project.
Stakeholder An individual or organisation whose interests are positively or negatively
impacted by the project or who can positively or negatively impact the project.

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE 15

NOTES:

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au
16 STEM PROJECT MANAGEMENT GUIDE

RE-ENGINEERING AUSTRALIA FOUNDATION

© Re-Engineering Australia Foundation Ltd, PO Box 136 Castle Hill NSW 1765. www.rea.org.au