Engineering Project Management

GENG8020-30-R-2019S-a

The most notorious examples of project failure:

Example 1: TITANIC

The Titanic project not only stands as an example for a disaster with 1500 people sinking into
the Atlantic but also as an example for lessons in Project management.

Stakeholder’s interest in the project and management’s cooperation is very important for the
success of the project. All along the stakeholders were interested in building Titanic with
luxury as their unique selling point. This lead to a compromise in safety. Design
improvements were focused on reducing vibration in first-class compartments but lifeboats
problem was neglected.

The initial phase of the project, define phase, plays an important role for project managers
and crew in understanding their stakeholder’s key expectations. At this stage, it is the
responsibility of the project managers to define strategic goals that meet the expectations of
stakeholders and satisfying the norms at the same time. It is evident to say that the Titanic
project failure started right from the define phase.

Assumptions and perceptions play an important role in the project. These assumptions from
the management that the ship is unsinkable made them oversee their perceptions on the safety
and number of lifeboats to be installed is never given a thought. The analysis to eliminate
root causes were neglected based on this myth and misinterpretation that Titanic is
unsinkable.

Example 2: Baggage handling system at Denver International airport

The Denver international airport project was started with a good intention to reduce the flight
turnaround time to 30 minutes, to make flight and passenger baggage handling operation
more effective and automated. This project stands as an example of failure due to
underestimation of the project complexity in the define phase.

The complexity of the project became a problem at every stage where advanced technology
to that time is involved. Mathematical algorithms, anticipating queue behaviours, optimizing
system performance stood as nightmares for the technical team to solve in short deadlines.

The project management team assigned to build this automated system was only given two
years to meet the planned opening date of the airport. Airports systems in San Francisco and
Munich stood as a reference but these much simpler projects took more than two years to
complete. The underestimated complexity and limited time frame made this project and
impossible task. Soon the assigned teams started taking shortcuts to achieve these deadlines
but ended up making it worse with their mistake in an effort to finish the project.

Example 3: Berlin Brandenburg Airport (Germany)

The frequently used expression “too many cooks spoil the broth” clearly explains the main
reason for the Berlin Brandenburg project failure. Too many stakeholders with various scopes
and ideas in the project to make this airport the busiest in Germany finally lead to its failure.
Unlike any projects, the Brandenburg airport project started with rigorous preplanning and
define phase of the project was a success.

Managing sudden changes is hard for any team to get adapted to. The scope and interests of
all the stakeholders and sudden changes in the project made it hard for the teams to cope up.
And finally these scopes for improvement from stakeholder’s perspective ended up making it
worse and the project got delayed.

It is the responsibility of every individual to communicate the right information to everyone

involved in the project. In this project, the initial spokesperson took the liberty in telling
everyone that the project is running smoothly when it actually is not. Soon as the time passed
by the situation is beyond repair.

It is no wonder the project was also a failure in terms of quality with several critical issues
found in preliminary inspections.

Example 4: Airbus A380

In the engineering perspective of this project, a few minor decision-making flaws in the
initial phases of the project lead to its failure. An oversight on a few minor decisions leads the
project to be several billion dollars over budget and delay by years.

This project is the most complex of all the airline projects in history. Airbus A380 is
comprised of 1150 separate functions to be operated by the 100,000 wires and 40300
connectors. All together the cables, wires, and connectors run through the aircraft mainframe
weaved together at about 500kms.

This became more complex when 16 independent design teams in Germany, France, Spain
and England used different versions of the software. The wiring harness designed in Germany
and Spain came in short by few centimetres with respect to the mainframe designed by the
England and France teams.

This all traces back to a single decision of proceeding with the project even with two versions
of CAD software available at different sites.