Full Description

• Get step-by-step action plans to help you improve every aspect of project management— from marketing to project closeout
• Learn how to assess your project management skills, identify obstacles that your A/E firm needs to overcome, and how to measure improvement
• Improve the quality, productivity, and profitability of your firm's project teams
• Learn how to build your project managers' non-technical skills, such as selling and making client presentations
• Sharpen your negotiation skills and close more deals
• Get surefire ways to ensure client satisfaction and project success with clear and consistent communication

For professional service firms, projects are the only product, the only profit center. A/E firm profits are made— or lost— at the project level. But if you want to achieve the highest possible level of project management performance, where do you begin?

Project management is a growth industry, with dozens of books and hundreds of courses available across all disciplines. ZweigWhite’s A/E Project Management Fitness Plan is a single-volume book designed exclusively for architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting professionals. Anyone with a project role— A/E firm leaders, principals-in-charge, project managers, project team members, and subconsultants— can improve their project management fitness with this comprehensive desktop guide.

Unlike theory-laden textbooks on project management, ZweigWhite’s A/E Project Management Fitness Plan provides you with proven strategies that you can put to use in your A/E firm today. The step-by-step action plans contained in this guide will tell you exactly what you need to do to improve the quality, productivity, and profitability of your A/E project managers and project teams.

ZweigWhite’s A/E Project Management Fitness Plan begins with a thorough self-assessment to provide you with an understanding of your A/E firm’s current project management fitness level. Then, each chapter provides practical step-by-step action plans to strengthen and tone each area of your firm’s project management— from marketing to close-out— to help you deliver projects on time and on budget.

With ZweigWhite’s A/E Project Management Fitness Plan, you’ll im-prove every aspect of your A/E firm’s project management. Learn about managing and motivating project staff and how to build your project managers’ non-technical skills, such as selling and making client presentations. You’ll also get tips for sharpening negotiation skills, monitoring and improving client satisfaction, and more.

Achieve the highest level of performance possible from your A/E firm’s project managers and project teams. Order your copy of ZweigWhite’s A/E Project Management Fitness Plan today!

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1: What is Your Current Project Management Fitness? A Self-Assessment Test for A/E firms

• Cultivating outstanding project managers
• Improving principal-in-charge performance
• Choosing the right project management tools
• Clarifying financial roles and responsibilities
• Improving public relations

• Improving quality through better firm management
• Improving project quality

• Improving the go/no-go decision process
• Building project manager marketing skills
• Improving your project prospecting skills
• Getting the most from preproposal meetings
• Improving the content of proposals
• Improving individual project proposals
• Creating winning presentations

• Honing your negotiation skills
• Managing the negotiation process

Chapter 6: Improving Your Contracts

Chapter 7: Managing Project Risk

Chapter 8: Improving Project Initiation

• Improving internal communications
• Improving communications with project team partners
• Improving communications with clients

• Making the transition from manager to leader
• Improving your project leadership skills

• Developing work plans
• Managing project scope
• Managing the project schedule
• Improving productivity and efficiency

• Building accurate project budgets
• Managing project budgets
• Monitoring and controlling finances
• Making small projects profitable

Chapter 13: Improving Project Close-Out

Chapter 14: Check-up: Reassessing Your Project Management Fitness

Appendix A: The Complete A/E Project Management Fitness Plan

Appendix B: Basic Elements of Client Contracts

Appendix C: Sample Project Manager Job Descriptions

Appendix D: Chapter Test Keys

Appendix E: Additional Sources of Information