London Ambulance Study Case

Assignment

Prepared for: Project Planning and Control        

Prepared by group L: Luiz Mauricio Rocha Cabral - 10130571

                      Juliano Marques Rezende - 10130274

                      Rodrigo Teixeira Aguiar - 10130667

                      Renata Tiburcio de Queiroz - 10130602

Date: 20/11/2014        

        

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Table of contents

1. Executive Summary        

2. Project Background        

3. Factors that contributed to failure        

4. Integration        

5. Project Time Management        

6. Project Cost Management        

7. Quality        

8. Human Resources        

9. Communication        

10. Project Stakeholder Management        

11. Risk Management        

12. Recommendation        

13. Bibliography & References        

1. Executive Summary

The London Ambulance Service is one of the largest in the world. By the early 1990´s there was a project to convert the old manual system to a computer-aided despatch system. It aimed the integration of the system, from the moment of connection until the time the ambulance arrives at the scene requested But the project failed due to many management problems.

This article is going to discuss about the many management problems of the London Ambulance Service computer-aided despatch system using the analysis of PMBOK as reference. Some of the problems found in the project  are:

-Litlle training and the accumulation of function show a bad human resourses management.

-Imprecision and failure in equip communication.

-Bad time management.

2. Project Background

In 1930 was founded one of the largest ambulance system. Covering an area of 600 square kilometers LAS serves about 6.8 million people in central London . With more than 750 ambulances and  2700 employees The London Ambulance Service receives about 2,000 calls per day including 80 hospitals in attendance.

During the period between 1974-1990 when the LAS was managed by the South Thames Regional Health Authority( STRHA) on behalf of the National Health Service began a project to implement a new system.

In the old manual system there used to happen many human errors. Loss of roles and imprecise information about the locations of the accidents were some mistakes that happened. The Operational Research Consultancy ( ORCON) determined that the process could not exceed 3 minutes and the ambulance arrive at the requested location in 14 minutes.The pressure to adequate the LAS to the ORCON and the mistakes quoted where the factor that lead to the introduction of new systems. In the early 1980´s LAS tried to introduce a new computer-aided despatch system, but the project was abandoned because of the failure in tests.

In 1990 when a new management came to the LAS, they tried to create a fully automated system. The aim was that the call taker would receive the call and despatch the most suitable ambulance resource with the locations and conditions of the situation. This new automatic system would fail completly within 2 weeks of execution.

3. Factors that contributed to failure

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4. Integration

          

In the project management context, integration includes characteristics of unification, consolidation, communication, and integrative actions that are crucial to controlled project execution through completion, successfully managing stakeholder expectations, and meeting requirements.(Project Management Institute, 2013).

           The project manager has the task of ensuring that all sectors work together. It is an ongoing task, day-to-day, joining the project plans, coordinating activities and resources to ensure the project follow perfectly from start to finish. In London Ambulance Service project lacked a qualified manager who was able to coordinate and collect team satisfactory results.

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Figure - Integration management

          

In some areas, such as communications and quality, the project management community should develop better tools and techniques to support the project manager's efforts. in other areas, such risk and cost, more emphasis should be placed on the training of functional managers in the use of relevant tools and techniques. In other words, the functional manager should get intensive but adapted project management training. the agent for such a fundamental change in the organizational culture can`t be the project manager alone. It is essential that it be sponsored at a high level of the organization and even treated as a project by itself.(Globerson and Zwikael, 2002).

5. Project Time Management

Time management is an importante part of project. Project Management Institute (2013) gives the following defition: “Project Time Management includes the proccesses required to manage the timely completion of the project.”.

    After reading Hougham (1996), it is remarkable lack of planning time required for implemantation of a large project. The LAS needed to achieve a rapid development. The ambulance service were under pressure since standards of performance were established.  The target programme dictated by their senior management is shown in Table 1.

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Table 1: Milestone competition dates

This short period of time did not allow the team to stand back and make changes that would correct the flaws of the project. Therefore, it was impossible to plan, policy and implement the programme in the best possible way.

According to Larson and Gray (2010) managers minimize the effort to follow trough on estimation project time. For them, this is a huge mistake. They explain that there are important reason to estimate the real time of a project. Estimates are needed to support good ideas, to schedule work, to determine how long the project should take and its costs. Therefore, LAS could have made a planning time compatible with the magnitude of the project in order to keep the projec under control all the time.