The Failure of Some of the Biggest Projects Undertaken by the UK Government - Essay Example

Introduction This is a case study with the main aim of recognizing various factors that led to the failure of some of the biggest projects undertakenby the UK government till date. We have recognized three major projects, namely, the Millennium Dome Project, The London Ambulance Project and the Terminal 5 Heathrow Project. While recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of these projects and also assessing the strategies that followed, we will also compare the above mentioned three projects in terms of their successes and failure. While we will go about evaluating the above mentioned course, we will also try and make a few suggestions that, according to us, might have rendered to a better strategic move and hence, less of a fiasco. Every case study has a conclusion to make. Ours happens to outline the wrong moves and learning from the mistakes made by those involved in the strategic decision making of the above mentioned three projects. While we will be discussing the chosen three projects in details later, let us get a brief outline of the same to assist the uninitiated. The Millennium Dome Project was termed as one of the biggest and most exceptional of the projects undertaken so far. Many politicians amongst the country took personal strides to make the project work. Millennium dome was built to serve as a memento for the third millennium, and hence the name, while its purpose was to exhibit art. Our next project, the London Ambulance Project, is one that helps many in their course of lives. It has one of the largest fleet of medical services, with 24x7 help, offering mobile medical services. It is one of the oldest establishments and still runs to its utmost capacity. The Terminal 5 project in Heathrow airport is also one of the oldest projects, taking over 18 years to take form, shape and finally life. In this project, a new terminal – terminal 5 – was developed to enable smooth processing and flight availability by the BAA officials. Now that we are aware of what each project is about, let us move on to the detailed sections of how these projects formed shape and what was their course in the times to come. Understanding the Projects and their downfalls Taking one project at a time, we will now review the selected projects. The first of all, we will be assessing the projects in totality, while the downfalls of each will follow later on. Projects As They Were a) The Millennium Dome – We have already explained what the main purpose of Millennium Dome was. Let us now take a look at the specifications of this project. The Millennium Dome was originally conceived by the John Majors Conservative government, mainly to celebrate the third millennium. However, the scope for the conception was small in nature. When the new government entered, lead by Tony Blair, in 1997, the project assumed a new and larger than life scope. The project was allotted £399 million, while the size for the whole project too increased by manifolds. The design and architecture was given to the famous architect, Richard Rogers. Tony Blair claimed in front of the world that the Millennium Dome would prove to be “a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity.” The project was proposed to attract 12 million visitors to the Millennium Dome in a year, covering for most of its costs. It was claimed that the Millennium Dome is one of the few attractions that could be seen from the moon too. However, from the very beginning of the project, many claimed and predicted that the calculations as understood and presented by the developmental authorities and the government were being over indulgent and over optimistic, while the project could head for doom (Ian Sinclair, 1999). While some of the claims were proven true, the project did fall into the financial trap, what with an extra funding had to be arranged for the completion of the project, with the total costs coming up to £789 million (National Audit Office, 2002). While the finances were running astray for the Millennium Dome, it did manage to get the top most position amongst the most popular tourist attractions in UK. In addition, the building won the Mac Robert Award, while also making waves amongst the Royal Academy of Engineering (ArchInform, 2008). b) Terminal 5, Heathrow – It took nineteen years, an expenditure of £4.3 billion and a work force of 60,000 to build the terminal 5 at the Heathrow airport in London (Miles Sackville, 2008). Built in a conjunction between the British Airways and the BAA, Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of airport operator BAA excitedly claimed that building of Terminal 5 “will breathe new life into Heathrow, allowing us to continue our transformation of the rest of the airport, and will put Heathrow and BAA back where they belong - at the leading edge of global travel” (BAA Press Release, 2008). The stunning architecture is given by the famous, 2006 Stirling Prize winner Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. It was estimated that the annual traffic of passengers would reach the 30 million mark. A project aimed at making the travel to British via air a less cumbersome process, what with the long waiting hours, the Terminal 5 was one of the boldest steps by the airport authorities. Willie Walsh, British Airways chief executive, cited at the time of the inauguration of the Terminal 5, “We have exclusive use of the terminal and that will allow us to greatly improve the levels of service we can offer. The customer experience at Terminal 5 will rival, if not exceed, that at any airport in the world (BAA Press Release, 2008).” Terminal 5 enjoys the position of being UKs largest free standing building, while also showcasing 60 aircraft stands, a hotel with 600 plus rooms and a multi storey car park. Apart from this, some other facts about the Terminal 5 happen to be (BAA Press Release, 2008): Baggages reclaim belts: 11 Length of bag conveyers: 17 km No of bags processed per hour: 12,000 Number of seats: 9,140 (excluding catering outlets) Number of toilet blocks: 112 Number of toilets: 800 Number of retail facilities: 112 c) The London Ambulance – The London Ambulance Service or LAS is one of the free at the point of contact service that provides medical and ambulance services on call. Showcasing more than 400 vehicles or ambulances in its fleet, it has helped combat many an emergencies coming its way. Established in concept in 1897, the London Ambulance has been working under the National Health Service (NHS) as NHS Trust since 1996 (londonambulance.nhs.uk). Its working module usually consisted of taking emergency or distress calls from the patients or friends of the patients and allocating the patient to a mobile van or ambulance near the patinet’s area. While the initial years saw the above mentioned task procedures ridden by hand or manually, the later, technologically more advanced years and the rising number of calls, made it evident that the LAS had to modernize too. Hence, started a quest for a reliable program that could deal with all the above mentioned tasks in an automated manner. The whole process turned out to be a success, though now without the minor hiccups it caused, while the furor amongst the media fraternity heightened. We will read more about this in the text that follows. Determining The Downfalls And The Reasons In The Above Projects While we have assessed some of the major aspects of the projects mentioned above, let us now come to the task of finding out what the downfalls were and what were the reasons that led to these downfalls amongst these much hyped projects. As mentioned earlier, Millennium Dome had out-marked the budget that was originally set for it. While the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair went to great heights to get an additional sum allotted to the project by taking funds from the Millennium Commission and the National Lottery Body. As the project costs kept mounting, the discontent amongst the people regarding the project became obvious. They were not willing to pay via the national lottery fund for the project (Thomas K. Grose, 2007). However, nothing stopped the project from reaching the finishing point. The project did finish and in the due time allotted to it. It opened on 31 December, 1999 and was publicly opened for the visitors from 1 January, 2000, welcoming the new millennium as it came. However, this is where the Dome ran into problems. It had estimated over 12 million visitors to visit the tourist attraction and hence, making up for the funds. However, despite it being one of the most popular tourist attractions of the year, it grossed only 6.5 million, when it came to the number of visitors visiting its grounds. Now again, out of these 6.5 million visitors, only 4.5 million were who actually paid for the tickets (National Audit Office, 2002). The above mentioned pointers led to the New Millennium Experience Company face heavy losses and thus ran into financial trouble. The whole project was decided as a failure, while attempts to remodel the building into an entertainment park also failed. The exhibits in the Millennium Dome were all auctioned, while the exhibiting building was demolished. Now only the Dome remained. The Dome was closed only after a year of its opening and remained non-functional for over 6 years. Above that, it was claimed that the maintenance of the Dome in its non-functional state had over £21 million to the company in one year itself (guardian.co.uk, 2001). It was then decided that the Dome would be leased for 999 years to a company called Meridian Delta Limited (MDL), which intended to convert the Dome complex into an indoor sport stadium. The building was then named, O2, after the telecom giant O2, who paid for the naming rights. Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, rightly cited in the press release, “The main cause of these difficulties is the failure to achieve the visitor numbers and income required. The targets were highly ambitious and inherently risky leading to a significant degree of financial exposure on the project. In addition, the task of managing the project has been complicated by the complex organizational arrangements put in place from the outset, and by the failure to establish sufficiently robust financial management.” Now moving onto the Terminal 5 fiasco. As we had discussed earlier, Terminal 5 was one of the biggest airport projects to be undertaken. However, when it was ready, after 19 year long wait of planning and execution, it ran into trouble. On the day of the opening, while its founding members claimed smooth operating, the opening turned out to be a complete fiasco. The baggage of the fliers were lost, the system operations failed, the staff was not sufficiently briefed, while the waiting periods for the planes were long. Moreover, people were not given sufficient assurance and handling, when they tried to contact BAA and BA officials. Many media reports claimed the Terminal 5 opening to be “a national embarrassment,” while others claimed that the Terminal 5 should have delayed the opening and checked for all the programming before making it public (The Press Association, 2008; Times of India, 2008). Some other claimed that the fiasco at T5 will affect the tourism industry in UK, while more fliers would opt for another route, in order to avoid the slow pace at the London Airport. Un-prepared staff, unchecked and un-tried system programming and lack of an alternative plan were the major factors that led to the T5 fiasco. While the T5 is better functional now, the horror of the opening days still resides in the heart of many. Now considering the downfalls of the London Ambulance or LAS. The LAS has been effectively functioning since ages. However, the problem arose when the LAS decided to shift from manually handled system to a programmed assistance. At first, Las had assigned the task of developing the required program to a company called IAL (a BT subsidiary), where the budget was set at £7.5 million. However, LAS soon scrapped the deal and came up with another plan. It announced another project open for bidding, meant for building the same program. However, the budget set this time was a measly £1.1 million. It was reported that when the bidding was opened, it received several bids; however, there was only one company that was ready to work within the time frame allotted and the amount given. Further, in accordance to the RHA Financial Standing rules, the bid is given to the minimum tender amount. Hence, the bid was won by the only one contender in league, a software house called Systems Options. The company had no experience in building a program for ambulances, while the LAS also did nothing to investigate the company credentials. It was reported in a report that a contending company had submitted a letter to LAS explaining that the time frame allotted was too less and might bring up faulty programming. The LAS gave no heed and had to face the repercussions. Once the program was ready, no one ran a check for it. The direct installation caused problems, when the system could not handle the huge rush of calls. Problems started rising – the vehicles could not be correctly traced, the calls not recorded in time, delay in processing, wrong vehicles allotted for a problem, allocating vehicles became irregular and incorrect, what with wrong or less vehicle tracing. The calls had to wait for long, which increased the call waiting load on the system, slowing down the system in turn. The whole process turned into a fiasco, with faults, miscalculations and wrong allocations (lond.ambulance.freeuk, 1992). The system further kept crashing, adding on to the patients and the ambulance operators’ woes. The media reported that almost 30 people died because of the system failure and program mal-functioning. The main reasons that came to front after an enquiry was set in were (Paul Beynon-Davies, 1995): Lack of trained officials Lack of proper management of the program Over-ambitious time frame Lack of investigation about the chosen company (system options) when choosing the bid Compromising price over quality Lack of proper briefing over the project Untested program being used without backup plans Learning from the mistakes From above, we come to a conclusion that in all the three projects, one common causative that led to the failure or temporary un co-ordinance was the over optimistic or inadequate planning. While planning does have a major impact, other factor was the lack of back up plans, in case of any problems arising unnoticed. In all three, we will notice how the problems that rose were dealt in an extremely unprofessional way. All three projects had authorities unprepared in case of a failure or unforeseen circumstance. While financial issues can always be taken care of, over ambitious planning and lack of a back-up plan happen to be the major causes of the complete or partial failure of the three projects. Thus, from the above discussed case study, we come to a conclusion, that extreme planning, back-up plan, testing of the project at each stage are the three major factors, that form the back bone of any project, making it a success if handled properly and with utmost care. References 1) National Audit Office Press Notice (2000). The Millennium Dome. 2) ArchInform (2008). Millenium Dome. Available at: http://eng.archinform.net/projekte/8943.htm, last updated: 11/7/2008 3) Paul Beynon-Davies (1995). "Information systems `failure: case of the LASCAD project". European Journal of Information Systems 4) A View on Cities, Millennium Dome (O2), Available at: http://www.aviewoncities.com/london/millenniumdome.htm 5) Thomas K. Grose (2007). The Revival of Londons Millennium Dome 6) WARREN HOGE (2000). Millennium Dome Calls It a Day 7) The Press Association (2008). Heathrow T5 an embarrassment 8) Sky News (2008). T5 Opening An Embarrassment 9) Miles Sackville (2008). Heathrow Terminal 5: Not quite a high five 10) Guardian.uk.in (2008). Heathrow Terminal 5, Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2008/jan/11/architecture?picture=332045243 11) PTI (2008). Heathrow opening a national embarrassment: UK MPs, Extracted from The Times of India (3 Nov 2008) 12) News.cheapflights.co.uk (2008). T5 shambles could benefit Paris and Amsterdam 13) Nick Heath (2008). Surprise! IT Caused Heathrow T5 Snafus 14) BAA Press Release (2008). Her Majesty the Queen opens Terminal 5 15) BAA Statement (2008). T5 baggage software problem fixed 16) E-Health Insider (2006). London Ambulance computer crashes nine times 17) Ian Sommerville (2004). The London Ambulance fiasco 18) London Ambulance Service Unofficial (1992). CAD Failure 1992. Available at: http://www.lond.ambulance.freeuk.com/cad.html#1992 19) Page, D., Williams, P., Boyd, D. (1993). Report of the public inquiry into the London ambulance service Read More