Posted: September 13th, 2017

Construction project management

Construction project management

Order Description

Coursework details (the topic is Project management methodologies)

The purpose of the coursework is to ensure that students have developed an understanding and some relevant knowledge of the literature related to their dissertation topic, as well as assessing their ability to: conduct a literature search, summarise and critically assess journal papers and apply their literature findings to their own specific project.
There are 3 sections to the coursework plus references. Please note that marks will not be given for any content on pages exceeding the maximum number of pages stipulated for each section.
The requirements for each section are outlined below:
1. A working title, synopsis (including beneficiaries) and aim & objectives (1 page maximum,
15 marks)
Your project topic may change a little as the work develops but at this stage you should give your ‘working title’. Its purpose is to give the reader a broad indication of the topic of the coursework. The synopsis is a short summary, outlining the topic you are proposing to investigate in your dissertation and its importance and significance. It should state the nature, purpose and approach of your project and who the potential beneficiaries will be. The aim and objectives outline your intended area and focus of research and help the reader to get a more detailed picture of your proposed project as well as some indication of its structure (there are more details on aim and objectives in the ‘critical concepts’ tab in Blackboard).
The aim is ideally one sentence and no more than a couple of lines long.
The objectives (typically 3 – 5) should be in the form of a list. It is appreciated that, at the moment, the focus of the research may not be established and so this section may still be quite broad. That is fine at this stage, although clearly the research will need to become more focused later.
References should be used in this section if appropriate. The list of references should be included in the references pages at the end of the coursework and need not be included in the one page allocated to this section. The requirements for references are explained later in this document.

2. Search strategy (1 page maximum, 10 marks)
In this section you should set out the search strategy you have used to find appropriate journal papers
– this should include such aspects as key words (and why these are relevant to your topic) and the search engines used. You should include an explanation of how and why you selected the 4 core papers included in your review i.e. How did you judge their importance/relevance? It should also include an explanation of how and why you selected any other papers and additional sources of information. Other sources of information include websites, industry reports etc.

3. Brief Literature Review (3 pages maximum, 60 marks)
Your brief literature review should provide a background and critical analysis of a particular area of academic research related to your dissertation topic. It is up to you to decide which research area youwish to focus on and you may wish to discuss this with your supervisor. You may take a broad approach or a very narrowly focused one – this is up to you.1
You must select 4 core papers. Core papers must be peer reviewed journal papers. Your brief literature review should be primarily based on these 4 core papers. You must summarise the core papers demonstrating critical engagement. This will include critical comparison and evaluation. It is appreciated that it is often very difficult to ‘critique’ a refereed journal paper which has already been through a rigorous evaluation process. By critical engagement we mean that you are actively engaging with what you are reading and the way in which you report the information you gather back to the reader. Your critique may focus on the scope and limitations of particular papers or areas/approaches that you propose this area of research should focus on. You may use additional papers to help critique or provide context for your review. You may use up to 8 additional papers in this brief literature review section. This suggested limit is given in order to assist you in giving an in-depth account of the literature in the space permitted. You may also use ‘additional sources’ such as websites, industry reports, newspaper articles etc (i.e. any source that is not a peer reviewed journal paper) if you wish.

Thinking about the following topics should assist you in developing your brief literature review and critically engaging with what you are reading:
I. Area: Briefly explain the context of the paper and the topic area that it addresses
(including any terms or acronyms that you haven’t yet explained)
II. Focus: Describe the particular ‘gap’ or new issue that this paper addresses
III. Approach and methodology: Describe the approach taken to address this gap/issue (e.g. a systematic literature review of academic papers, questionnaires, interviews, observations, quantitative analysis of trends etc). Why was this approach selected? What was the scope of the approach – was it a particular company, sector, country, time period? Make it clear what is included in the research and what is not so that the reader knows what context the research applies to i.e. don’t report it as being representative of the whole field of PM when it was it only included a few interviews in a single company.
IV. Findings: What were the findings from the research and how did this relate to the
authors’ aim and objectives?
V. Conclusions: What conclusions did the authors draw from these findings? What
evidence did they use to back up their findings? Are the findings justified/valid in your view and why? Does the paper achieve its aim?
VI. Comparison: Do these conclusions agree or disagree with other work in the area? Why is this the case?
VII. Application: What does the above mean for your own area of research?

Conclusions from the literature review, implications for your own project and next steps
You should summarise the key findings from your literature review (including relevant critical comparison) and discuss how these relate to your own project. You should outline and discuss the implications from the literature review for your own project (this could include, for example: the implications for the focus of your research, your methodological approach, your conceptual/theoretical framework, the relevance of the project to industry etc). You should indicate the next steps for your own project which result from your brief literature review. Parts VI. and VII. in the list above are particularly relevant to this section.