Project analysis for building new lubricant blending unit

The purpose of this paper is to apply the aspects of the project management of building a new lubricant blending plant. Data of the real investment is collected from the concerned departments and vendors. The project involves building a new Lubricant Manufacturing plant with a capacity of 12,000 Mt (Metric tons) per year in Ghana, West Africa, by ABC. A market research on African countries (taking into consideration the taxes and duties) was done to help ABC group decide on a strategic geographic region in Africa in order to increase its market share by enhancing its competitive advantage over other rivals. According to the analysis it is estimated that the project should start on 6th of October 2010 and shall end on 30th April 2012. The project is considered to have an enhancable time, acceptable cost, and constrained scope. MS Project 2007 is used to perform the analysis. The work breakdown structure was prepared using MS Project to list the project tasks. Cost and time for these tasks were then estimated and assigned accordingly. After that, a comprehensive analysis was carried out on the project using SWOT analysis, cost analysis, time analysis, resource analysis, risk analysis and sensitivity analysis. The risk severity matrix was also plotted and the severity of each event was assessed. According to the risk involved and their severity, a contingency plan was developed to overcome the high risk of rainy seasons. The “@Risk” software was used to evaluate and visualize the impact of varying the tasks duration and costs on the project output according to predefined variation patterns. Results from the analysis demonstrate that there is 97% probability that the project duration will be between 408 days and 456 days. It also shows that there is a probability of cost variation from USD 2.64 and USD 2.78 millions is around 90%. After performing the sensitivity analysis, it was found that the procurement of material is the most sensitive task in the WBS.