Project management KPIs
1B, 2C, 3D, 4A, 5H, 6E, 7F, 8G
Listening activity 1
1. The "Big Dig" highway project in Boston, the Montreal Olympics stadium, the Brandenburg
Airport in Berlin, and a high-speed railway in Britain.
2. Megaprojects.
3. Only 8.5% of projects meet their initial estimates on cost and time.
4. "Strategic misrepresentation" is providing unrealistically low budgets to start projects, because
accurate budgets would make project development difficult.
5. People in Pixar develop and test films in detail before production, which helps reduce unexpected
events.
6. Because standard components can be assembled into arrays and turbines.
7. Modular reactors for nuclear energy and the use of existing facilities for hosting events like the
Olympic Games in Paris. Standardised designs and manufacturing processes for everything from
train tracks to viaducts helped China build the world’s largest high-speed rail network in less than
a decade at the start of this century.
8. Rigorous planning and standardisation can help mitigate risks and avoid problems in their
projects.
Listening activity 2
1. specify
2. sequence
3. arrows
4. boxes
5. estimate
6. identify
7. longest
8. completion
9. progress
10. calculate
11. vary
12. affecting
13. optimised
14. logic
15. duration
16. representation
17. track
Video activity
1. To be able to focus their full attention on it.
2. Some like to have more variety. / They feel they perform better when there are multiple projects
going on at the same time.
3. It forces us to stretch and grow.
4. Recent findings suggest that deep focus on one task can have significantly better outcomes than
multitasking which people are actually bad at, despite common myths.
5. Time and focus.
6. They should watch for warning signs of high stress levels in themselves.