The Water Cube Project: Arup Project Management - Case Study Example

A critical evaluation of the Water Cube Project: Arup Project Management BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Executive Summary The Beijing Water Cube Project undertaken by Arup Project Management was a measurable success and could serve as a benchmark for best practice in areas of planning and development of monitoring and control systems. Arup utilised strategies which considered the socio-psychological components of human behaviour in the planning process, which underpinned development of semi-independent, less-bureaucratic hierarchies to facilitate motivation and project commitment from team members. Combined with planning that considered issues of potential change resistance, effective leadership was manifest as a planning ideology when managing people in the project. The success of the project was also underpinned by building effective control systems which included email, shared servers and interfaces that facilitated better discourse between project members. Such systems also created opportunities for routine data collection and analysis, further underpinning success in decision-making in terms of cost control and resource allocation. Planning and monitoring as strategies of Arup were the most instrumental in ensuring that the project achieved its objectives, which is supported by best practice literature in project management. This report highlights how planning and development of monitoring and control systems best served meeting budgetary and timeline expectations for closure of the Water Cube project. Introduction In preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Arup Project Management was heavily involved in the construction and design of the Water Cube Aquatic Centre, a highly successful project. What made this project so significantly triumphant was proper planning and establishment of relevant monitoring and control systems. Outside of the physical and functional features of the Water Cube, in relation to architectural design, Arup’s involvement in planning the proper team, developing effective organisational hierarchies, and ensuring that project outcomes were achieved underpinned Arup’s success in this project. This report evaluates why Arup’s planning, monitoring and control systems contributed to achieving successful project objectives. Brief Background of the Project The Water Cube Project entailed construction of a revolutionary aquatic centre in Beijing which would facilitate aquatic competitions for the Games. The centre was to be constructed to sustain a competition pool, a warm-up pool for competitors, and a relevant diving pool. For the purpose of the Games, the centre was to be constructed with 17,000 spectator seats and, after the Games, be reduced to 7,000 seats which would sustain centre activities once the Olympics were completed. This would make the Water Cube a long-term opportunity for Beijing residents and illustrate innovation in architectural design for Beijing’s populace. The project maintained a six year timeline objective to ensure its opening six months prior to the launch of the 2008 Games and a budget of $110 million which encompassed pre-Games construction activities and post-Games conversion of the seating capacity. This was a complicated and multi-disciplinary project that demanded significant planning and control system development to ensure the project achieved its ultimate goals of adhering to the established budget and being completed within the timeframe allocated to build a quality water centre. Evaluating Success in Planning One of the most fundamental success factors when planning a project is ensuring that the proper team is identified and recruited for participation in all project-related activities and functions. In the Water Cube project, project managers were assigned responsibility for facilitating all project-related activities and began to develop team-based policies and hierarchical structures which would earn respect and, hence, motivate positive team performance. The first stage in planning was project managers seeking recruitment of experienced and dedicated team members, utilising internal organisational marketing principles to gain enthusiasm and excitement prior to recruited staff engaging in project-related activities (Zou and Leslie-Carter 2010). This strategy was highly successful as literature in management and project leadership consistently reinforce that such commitment and enthusiasm is achieved by the project manager establishing and reiterating a vision in order to motivate team members to adopt this same vision (Iacob 2014; Fairholm 2009). By marketing this vision, project managers served as role models by which other organisational members moulded their attitude and opinion of the impending project, a phenomenon recognised to gain team member enthusiasm and commitment (Eisenbach, Watson and Pillai 1999). Whilst vision establishment and illustrating project enthusiasm may appear to be rather simplistic management activities when seeking recruitment and ensuring commitment prior to engaging in project-based activities, it was fundamentally important for creating a positive team environment. In the Water Cube project, change was not only a necessity, but a reality that guided team member direction and activity. Ford, Ford and D’Amelio (2008) assert that when change is present, team members often provide managers with irrational and sometimes illogical responses in an effort to prevent a new change activity from commencing. Project managers were proactive in ensuring that recruited team members were passionate and excitable about their roles in the impending project, hence establishing the socio-psychological mechanisms that would reduce such illogical change resistances throughout the entire project. For instance, the project required overlay changes and operator activity changes, which could have easily led to team member resistance. Recognising the stern importance of human behavioural components at the most critical, initial stages of the project, there is no evidence that there was any measurable staff resistance which is common in many projects (Lundy and Morin 2013). Furthermore, it was necessary for Arup project managers to establish the appropriate hierarchical structures that would facilitate team member satisfaction. In the planning process, project managers realised that many specialised talent experts necessary for facilitating a successful project did not function well in bureaucratic, hierarchical management structures with heavy emphasis on controls. Teams were structured with semi-independent systems that allowed for more flexibility and autonomy for technical specialists in the project (Zou and Leslie-Carter). A quantitative study surveying industry project management professionals indicated a direct correlation between success in projects and establishing semi-autonomous systems (Bourgault, Drouin and Hamel 2008). Research literature indicates that autonomous team structures improve team member performance levels and increase overall satisfaction as a team member (Schmid and Adams 2008). Hence, this established an environment where technical team members were not viewed as simply overhead, but as viable contributors to the project and as trusted resources in various decision-making activities. Again, project managers recognised the socio-psychological needs of technical team members and worked diligently to structure the hierarchy in a fashion that would motivate and satisfy project team members; hence leading to project success and achievement of objectives. If the project managers had not been diligent in recognising the potential liability of neglecting human behavioural aspects of team leadership, the project would not have been as successful. Team members would likely have manifest resistances when change was introduced, felt dissatisfied in their team roles, and been resentful of highly control-focused management ideologies. This project’s management team utilised successful planning strategies that focused on psycho-social aspects of teams which facilitated achievement of the project’s main objectives and goals. Evaluating Success in Monitoring and Control Monitoring and control strategies in the Water Cube project were also instrumental in contributing to the project’s ultimate success. Project managers implemented superior communications systems which allowed for routine interface between technical team members and the project management team. This allowed project managers to have detailed reports on costs associated with specific sub-project teams and be informed when certain activities might exceed budgetary allocations pre-determined by the project managers. Having instant access to such reports and communications gave project managers the ability to quickly respond to potential budget over-runs or consider new resource allocation strategies which would mitigate such problems. Baloi and Price (2003) indicate that cost-overruns are common in poorly managed projects as a result of failing to successfully evaluate HR-related and operational components. To avoid this situation, interfaces and email systems underpinned the ability for project managers to understand what real-world cost issues and resource-based issues were facing project team members and develop strategies to ensure that the initial budget was satisfied. This also eliminated the prevalence of mistakes as well as generating the foundation for rather unparalleled cost savings as opposed to other best practices in monitoring in the construction industry. Larson and Gray (2011) describe the importance of data collection and analysis required to establish effective project control systems. Realising this was a complex and multi-disciplinary project, managers established the interfaces and communications systems that would facilitate both qualitative and quantitative data collection which provided a plethora of data about all aspects of the project team’s activities, concerns and budget-related issues. In a project environment where groups were provided semi-autonomous decision-making opportunities, data collection and subsequent analysis became the framework for how cost savings were achieved and how project managers understood all aspects of technical and human-related activities that were occurring in real-time throughout the project’s life cycle. Maylor (2010) asserts the importance of monitoring and control in his 4D model which facilitates better decision-making and ensuring that closure of the project occurs as initially determined along the project’s expected timeline for completion. If the project managers had allowed for complete autonomy (rather than the semi-independent structure) it is highly unlikely that the project would not have experienced cost over-runs and experienced challenges associated with human error in decision-making that is more successfully developed using hard data. Furthermore, Andersen (2008) describes an effective control system which includes status reports and project evaluations. Project managers in the Water Cube project recognised the need for internal reporting and facilitated the design of an IT system that maintained shared servers between management and team members that would provide evidence of the status of the project in each of the stages along the project life cycle. This allowed project managers to engage in more detailed and relevant forecasting when interfacing cost management systems with team member reporting systems. After establishing the prescribed time boundaries and physical expectations of project activities, this allowed for routine project evaluations to occur and effectively address any issues which might conflict achievement of the project within its anticipated life cycle and as it relates to cost adherences. Through the establishment of routine reporting systems that allowed for instant access to important project-related data (and relevant challenges), project managers could cross-reference different databases of information and use this data to maintain control over important aspects of the project. These IT-based systems of shared servers and electronic communications systems created an environment where project managers could efficiently extract project information related to a plethora of criteria and gain important systematic insight into important operational activities and control the project throughout the entire life cycle. This not only seemed to improve expedition in decision-making, but built a data model that reduced uncertainty about how the project was progressing and build discourse between managers and functional team members which built the foundation of a knowledge-based project, thus ensuring success in achieving all pre-determined project objectives. Conclusions Whilst the Water Cube project in Beijing maintained other successes, such as in areas of stakeholder management and project governance, the most measurable and obvious successes were in areas of planning, monitoring and controlling the project throughout all stages of its life cycle. Project managers utilised best practice in regulating socio-psychological responses of important and crucial team members, facilitating an organisational hierarchy which would best motivate performance and commitment. Blended with this leadership approach to internal stakeholder management was an autonomous work environment that is known to facilitate better team functioning and team dedication. In conjunction with improving communications systems, building interfaces and shared servers that provided an over-abundance of real-time quantitative and qualitative data, project managers could more rapidly respond to problems when they occurred and develop solutions that would align the project with its initial objectives for successful completion. Monitoring and control is a significant consideration of highly successful project managers and, in the case of the Water Cube project, were monumental in achieving project success; holistically. The Water Cube project can serve as a benchmark for best practice in planning and monitoring a project with emphasis on project leadership, improving data collection and evaluation systems, and also coordination between autonomous, functional groups each tasked with different obligations and technical responsibilities along the entire project. References Andersen, E.S. (2008). Rethinking project management: an organisational perspective. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. Baloi, D., and Price, A.D. (2003). Modelling global risk factors affecting construction cost performance, International Journal of Project Management, 21(4), pp.261-269. Bourgault, M., Drouin, N. and Hamel, E. (2008). Decision-making within distributed project teams: an exploration of formalisation and autonomy as determinants of success, Project Management Journal, 39(S1), pp.97-110. Eisenbach, R., Watson, K. and Pillai, R. (1999). Transformational leadership in the context of organizational change, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(2), pp. 80-88. Fairholm, M. (2009). Leadership and organizational strategy, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 14(1), pp.26-27. Ford, J.D., Ford, L.W. and D’Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story, Academy of Management Review, 33(2), pp.362-377. Iacob, V. (2014). Risk management and evaluation and qualitative method within the projects, Ecoforum, 3(1), pp.60-67. Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F. (2011). Project management: the managerial process, 5th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lundy, V. and Morin, P. (2013). Project leadership influences resistance to change: the case of the Canadian Public Service, Project Management Journal, 44(4), pp.45-64. Maylor, H. (2010). Project Management, 4th edn. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. Schmid, B. and Adams, J. (2008). Motivation in project management: the project manager’s perspective, Project Management Journal, 39(2), pp.60-71. Zou, P.X.W. and Leslie-Carter, R. (2010). Lessons learned from managing the design of the Water Cub National Swimming Centre for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 6, pp.175-188. Read More