Starwood

Starwood: Project Management The recent achievement of the prestigious AAA 5 Diamond Award for the resort triggered a review of the resort’s spa and golf programs to see what needed to be done to bring them up to the same, 5 Diamond level. The result of that was a corporate commitment of $38 million to renovate both the spa and golf course. “Clear and accurate definition of a project is one of the most important actions you can take to ensure the project's success. Defining a project is a process of selection and reduction of the ideas and perspectives of those involved into a set of clearly defined objectives, key success criteria and evaluated risks.” (Project Definition). Must take into account, the project definition should include a statement of the business need that the project seeks to address and the description of the product, service or deliverable business objectives. (Project Definition). We saw in the video that the company operations were instrumental in defining the scope of the project and marshaling the resources to prepare the plan. The Operations included the senior management at Starwood’s, the Corporate Design and Construction group. Also, they did the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The Capital Committee needed to be involved early on to determine the $38 million price tag. “Project planning is a discipline for stating how to complete a project within a certain timeframe, usually with defined stages, and with designated resources. One view of project planning divides the activity into: setting objectives, identifying deliverables, planning the schedule, making supporting plans.” (Project planning, 2002). In Starwood, the Company operations team continued its involvement by developing the architectural and engineering plans and the work breakdown structure and that show all the options of the project path. Accounting has prepared its forecast for the costs of this project. Finance has the creation of alternative financing plans such as the spa/golf membership concept. In monitoring and controlling this project, the role of accounting will be to track costs against budgets. The role of marketing will be successful launch of promotional campaigns to market the project. Significant growth in the Day Spa category, in Phoenix, leads that any new facility will need to offer more services than the existing day spas provide. The salient intangible factors associated with selecting one of the three options for the spa are Provide the best for the international customers to be the best in all over the world, and location of the spa, which supports the ‚Augrandiose, luxury‚Au spa experience. Financial projections for many scenarios were prepared, so that the Capital Committee had enough detail to approve funding for the chosen project. They did not use the parking garage location since having scenic vistas from the spa carried high value. Having a spectacular mountainside facility, would garner international attention for The Phoenician and Starwood, and would place the spa among the world. so, the option to carve out the Spa in a portion of the hillside was chosen. Groundbreaking was planned for May 2006, with project completion in November 2007. The Phoenician management can make a decision on the spa quickly, depending on the decisions of the Accounting and Finance Committees, also depending on the planning of the project. The time spent in planning a construction project can exceed the actual time spent in physically building the structure. While construction of the project may take only one year, the planning a construction project may take several years. References Krajewski, L. J., Ritzman, L. P., & Malhotra, M. K. (2010). Operations management. (9th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Project Definition. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.spottydog.u-net.com/guides/define/frameset.html Project planning. (2002). Retrieved from http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/project-planning