You have a junior team and need to manage a project that is forecast to be unprofitable and that is not meeting the client's expectations

[The question in full was...]

"The project that you are working on is with a junior team with little experience. Suddenly, (for whatever reason) the project manager is unable to continue managing the project and you are the most senior person on the project team. You have to manage the project that is forecast to be unprofitable and not meeting the client's expectations. What would you do to turnaround the project to ensure that it is successful and profitable for KPMG?"

And the answer was:

I said that I would firstly have a team building exercise so that the project team would go through the phases of getting to develop relationships in the project team. I would then delegate the tasks to individuals to assign responsibility to each other and monitor the progress that the individuals were making. This ensures that the project was functioning well internally and that the team would be preforming at high standards.

I would then have regular dialogue with the client and with the directors of the company. This would allow them to monitor the progress of the project team and ensure that the deliverables were being met to a high standard. It would also allow the client to be responsive any changes that would need to be made to the project and the workstreams within the project. These could then be modified to allow more customisation to the functions being delivered.

Additional information

I was unsuccessful on this occasion. However, I did land a role with RBS as a Project Accountant.