Project Romulus – Project Evaluation Plan and Project briefing

Purpose

As tragedy incident occurred in MSC Napoli on 18 Jan 2007, management has

decided to launch a new project, Project Romulus to ensure we all learn from the
incident. Under Project Romulus, a new Code of Practice (CoP) will be introduced
accordance with recommendations of UK Maine Accident Investigation Branch
(MAIB) and Industry Guidance by International Chamber of Shipping (ICS). To
facilitate colleagues understanding the content of the Code of Practice, a whole-
enterprise learning support package will also be introduced. This briefing is going the
evaluate Project Romulus’s potential leadership style and outcome along with outline
of Project Evaluation Plan (PEP).

Project Goal

“To ensure all employees are learned from MSC Napoli incident and increase safety
awareness. Through the enterprise learning support package, make all employees
fully understanding and able to implement the recommendation in UK MAIB report
and ICS Code of Practice so that safety standard could be enhanced.”

Project Briefing

Safety is our core value, also our utmost priority of our business. After the MSC
Napoli incident, management team is decided to adopt new Code of Practice to our
fleet in order to enhance safety standard. A whole-enterprise learning support
package would also be available to all colleagues to study the content of new Code of
Practice. The whole-enterprise learning support package is developed according the
following 7 principles (Sharp, 2018):
 Connect learners to
Empower others Decentralize
valuable resources

Channel curiosity
rather than command Invest in adaptivity, Shift people's
and control the not efficiency perspectives
learning process

Dig the data

To facilitate the learning of the employees, the whole-enterprise learning support

package contains the following elements:

- Computer-based Training (CBT)

An application includes all the necessary knowledge of the MSC Napoli incident,
MAIB report and ICS Code of Practice’s recommendation, including stability
calculation, importance of speed with regard to wave loading and other relevant
knowledge. Multi-choices quiz will be included to access employees’
understanding of the knowledge.

- Web-based Discussion Forum

Enable employees to share their views and asking questions in the discussion
forum. Management is responsible to review and answer the question and
concern in the forum. Good suggestion to improve operation and safety of the
company will be adopted.

- Seminar
Experience masters were invited to host a seminar to share knowledge regarding
Code of Practice to employees. Various case study also will be used as learning
material to allow employees better understanding the requirement in the Code
of Practice. Employees can apply what they learn to the case during the
discussion and reflection.
Leadership style

Project leadership is the act of leading a team towards the successful completion of a
project (Westland, 2016). Implementing a project is not a one-man job, instead, it is
a collective effort and contribution of a team. However, different leaders have his
different approaches to achieves their goal. Therefore, appropriate leadership style
for implementing Project Romulus serves as essential part for successful of project.

Unlike the traditional learning method, the whole-enterprise learning support

package contains a comprehensive learning material and innovative learning
methods. Appropriate leadership style need to be applied to motivate colleagues
actively engage in the learning and the awareness of safety. There are many types of
leadership style and following is going the evaluate 2 types of style, Transactional and
Transformational.

Transactional Leadership Style

Transactional Leadership, also known as managerial leadership, is a style of

leadership in which the leader promotes compliance of his followers through both
rewards and punishments (James & Ogbonna, 2003). Transactional leaders tend to
use reward and punishments as management tools to ensure followers’ compliance.
Therefore, transactional leadership is under concept of “exchange”. Worker with
positive performance will be rewarded while corrective action will be taken to
improve performance to poor performer. Transactional leadership are focused on
processes of the work rather than forward-thinking ideas. In order words,

Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership is a leadership style in which leaders inspire followers to

transcend their own self-interests for the benefit of the organization (Robbins &
Coulter, 2007). Inspiration is the key idea of the Transformational Leadership. Leader
with Transformational Leadership style is concerned about the development need of
followers. Warrilow (2009) suggested that Transformational Leadership is all about
leadership that creates positive change in the followers whereby they take care of
each other’s interests and act in the interests of the group as a whole. He identified
four components of Transformational Leadership:
1. Charisma or idealized influence
2. Inspirational motivation
3. Intellectual stimulation
4. Personal and individual attention

Comparison between Transactional Leadership and Transformational Leadership

The following table summarize the different between Transactional Leadership and
Transformational Leadership:

Table 1: Comparison between Transactional Leadership and Transformational

Leadership (James & Ogbonna, 2003)

Transactional Transformational
Leadership is responsive Leadership proactive
Works within the organizational culture Works to change the organizational
culture by implementing new ideas
Employees achieve objectives through Employees achieve objectives through
rewards and punishments set by leader higher ideals and moral values
Motivates followers by appealing to Motivates followers by encouraging
their own self interest them to put group interests first
Management-by-exception: maintain Individualized consideration: Each
the status quo; stress correct actions to behavior is directed to each individual
improve performance. to express consideration and support.
Intellectual stimulation: Promote
creative and innovative ideas to solve
problems.

Leadership style evaluation

In fact, either Transactional or Transformational has its own unique feature which is
beneficial for implementing Project Romulus. Choosing a correct leadership is
essential to motivate employees to achieve the project goal. Shipping is a very
unique industry. When the ship sailing at sea, the safety of the ship totally depends
on the crew onboard, no one else. Therefore, the crew self-awareness of safety and
self-motivation of complying relevant guideline are important. In this regard, the
following is going to analyze which leadership style would be more suitable to Project
Romulus in following 3 perspectives or challenges.
Team collaboration
Team collaboration can refer to communication and project management approach
that emphasize teamwork, innovative thinking and equal participation to achieve
objectives (Rouse, 2019). In the Project Romulus, it’s not only targeting small group
of employees but whole company involvement. Encouraging employees to put
company interest first is essential for the success of the project. In this regard,
transformational leadership style is more preferable to Project Romulus as it focus on
group interest more than individual interest.

Meeting goals and objectives

The primary goal of Project Romulus is to make all employees fully understanding
and able to implement the recommendation in UK MAIB report and ICS Code of
Practice through learning package. Appropriate leadership style should be applied to
the project so that employees can be encouraged to achieve project goal together.
As outcome of the project, safety is not physical reward which cannot be measured,
transactional leadership style may not be suitable to Project Romulus. Under
transactional leadership, Employees achieve objectives through rewards and
punishments set by leader which cannot be effectively motivated under Project
Romulus. Instead, transformational leadership allows employees to achieve
objectives through higher ideals and moral values.

Optimizing team performance

Safety of the vessel is relied on collective effort of the ship crew as well as office staff.
Enterprise support learning package is only a mean to enhance knowledge and safety
awareness of colleagues. How to put the theory into practice so that overall safety
standard could be increased is the most critical issue of the whole project.
Transformational leader focus on “inspiration” and take care each other interest.
With transformational leadership, team members inspired by leader to achieve same
goal through collective team effort.

To conclude, transformational leadership style is more suitable for the Project

Romulus than transactional leadership.
Project Evaluation

It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of the learning because knowledge

employee learned is non-measurable. However, we do have some objective data can
be obtained to measure training outcome. In addition, as part of the project goal is
to reduce the incident rate, some of the fleet statistics also can be used to measure
effectiveness of the project. The following KPIs (Key Performance Index) will be used
to measure the effectiveness of the Project Romulus:

Table 2: KPI for Project Romulus

Perspective KPI for evaluation Target

Training % of employee trained 98%
Knowledge learned (Quiz) Average 70%
Employee suggestion implemented 80%
Training Hours 50 hours
Employee satisfaction regarding the learning 90%
Safety No. of incident 0
Off-hire time due to incident 0
PSC remarks 0
No. of near miss reported 10 per month

Data Collection and process

In accordance with the KPIs, relevant data need to be collected and processed and
compare against the KPI in order to review the effectiveness of the project.

Table 3: Data Collection Method

KPI for evaluation Data Collection Method

% of employee trained Training record from HR
Employee suggestion implemented Record from Admin
Training Hours Training record from HR
Employee satisfaction regarding the learning Questionnaire
No. of incident Fleet statistics
Off-hire time Fleet statistics
PSC remarks Fleet statistics and PSC website
 No. of near miss reported Fleet statistics
The evaluation will be conducted on half-yearly interval. All the data collected would
be compared against the KPI to evaluate the effectiveness of Project Romulus. If the
result of the evaluation could not meet the target KPI, comprehensive review will be
initiated to identify the area of improvement.

Conclusion
Safety is always our utmost concern which must not be comprised. Project Romulus
gives us an opportunity enhance our knowledge regarding safety. However, how to
make employees put the theory into practice rely on appropriated leadership style to
motivate the colleagues. We believe that adopting transactional leadership style
could effectively motivate colleagues to put safety as their interest.
Reference List

James, O. & Ogbonna, I. G., 2003. Transformational vs. Transactional Leadership

Theories: Evidence in Literature. International Review of Management and Business
Research, Jun, pp. 355-361.

Robbins, P. S. & Coulter, M., 2007. Management. 9th ed Author: London: Prentice-
Hall.

Rouse, M., 2019. Team Collaboration. [Online]

Available at: https://searchhrsoftware.techtarget.com/definition/team-collaboration
[Access: 11 Nov 2019].

Sharp, E., 2018. 7 Principles of Enterprise Learning. [Online]

Available at: https://trainingindustry.com/magazine/mar-apr-2018/7-principles-of-
enterprise-learning/
[Access: 17 Oct 2019].

Warrilow, S., 2009. Transformational Leadership Theory - The 4 Key Components in

Leading Change & Managing Change. [Online]
Available at: https://ezinearticles.com/?Transformational-Leadership-Theory---The-4-
Key-Components-in-Leading-Change-and-Managing-Change&id=2755277
[Access: 21 October 2019].

Westland, J., 2016. What is Project Leadership. [Online]

Available at: https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/what-is-project-leadership
[Access: 17 Oct 2019].