The Columbia Gas of Massachusetts case

The Columbia Gas of Massachusetts case – Your assignment is to identify 2 to 4 project management issues and provide a draft of solutions and the pros and cons of each.

Click assignment2examplepdf.pdf for a sample assignment (from the case used in the past in this course) to help you understand the structure.  IMPORTANT NOTE: the student in this example included a “solution ranking matrix”.  This is a nice tool to be familiar with but it is not required for the assignment. Feel free to include one for ‘extra consideration’ but it is not required.

IMPORTANT: the file above is, as it says, only meant to help you with structure.  IT IS NOT MEANT AS A SOURCE OF TEXT for your document.  Blackboard is enabled with applications that sense copied text and if detected, not only is your ability to earn points going to be severely restricted, there is significant disciplinary action possible for this activity.

See the Grading Guidance in the Individual Assignment 2 Final section below.

Case Study Final

Columbia Gas of Massachusetts Case – Project Issue Analysis Report (Total 15 Points)

CLICK BELOW FOR THE CASE

ColumbiaGasOfMass-case-6-AUG-2020r.pdf  

How this will be graded:

Structure, Organization, Ease of reading, Grammar: 3 Points

• This Assignment had a very, very specific structure.  Identify 2-4 issues.  Come up with solutions for those issues and summarize them briefly. Provide a table with Pros and Cons for each, use a weighted table to rank the solutions and select the best to implment, and wrap it all up with an overall (but brief) recommendation – what could have been done to help prevent this disaster from a PM perspective.  DID YOU FOLLOW THIS STRUCTURE?
• Did you follow the advice given in the lectures and From Your Instructor about the format?
• Did you follow rules of English grammar, spelling, and syntax?  Did you fix errors pointed out via Word’s editing capabilities (e.g. squiggly blue or red underlined text)?

Content: 10 Points

• Is it clear from reading your assignment that you read the case and understood what happened that led up to the mistakes that were made and that yielded the fires and explosions?
• Did you ‘dig deeper’?  Some people identify very technical issues – did you find the underlying reasoning – the project-level thinking that may have driven decisions to go a certain way technically?
• Did you keep your writing concise and to the point?  Part of the intent of this assignment is an exercise in expressing important ideas in as efficient a way as possible.
• Was there a logical flow from your Issue Identification to your Proposed Solutions, to your Pros and Cons and to your conclusion?
• Did you create a weighted table (see example) to compare the proposed the solutions in terms of ease of implmentation and effectiveness?
• If you did have ‘extra’ information to exhibit, did you put it in an Appendix rather than in the body of the text?  Again, the focus is on a concise, crisp presentation of your arguments.

References and resources: 2 Points

• Did you provide several relevant references that helped make your points?  Of course you can use the main Case as a reference, but did you reach out and find out more about the Columbia Gas incident from other sources?  You really should at least investigate the references pointed to at the bottom of this Case at a minimum.

Other things to consider:

• Did you add value from your own professional and/or personal experience?
• Did you make appropriate use of figures and tables in an appendix?  Don’t substitute quantity for quality here – one good, relevant, and meaningful small table is worth 100 randomly inserted graphs and charts.
• Did you really take on the viewpoint of a project leader here, and consider the way the team was motivated, the way the different stakeholders communicated (or didn’t), the culture of the different companies?
• Did you consider the different stakeholder interests?

Resources:

A recently-published article you can cite (amongst others – do NOT make this your only source): is this one:

Article – Ronald J. Willey – Process Safety Progress Journal – Insights to the Columbia Gas Explosions.pdf

Also, be sure you at least review the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports