PROJECT MANAGEMENT: The Channel tunnel

INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project management is the planning, organizing and managing of tasks and resources to accomplish a defined objective, usually with constraints on time and cost. Most projects, whether they are large and complex or small and simple, can be planned by breaking the project into small, easily manageable tasks, scheduling the tasks, and then tracking the tasks as work progresses.

Project management helps you answer questions such as:

What is to be done?

Who will complete the task?

When must it be done?

How much will it cost?

What happens if work isn’t completed on time?

Planning the project and creating a schedule

This includes defining the tasks and their duration, setting up relationships between tasks, and, if you are tracking resource usage, assigning resources. All later phases of the project are based directly on the information you provide when you first plan your project.

• Managing changes

This is an ongoing process that begins once you create a schedule and the project starts, and ends when the project is complete. It includes tracking and adjusting your schedule to reflect changes that occur as the project progresses.

• Communicating project information

This is a very important process that involves communicating project information to clients, project staff, and management.

Project management software is productivity software that will assist you in each of these steps. Many professionals find it is among the most productive tools in their skill set.

In today’s business it is in the best interest of companies to have project managers. Common sense isn’t always usually accomplished. For anyone who’s ever worked on a project in a technical setting knows this. Indeed, much of working with others consists of solving unexpected problems and learning from mistakes along the way. Knowing this and having the proper tools a project manager will be able to manage and complete the most intense project out there.

It seems that people time and again have the wrong impression of what a project manager does. It is not about being able to create a compound plan to hang on the wall. It is not about setting up conference after conference. This is about understanding a big business objective, understanding the technology involved, being able to communicate at an assortment of levels, being able to encourage and direct people, being able to handle the constant worry and troubles, and being structured enough to make certain the whole thing that needs to get completed, gets completed. What this comes down to is a project manager should be able to meet or exceed all of the stakeholder’s expectations. The project manager also must be able to get others to work with limited authority throughout the duration. “Doing most of the work yourself is a poor long-term development strategy and will never solve the problem.

In every project there are always some universal characteristics that will be shared. They all have a comprehensible and established purpose and very distinct life durations. Overall, all projects are doing something that may possibly be new or yet a onetime endeavor but have explicit requirements which include; time, price, and performance. “Project management deals with tools, people, and systems.” (Lewis)

The first project of this module is to do a group poster presentation. We have limited time to carry out research and we were worn off by the intensive lectures. This is where I found out how time management and team work play as important elements for success. We distributed the workload among ourselves and set a time frame for completion. Group members were to adhere to the time frame stipulated. This is how we manage to complete a simple presentation, with many hidden hard work behind our success.

A project manager should have certain qualities in order to successfully execute a project and then run them successfully for the project to be a hit in the market. A project manager should have certain attribute for successful in a project and they are

Monitoring and Controlling: Project manger always monitors the work done by his team members and has control over the entire project. They also have to make sure about the budget estimated at the beginning of the project.

Self-esteem: Project manager should always motivate his team members to do their work sincerely and help by supporting each and every one at the work.

Leadership skills: Project Manager should have leadership qualities to manage the team.

Project closure – The final objective is project closure which includes verifying that all of the work has been accomplished, check the Contractual closure of the contract, financial closure of the charge numbers and finally administrative closure of the paperwork.

Successful project management can then be defined as having achieved the project objectives.

“Project management has evolved to plan, co-ordinate and control the complex and diverse activities of modern industrial, commercial and management change and IT projects” (Lock 2009).

Channel Tunnel:

Introduction

The Channel tunnel project undertaken to create a connection between England and France via underground tunnel, presents one of the largest privately funded construction projects ever under taken. It required the cooperation of two national governments, bankers underwriting the funding for the projects, numerous contractors and several regular agencies. The construction and engineering of the tunnel required the use of new technology and required significant modifications during the project due to unexpected conditions and changes required by various parties.

This case study demonstrates the numerous factors which played during the course of the project that has significant effects on the overall course of the project. At the end Caunnel project was completed, but it was late and over budgeted.

The promotion of and investment in the Channel Tunnel was a challenging multinational affair drawing in institutions from several countries. In this paper, I concentrate on the promotion of the abortive tunnel project of 1957-1975 and the ultimately successful venture a decade later, focusing on governments and companies in Britain, France, the United States, and Japan. I identify the management and sharing of risk as the critical elements in the Tunnel’s political economy. Here, the difficulties produced by the “quadripartite quilt” of negotiations involving two governments (Britain and France) and two tunnel companies are at center stage, though I also argue that American involvement was important in the first project, and Japanese financial support was critical in the second. The debates concerned the type of crossing, questions of ownership versus licensing and regulation, and the importance of making public investment in related and supporting infrastructure. The Channel Tunnel has significance as a prototype of public-private partnership in Britain, and I draw lessons from the experience, referring in particular to the challenges presented by the “infrastructure project circle.”The paper draws on material assembled for Terry Gourvish, The Official History of the Channel Tunnel (London, 2006).

It all started in 1802 when French forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, which would be illuminated using oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches for transportation and also an artificial mid-channel foe changing horses. But, the project was delayed for a very long period

In 1955 both British and French governments supported surveys and in 1974, a government-funded the twin tunnel project with car shuttle wagons.

Later in 1975 British government had no interest in funding the project so they had no objection for a privately funded project. And hence the project was given into the hands of the private companies.

On 2 july 1985, both French and British formed a group Channel Tunnel Group/France. The design and construction was done by this company as the project was undertaken by private companies. The Chunnel Tunnel is a build -own- operate- transfer project with a concession. And the British and French governments will hold the control on final engineering and safety decisions, now those were in the hands of Channel Tunnel Safety Authority.

Eleven tunnel boring machines, which were working from both the sides of the tunnel cut through two rail tunnels and the service tunnel, this started in 1988, and 1994 operating of the tunnel began. And it was estimated that the cost of the construction was £4.650 billon.15000 people were employed with daily expenditure over £3 million. And ten workers were killed during the construction process.

The Eurotunnel completed tunnel boring on time, hence the tunnel was finally opened officially by British Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterand in a ceremony held in Calais on 6th may 1994.

The Chunnel Tunnel also known as (French: Chunnel tunnel source ls manche) is a 50.5-Kilometer undersea rail tunnel linking Folk stone, Kent near Dover in the United Kingdom with coquilles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France. At its lowest point, it is 75 meters (250 ft) deep

1802

Channel tunnel proposal was brought across by Albert Mathieu

1875

The beginning of Channel Tunnel Company Ltd

1882

Abbot’s Cliff had reached 897 yards (820 m) and Shakespeare Cliff was 2,040 yards (1,870 m) in length.

January 1975

British-French government stopped there backed scheme support in 1974

February 1986

They proceeded the project with the permission of Treaty of Canterbury

June 1988

In France the First tunneling was started

December 1988

Tunneling operation was started in UK

December 1990

Broke down of the service tunnel under the Channel

May 1994

The formal inauguration by The Queen and President(French)

Mid 1994

Passenger and Cargo’s started using the trains

November 1996

Due to fire there was huge damage in the tunnel

November 2007

After the renovation the tunnel was re opened for the public.

Fig. SOME IMPORTANT DATES.

Challenges:

Communication Gap

Communication plays a very vital role in a project, not only for the project managers but also for the rest of the team members. This is one of the factors driving a project to success or failure. England and France are the two groups of people who were working together and there were communication gap between two teams, which leads to major delay of the project.

Planning

There was no proper planning for this project as this was the first project towards Chunnel, none of them were aware how to go about it and what are the different kinds of challenges they will come across during this project and they were unable to project on anything. In every stage they use to come up with different problems and that use to take time this use to reflect time factors and because of this budget use to go high.

Strengths

Technically strongly built, hence a successful ‘Quality Management’ implemented. Back office support was excellent. Good team work between two groups. A winning proposal under ‘build owner transfer’ granted to CTG and overall quality of work impressive, work place accident rates were below the industrial average and implementation of effective change management.

Weakness

Time delay and over budget, project was not well planned, poor change management, risk management was not in place, change in design resulted in project delay, litigation and claims was high in the project, lack of team work and communication, financial model optimistic resulted in cost increase, scope was not well defined and rolling stock and specifications were not the same between British and French.

Lessons to be learnt:

Due to proper planning there was delay at work provide adequate defined scope and a well planned changed management system, the sound risk management technique and adequate planning and research techniques to be put in place. Good coordination between two governments and try minimizing the litigation and claims by brining proper planning in place.

We had a great time doing this project. The time and money spent on Channel tunnel inspired all team members to take a trip through the Euro-France Eurotunnel. While preparing a poster me and other team memebers got an oppurtunity to watch a documentary video on Euro tunnel filmed by Discovery channel. Project management theories of team leadership was a big lesson I got to learn while doing this poster. One of the team members took control when the team dynamism was coming to a stand still. Watching him giving direction to team and motivating various team members to perform was when I understood leadership roles. I played a role of organiser in the team. I took responsibility to keep track of every ones effort in the team. I also passed on their work done to every other team member, and acknowledged that member. Presentation skills was of most importance in poster making as we were not allowed to explain the posters, whereas the posters had to speak for themselves. All the team had to put their thinking caps on and rack brains to come with a good presentation idea. At first we planned to put everything we had into the poster but later realised that would over crowd the poster. Hence then we sorted the data we had and then easened our poster with a partitioned look and a title in the middle.

Project Life Cycle

As can been seen in the methodology lifecycle graph shown in the poster and also attached in the appendix, our poster making task was a smooth run. Our module leader Michael Snelgrove assigned our team Jaguar with Chunnel Tunnel case study. To make a poster on Chunnel Tunnel project case study wasn’t a easy task. I joined the team later hence in the second week the team introduced me to the case study and we all decided to meet again with highlighted essentials. The week after we all discussed and distributed essential task amongst ourselves every Niaz introduced us to the title “Everything Comes Down To Money” as in the Chunnel Tunnel project the blotted budget was the big issue. Everyone agreed with the title and started with further data collection, Niloy one of the team members gave me the sources for study materials and there on we finalized the total data and content to be presented in the poster. We discussed reaming time cost of printing, specification of poster and risk of showing some required data on the poster. Every one confirmed their acceptance towards work submitted by each team member. The printing cost of the poster were one of the issues in one of the data meetings but the module leader Michael Snelgrove solved the problem by taking responsibility for poster printing costs, as we were nearing the data submission we discussed our work with the module leader and requested for suggestions to improve the poster then more amendment tasks were distributed among ourselves we then finally sat together and finalized the poster. Analysis and Communications were the major skills we used for the successful completion of the given task. We received positive comments on the judgment day of poster except for our criticism on showing the “Hitler’s “photograph in the poster.

Conclusion

After doing the poster makings the group has a whole understood that no previous experience and hidden technical costs resulted in late compellation of the project with the bloated budget.