This assignment is a ‘consultancy opportunity’ in which a family business asks you to make a proposal for improved project management within an antique furniture restoration business. The business is a family-owned company employing 26 staff and was founded by an individual who has suffered a mild heart attack and who now needs a period of recuperation over three months. The family recognise that the individual is a strong-minded personality who ran the company as a ‘sole trader’ business and that the business will suffer in his absence. You are asked to make a written proposal to the family about (i) how you would approach the brief, (ii) what you would do as an interim manager over the three month period and (iii) how you put in place project management strategies to ensure that the risk of excessive reliance on the founder in the future could be minimised.
Please note that we recognise that no student is likely to have had experience of running an antique furniture restoration business – this is precisely why we have chosen this example. We are not expecting you to do extensive research about this business sector although it might be useful to look at one or two websites for similar businesses to simply get a ‘feel’ for what they do. Rather, the main aim of the exercise is to get you to think about concepts that would apply to any kind of business where risk exists due to an excessive reliance on the founder such that the business cannot function well when they are absent for an extended period. The assignment should be structured as a six-page document with two pages allocated to each of the three components – each component carries equal marks as shown in the table below. There is no need for you to include anything about what you would charge for this assignment although you should assume that you will work full-time over the three-month period after which the founder is expected to return to work.
