You are reviewing the response to an RFP issued by your company for a project that will last a year and exceed US$5 million. Three vendors have been shortlisted. The first, Nosteltec, Inc., is a relatively new company in this industry. It has assembled a team of industry experts with vast industry experience and qualifications. The second company, Xen Contractor, has been in business for 20 years. You and your company have a long and positive history working with this vendor. The third company is SonoNet LLC. It has been in business for 10 years and has a reputation for extensive expertise and superior delivery. They are also well-known for being one of the more expensive providers in the market. You have many relationships with the Xen Contractor staff, which you established during prior procurement contracts with this company. As a result, a project manager from Xen Contractor, with whom you are friendly both personally and professionally, calls you for clarification on a point

Ron is a project manager handling an alternate water-supply project. During a project performance review, he notices the following: (i) Activity A, on the critical path, is delayed by four days. (ii) Activity B, not on the critical path, is delayed by nine days. (iii) Activity C, on the critical path, is delayed by two days. (iv) Activity D, not on the critical path, is delayed by five days. In what sequence should Ron prioritize his efforts in addressing these delays?

Your company is planning to bid on a project in an application area you have never worked before. You are aware your company does not have any resources with the necessary expertise, but you are confident of ramping up the necessary skills and delivering the project successfully. Further, the buyer has not specifically asked for prior experience of completed projects of similar size and scope. Your management is pressuring you to submit a bid. What should you do?

A government agency has awarded your company a massive software project. This project has an early completion incentive, and your company has a policy of paying a bonus to the project manager if such an incentive is awarded. However, this particular government agency has a reputation for being extremely difficult to work with; there is a great deal of bureaucracy within this agency, and stonewalling and hostility toward contractors are common. The project manager will need to have excellent political skills to lead this project successfully. You have been asked to lead the project because of your expertise with this type of project. However, you have never worked within such a highly charged and political environment. What should you do?

A seller organization was executing work for a project under a contract. During the course of the project, a number of disputes arose over the scope and quality of the work. Which of the following is the preferred method of resolving these claims?

A project manager in a seller organization discovered that certain deliverables had been delivered to the buyer without undergoing proper testing. Recalling the deliverables will result in a cost overrun on the project. What should the project manager do in such a case?

Which of the following roles in a project is most likely to be involved in negotiations on procurements during the Conduct Procurements phase?

There is a heavy demand for new houses in your city's expensive neighborhood. RECON, a construction company, has employed you as a project manager to assess the benefit of building new energy-efficient houses in that neighborhood, even though it takes more expensive technology to build such houses. You have started gathering data to perform a detailed payback analysis to submit a report to your management. Since the full financial impact of building energy-efficient houses is difficult to estimate, you would like to prepare a rough costbenefit analysis and include it with the report. Which of the following describes the effort you are undertaking in this scenario?

Control charts are used to determine the stability of a process. Which of the following best describes the range of the control limits applied on a control chart?

While conducting a brainstorming session to identify stakeholders, a process manager disagrees with you on a decision you made regarding the influence and impact of each stakeholder on the project. He even makes some comments against you in front of other stakeholders. As a senior project manager, what should be your immediate response?