PM 300 Week 1 Projects and Value Delivery Example

More Than a New Chiller: How a Duluth Ice Arena Project Delivers Value Beyond Its Outputs

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PM/300: Project Management Principles and Standards

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Northshore Community Arena, its budget and its figures are composites written for a model paper.

Northshore Community Arena, a composite two-sheet ice facility owned by the City of Duluth, Minnesota, hosts youth and high school hockey, a figure skating club, adult leagues and public skating from late August to April. Its refrigeration plant was installed in 1994 and uses R-22, a refrigerant whose new production ended in the United States in 2020. Each leak now has to be topped up with reclaimed gas that cost the city about $41,000 last season, and the compressor has failed twice in three years, closing one sheet for a combined 19 days. The parks department has approved a $4.6 million project to replace the plant with a low-charge ammonia chiller and a glycol loop under the existing slabs. This paper explains why the replacement is a project, where it sits in the city's system for delivering value and how the department can tell, two seasons from now, whether the money produced what it was meant to produce.

Why the Replacement Is a Project

In the current standard, a project is a time-limited effort whose result is one of a kind, whether that result is a product, a service or some other outcome (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2021). The replacement fits each part of that description. It has a planned start after the hockey season ends in April and a fixed end before ice must be made in late August. Its result is unique: no other building in the city has this slab, this mechanical room or this mix of users. Its team is also temporary. A city project manager, an engineering firm that designed the system, a mechanical contractor and an arena operations lead will work together for about 16 months and then disband.

Turner and Müller (2003) described a project as a temporary organization to which an owner assigns resources so that it can bring about a beneficial change. Their description helps here because it puts the city, not the contractor, at the center. The contractor is paid to install equipment. The city is the party that wants a change, and the project exists as a short-lived organization working on the city's behalf.

Project Versus Operations

Operations at Northshore are the ongoing work of running the building: resurfacing the ice between sessions, scheduling rentals, staffing the skate counter and maintaining equipment. That work repeats every week and has no planned end. The replacement project draws on operations, since the arena's lead technician knows how the old plant behaves and which slabs run warm, and it hands its result back to operations at commissioning. Drawing a clear line at handover matters. If the project team leaves before staff are trained on ammonia safety and the new controls, the city will own equipment that its people cannot run, and the benefits will never arrive.

Where the Project Sits in the City's Value Delivery System

The standard explains that organizations create value through a system of portfolios, programs, projects, products and operations working together (PMI, 2021). Duluth's parks department manages a capital portfolio of roughly 30 projects a year, including trail repairs, playground replacements and building systems. The arena replacement is one of the largest items in that portfolio and was ranked first this year because of failure risk. It also belongs to a smaller program of facility energy upgrades, which links it to a library lighting retrofit and a pool boiler replacement funded in part by the same state energy grant. The program lets the department compare results across buildings and share one energy consultant.

The arena itself works like a product that the city offers to residents and renters: ice time sold by the hour, public skate sessions and a home for clubs. The project improves that product without changing what it is, and the arena's daily operations turn the new plant into reliable ice every day afterward.

A new chiller that nobody can run safely is an output with no value attached to it.

From Outputs to Value

The standard distinguishes outputs, the things a project produces, from outcomes, the changes those outputs make possible, and from benefits, the gains that the sponsor and others receive (PMI, 2021). Table 1 traces each output through to a measure:

Low-charge ammonia chiller and controls: stable ice temperatures on both sheets, so no rental days are lost to plant failure; measured by unplanned closure days per season (baseline 19 in three years).

Glycol loop and new header pipes: even freezing across each slab, so fewer complaints and injuries come from soft spots; measured by ice-quality complaints logged per month.

Heat recovery to the resurfacer water tank and snowmelt pit: waste heat reused on site, so the arena burns less natural gas; measured in therms per season against the three-year average.

Trained operators and a safety plan: staff able to run and monitor ammonia safely, protecting workers and keeping the building in compliance; measured by inspection results and training records for all six technicians.

Removal of the R-22 system: no more reclaimed refrigerant purchases, about $41,000 a year in avoided cost; measured by refrigerant spending per season.

The table keeps the parks board from confusing completion with success. Every row begins with something the contractor hands over and ends with something the city can count. The last column also tells operations what to record, since the project team will be gone when most of the benefits appear.

Who Receives the Value

Value is not the same for every group. Youth and high school hockey associations gain most from reliability, since a closed sheet in January cancels games that are hard to reschedule. The figure skating club cares about ice quality, because jumps and spins are sensitive to soft or uneven surfaces. Public skaters value open sessions on weekend afternoons. City finance staff value the avoided refrigerant cost and the energy savings, which help the arena move closer to covering its operating budget from fees. Neighbors gain from a smaller refrigerant charge in a building near homes and a school. Naming each group shows the board that the project is about service as much as equipment.

Success Beyond Time, Cost and Scope

Atkinson (1999) argued that cost, time and quality, the so-called iron triangle, are at best partial tests of a project, and that benefits to the organization and to stakeholders belong in any judgment of success. Serrador and Turner (2015) later analyzed a large sample of projects and reported that finishing efficiently was clearly linked to overall success yet explained only part of it, leaving room for stakeholder satisfaction and business results. Both findings apply to Northshore. A project that finishes in August within its $4.6 million budget but leaves operators unsure of the controls, or that saves no energy because heat recovery is never switched on, would be efficient and still disappointing.

The arena should therefore set two kinds of targets. Delivery targets are a schedule that keeps the ice season intact and a budget with a 10 percent contingency. Value targets are zero unplanned closure days in the first season, a 15 percent cut in natural gas use, an end to refrigerant purchases and fewer than five ice-quality complaints a month.

Measuring Value After Handover

The project manager will write a benefits handover note naming the operations lead as owner of each measure in Table 1. The arena will report the measures to the parks board after the first and second seasons. If gas use does not fall, the engineering firm will be asked to check the heat recovery settings while the warranty is active. If closures continue, the board will learn early whether the problem is equipment, training or something the project did not address.

Conclusion

Northshore's refrigeration replacement counts as a project: it has an end date, a one-of-a-kind result and is carried out by a short-lived team on the city's behalf. Its value does not lie in the chiller itself but in reliable ice, safer operation and lower costs that operations will deliver for decades. By tracing each output to an outcome, a benefit and a measure, and by naming who gains, the parks department can judge the project by what it was meant to achieve rather than by the day the contractor leaves.

References

Atkinson, R. (1999). Project management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. International Journal of Project Management, 17(6), 337-342. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(98)00069-6

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.

Serrador, P., & Turner, R. (2015). The relationship between project success and project efficiency. Project Management Journal, 46(1), 30-39. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.21468

Turner, J. R., & Müller, R. (2003). On the nature of the project as a temporary organization. International Journal of Project Management, 21(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(02)00020-0