The Edinburgh Tram System - Failures

Under the Mott Stadium Consortium, Cost Consultants Franklin & Andrews were formally engaged in 1999 at the commencement of the concept phase. The engagement of the design team was funded by a portion of the lotteries grant to the value of £14 million which contributed to project planning and design work.

 The line manager treating such plans as merely an irrelevant forecast prepared by another. For the whole project process, the ability to influence cost diminishes rapidly over time, the greatest influence being at the design phase. However the greater the time between plan and implementation, the greater is the variance of actual schedule and budget against plan. Detailed planning of activities planned to be executed far into the future – say more than three months – is futile. This is because:  there are uncertainties which cannot be quantified;  stochastic modelling does not identify the cause of variation;  forecasting models extrapolate from past trends which may not be valid for the future. Theoretically, the binomial theorem [7,8] supports this claim. The probability of an event occurring in repeated trials – where the event may be, for instance, a task running 10% over its planned duration – is given by the binomial distribution. This shows that the percentage error of the estimate of the mean performance on the task as a ratio of the percentage error for the mean durations of all tasks in the work breakdown structure (WBS) is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of tasks, for a discrete sequence of tasks. Thus for a 52 week project to be estimated at ±10% accuracy

Project management is the performance based process focus on one o more deliverable. It is the process of identifying a problem or need coming up with possible solution, deciding on the best one and completing the project in a manner that is acceptable to

* Provide a top-level description of the overall scope of the project. At this point, not enough information is typically available to describe scope in detail. This will take place during the initial planning stage of the project. However, the general description of the project’s scope should be sufficient for making rough estimates of the project’s schedule and costs.

The Network rail has also come under criticism from the National Audit office due to the cost increases and delivery delays. They concluded that the time frame as well as the number of bridges that would need to be modified were underestimated. This increased cost due to planning permission and consent from other works that needed to be obtained. All these factors have resulted in delays in the

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to conform to customer demands.

When any organization undertakes a large-scale project, the first and most important component to ensure that the process runs smoothly and effectively is effective project management. Project management not only sets the tone for the overall project, but creates the plan and facilitates effective implementation. From the first meeting to plan the project to the last report written about the experience, project management is integral to project success.

Project management requires a solid management plan focusing on scope and scheduling risks, communication, good decision making, how to deal with uncertainties, ethics, and to utilize the situational leadership style. I feel that it is required to adapt and understand the type of

Since the early stages, the project was inundated with concerns and issues with the project scope. From the perspective of project management, the initial scope was not defined well enough. Details of the design were over looked and aspects such as the details of the air conditioning ended up increasing the original scope by $200 million. This supposedly led a prosperous project to an uncertain economic ordeal. Initial estimates of the project had been $5.5 billion and by the time of its actual completion it been delayed by a year and increased to $15

The council authorises CEO to manage this project of upgrade and appointed Mr Barney Fernandes as Project Co-ordinator. The upgrade cannot commence until Regional Airport Development Scheme does not secure the funds and it get ratified by the Council!!!

According to The BBC (2004), in the initial planning stages the predicted £40 million was set aside by the government to fund the project. This amount remained fixed until additional uncontrolled construction costs resulted in the project cost to increase to £109 million in June 1999 to a total cost of £414.4 million which in turn resulted in a 20 month delay to the initial schedule.

Moreover, Phillips et al., (2012, p. 15) defined this first step of the Project Life Cycle as ‘the phase where the project selection takes place’; usually the project managers are not involved in this stage. The authors also wrote that the aspects that are identified through this process are ‘product description, justification, scope, deliverables, duration, resources, financials, and risks’. The Sydney Opera House is a real paradigm that proves the importance of the time duration of a project which is mentioned by Jones (2006, p. 28); It was estimated to be completed in January 1963 with a cost of £3,500,000 ($7 million), yet it was finished a decade later with a cost more than

The application of information, expertise, tools, and procedures to project activities to meet the project requirements is known as project management (PMBOK 2008). Alternatively, project management is the process in which projects are well-defined, planned, supervised, organized and conveyed such that the agreed features and requirements are fulfilled (APM BOK 2006).

A project is something which makes a change in people’s lives. It is to develop, benefit and implement change. There are many aspects and planning that goes into a project and many things that affect the success of a project, most importantly being the project management and administration. Project management and project administration have several things in common as well a few differences. Some of these differences are constant and some are not.

Project management is a series of steps taken in sequence to manage a project through all phases from conception to completion. The steps are documented in a strategic plan. The plan is used to ensure that all parties are working towards a common goal. Project management requires applying knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to specific activities in accordance with established standards and guidelines. There are five basic functions of project management: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Basic activities of project management include: identifying project requirements to define the outcomes; addressing various needs, concerns and expectations of others; setting up, maintaining and carrying out communications; managing others; creating project deliverables; and balancing competing project constraints.