NCO113 Teamwork in the Modern Workplace Group-Based Assignment 01, 2026, Singapore

NCO113 Group-Based Assignment 01

This assignment is worth 30% of the final mark for NCO113 Teamwork in the Modern Workplace. This is a group-based assignment.

Situational Case

Toby Tan, GM of Excel Design Studio’s Singapore office, woke up unusually early today. He had an online client meeting scheduled at 9 am. Toby had dreaded this meeting since yesterday after receiving a call from Bob Grey, Excel’s global project director based in London, about complains from Quantum, one of Excel’s largest clients.

Quantum was a leading cloud storage service provider rapidly expanding their global data centre capacities. It had engaged Excel to be its global project management (PM) service provider to manage the design and construction of its data centres. In addition to the two projects in Singapore and Indonesia under the Singapore office, Excel was concurrently working on six other projects for Quantum in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the USA, and South Africa.

Yesterday, Bob had an hour-long call with Quantum’s global projects director, Susan Blacksmith. Susan was an ex-colleague of Bob and was instrumental in helping Excel clinch the global PM service contract with Quantum last year. She trusted Bob and Excel’s multidisciplinary engineering design capability, PM expertise, and global presence. Susan told Bob that she had been under increasing internal pressure as her local project teams had complained about Excel’s performance in Asia and other parts of the world. Four of the ongoing projects were behind schedule. The Indonesia project with a five-month delay seemed especially problematic due to recurrent mechanical and electrical (M&E) design submission delays. Indonesia and Singapore were two strategic markets designated by Quantum to spearhead their APAC business growth.

Susan had known about the problems with the Indonesian project for some time. Excel’s local project delivery capability in Indonesia was weak as they had no local office or staffing presence. Excel had been relying on its Singapore team to manage the local design consultants and contractors remotely, and the quality of the PM reporting was not up to standard. Quantum’s local project team members had complained about Excel’s team performance multiple times, but little had changed.

Susan had repeatedly urged Toby and Bob to bring in a senior Indonesian design manager to support the local design consultant. But Toby had pushed back on Susan’s demands, suggesting that finding a qualified manager in Indonesia was difficult. Further, the proposed additional design oversight was outside the initially agreed project scope of the PM service, and Excel was not paid to support the local design consultant.

Toby was concerned about the project’s profitability. Supporting the Indonesian project out of Singapore was costly. Adding a senior design manager at Excel’s expense would push the project further into the red. Toby felt that Quantum was unreasonable since they insisted on many M&E design requirements that were uncommon in Indonesia, which was partly why the project had run into design submission delays.

Earlier this week, Susan was surprised to learn about the imminent departure of Excel’s Project Manager in Indonesia through a competitor of Excel. Susan was displeased about the lack of timely communication with her team about his departure. Although Susan and her team did not think too highly about this Project Manager’s capability, he had been instrumental in driving the project since its inception. His departure would further weaken Excel’s PM capability and cause further delays to the project. Susan’s boss had pressured her to catch up on the Indonesian project quickly, or she should look for an alternative Project Manager for APAC.

Meanwhile, Bob was furious with Toby because he only heard about the imminent departure of the Indonesian Project Manager from Susan, which made him look bad. He wished Toby had informed him earlier, so he could be more prepared for his discussion with Susan yesterday. As the global project director, Bob was responsible for the overall performance of the various projects for Quantum, and Bob had to meet up with Susan monthly to report on their progress. He was aware of the multiple project delays and had been chasing the local country managers to step up their project resources to catch up on those projects. But since he had no P&L responsibilities nor the power to mobilise local resources, Bob needed the cooperation of the local management teams to drive the projects.

Internally, Bob had also been under pressure from the COO to improve their performance as Excel was bidding for additional design contracts from Quantum. The last thing he wanted to happen was to lose the global PM service contract on the existing projects. In his email to Toby yesterday, Bob was quite blunt and direct in requesting Toby to mobilise his senior PM and design team quickly to jump into the Indonesia project. And Toby was expected to propose a workable plan for Susan’s buy-in in today’s meeting.

Toby was unhappy with Bob as he thought that Bob just wanted to look good in front of Quantum and leave him with the heavy lifting. Since learning about the resignation of the Project Manager, Toby has had several conversations with the resigned Project Manager hoping to retain him, but without success. The Project Manager shared with Toby that Quantum’s local GM was tough to work with, micro-managing their work and second-guessing his recommendations. It was the main reason why the Project Manager had decided to quit.

Immediately after his call with Bob yesterday, Toby called for an urgent internal meeting with his heads of department for PM and M&E services. They had known about the resignation of the Indonesian Project Manager two weeks ago but were hoping to find a replacement quickly before disclosing it to Bob and Susan. But it was challenging to find a suitable replacement with such short notice. Now that Susan had learned about the news from their competitor, they must formulate a plan quickly to manage the situation.

Toby knew that the Indonesian project would undoubtedly be loss-making. Still, he had to bear the loss to support the Excel’s diamond client. He could only hope that his investment in Quantum would pay off when Quantum’s APAC business eventually took off.

He discussed options for internal transfer from other projects. But the Singapore office resources were extremely tight as they had just kickstarted two government projects in Singapore. Few experienced managers would be willing to relocate to Indonesia to oversee the project there as most of them were married with kids studying in Singapore. Partnering and outsourcing locally could be another option, but this would mean making a further loss from the project. Quantum would also reject this option since building up Excel’s local Indonesian presence was a commitment Excel had made to Quantum when bidding for the global PM service contract.

How would Toby, Bob and Susan manage the situation and propose a way forward?

Question 1

As a group, prepare a video of a role-play of the above meeting. In the role-play, you should demonstrate empathy, apply appropriate communication skills, and use collaboration and problem-solving skills to manage team relationships and conflict to promote effective teamwork.

Each group member must assume one character (Toby, Bob or Susan) in the role-play of the above meeting. The group may introduce an additional character appropriate for the meeting. The meeting can be a physical in-person meeting or a virtual online meeting. When preparing the plot of the role-play, the group can make appropriate assumptions about the situational case and make appropriate extensions to the situational case. The situational case provides the context going into the above meeting.

Issues the group should consider and discuss when preparing for the role-play may include, but are not limited to, the following: Who should attend the meeting? What do you hope to achieve from the meeting? What are the pain points and constraints of each participant? Given each participant’s roles and emotional states, how will they demonstrate and apply empathic communication to clarify each other’s concerns and problem-solve collaboratively? What alternatives and trade-offs might each participant offer or demand in return? How can they influence each other to reach consensus on a mutually agreeable plan to move forward in the short, medium and long term?