Background

The Country Sports Council (CSC) is a statuary board under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY). Its mission is to empower people to live better through sports and help to bring sports into the lives of all citizens. It manages public sports facilities, including the National Stadium. It also works with other ministries in organising events which need its supports in sports related areas. Assume now is September 2022. CSC is participating for the bid called by the International Word Cup Committee (IWCC) for hosting the Youth World Cup 2024. One of the IWCC's requirements is the stadium must be audited with a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) System. The outcome of the bid will be announced in January 2023. A VAR System consists of many cameras installed in a stadium to monitor the movements of a ball during a match. The videos captured are streamed to a control room and monitored by three off-field referees to help the on-field referee to make ruling decisions. Although VAR System has existed for a few years, it has yet to be implemented in the National Stadium. Furthermore, with the advances in technology, new features, such as implanting sensor into the ball to detect it though 5G communication network, can be incorporated. Data include the ball's location and velocity can be instantly fed into Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to analyse the players' performances for entertainment and training purposes.

In view of the need to pass IWCC's audit and the potential benefits, the CSC's management has decided to implement a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) System and called it the VAR Project

Section 1: Defining the Project

The CSC's CEO, Mr. Mark Tay, has appointed the following staff to form a project team for the VAR Project:

1. You, a CSC's Senior Administrative Officer, is appointed as the VAR Project Manager. You have managed a few projects successfully at CSC. The management trusts that your resourcefulness and tenacity will help in this important project.

2. Mr. Fandi, a CSC's Facilities Manager. He oversees National Stadium's Maintenance & Engineering (M&E) operations. He outsources some of the labour-intensive works to local contractors.

3. Ms. Nancy Lim, a Software Engineer seconded from Gov Tech, the government technology arm, helps to develop the VAR application software and data communication system.

CSC also contracted Eagle Eye Corporation (EEC), a high-resolution camera manufacturer in Germany, to design a new camera for the project. EEC has assigned its Engineer, Mr. Joachim to this project. The CEO briefed you on the management's expectations:

The project shall start on 1 October 2022 and be commissioned by 29 December 2022 as IWCC has scheduled to audit the VAR System on the next day.

Besides meeting the IWCC's requirements, the system shall incorporate as many AI analytic features as possible.

An appropriate budget must be worked out and submitted to the Ministry of Community. The team needs to be prudent in spending, but he will approve any future increments which are justified.

Question 1

Appraise any five (5) conditions relevant to VAR Project in deciding whether to use the Topdown or Bottom-up Estimates approach for the project cost. For each condition, relate it to the VAR Project, and determine the estimates approach CSC shall adopt. Finally, recommend the cost estimates approach CSC shall adopt for this project.

Note: You must answer in this format:

For __________ (condition): *Top-down/Bottom-up Estimates approach is preferred because __________________ (reason). This *is/is not the case for VAR Project as _____________________ (justification). Hence, CSC shall adopt the *Top-down/Bottom-up Estimates approach under this condition. (Repeat the paragraphs for all five conditions), Overall CSC is recommended to adopt the _________________ Estimates approach for the VAR Project