Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management

This report analyzes the success or failure of the Burj Khalifa project from a strategic project management perspective. It discusses the project's background, standard criteria for project success or failure, critical evaluation, and recommendations for future projects.

Burj Khalifa
Strategic Project Management

Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
Executive summary
In this report, the success or failure of Burj Khalifa project has been analysed. It reflects upon
the strategic analysis from project management view. The case has been developed and
criterias are identified for critical evaluation of the project. Along with them, standards
criterias of success or failure are also discussed and recommendations are mentioned for
future project references.
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
Table of Contents
Background................................................................................................................................3
Project case................................................................................................................................3
Standard criteria for project success or failure...........................................................................4
Critical identification of the criteria................................................................................................................7
Critical evaluation...........................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................................9
Recommendations......................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................11
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
Background
Burj Khalifa currently stands at the world’s tallest building and is located at Dubai in Middle
East being the world’s third largest oil producing country. The tower is now commonly
known as a Burj Dubai. Dubai has also become among the world’s most popular country in
terms of popular destination in the world because of its architectural wonders and lifestyle
amenities. It has a total height of 828 metres. The construction of Burj Dubai began in 2004.
The exterior designing of the tower itself took over 5 years to complete. The decision to build
just a tall building came from Dubai’ government primarily to gain recognition in the
international community. Constructors had given this name to the building mainly to honour
the president of UAE Mr. Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The height of the tower as well as
the design of the building broker all records in the architecture industry. Furthermore,
approximately 110000 tons of concrete were used for the construction and 22 million-man
hours had been utilized. The entire tower has several amenities and facilities including a
state-of-the-art firefighting and earthquake resisting design, housing apartments,
entertainment zones and even commercial office spaces (Levy, 2010).
Project case
The primary aim for the construction was not to attain a world recognition for the height of
the tower but to also gain international recognition for its design. The architectural design in
itself is unique and is composed concrete and steel frame. In order to keep it secure and
resistant, the architects has adopted for a Y-Type plan shape with respect to the tower. The
rationale behind choosing this project is evidently clear as this project has all the right
elements that has not been utilized before in similar constructions before and thereby making
it right fit for this project management case (Zeveloff, 2012).
The height of the tower is nearly 828 metres and overall occupied floor is approximately 585
metres. Apart from that the total area occupied by the tower is approximately 465000m2. The
difficult part of the architecture is to minimize the force of winds on building. The structure
being used to construct the building is Buttressed core system. Apart from this, the lateral
load resisting system is among the most unique part of this building. There are several other
components in this building that is connected to the re-enforced concrete used in the exterior
columns. The thickness of the internal walls range from 500mm to 1300mm. Floor framing
systems are typically used in climbing framework system, the construction art, the rebar pre-
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
fabrication part as well as column preceding methods are being used as some of the core
technologies for the tower. As such, the construction of the building is unique and quite
advanced in its own way that ultimately help construct the world’s largest building.
Standard criteria for project success or failure
There are a total of thirteen factors that has been put together by Jiang and these includes:
• Clear Goals: Goals include the philosophy as well as mission that together defines
objectives for project members.
• Project Manager : To make sure such projects are successful the project manager must
be highly skilled and expert in the domain and should have excellent technical skills,
know-how and interpersonal skills. The project manager should also be a competent
leader and should’ve overseen several large projects. They should also be able to align
the vision and mission to project goals.
• Higher level support: The project would primarily be supported positively and be kept
on priority by the top-level management.
• Communication channel : A clear and well defined means and methods of
communication should be defined and important information such as progress reports,
updates, feedbacks, suggestions, risks and changes should be communicated
appropriately.
• Responsiveness: The team including the project manager should be responsive
towards the client and keep them updated with the progress on the project.
• Competitiveness: The team should be competent enough to actually get the project
done. This requires a careful and highly curated selection process and finding the right
people for the project.
• Good resource allocation: There are several key resources attributed to any project
and they are nothing but money, humans, logistics and materials. They should be
appropriately allotted towards accomplishing each part of the project so as to ensure
smooth functioning of the project.
• Control Mechanism: The project plan must have a well-defined schedule as this is the
key towards strict control mechanism for projects.
• Client Acceptance: The client’s acceptance and understanding of the project is also
crucial towards a successful delivery of the project.
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
• Feedbacks: Feedbacks are essential towards positive progress of any project. These
may come from the team, staff or anybody involve with the project. A good
communication channel and strategy would allow for all parties to present their views
coherently and suggest for improvement
• Technical tasks: All the technologies and methodologies being used in the project
should be time tested and known to the lead architect and project manager before they
are being put to use for the project.
• Troubleshooting management: The members of the project need to have an effective
method in place for recording problems independently and such practices must be
encouraged by the project manager. This will allow for greater discovery and
resolution of conflicts and issues associated with the project.
• Client Acceptance: Client of a software project must understand the importance of it
and accept the deliverables positively (Attarzadeh, 2008)
As per the Chaos report, based on the outcome of a project, a project can be categorized into
three resolution types that include project success, project challenges and project impaired.
Resolution
THE CHAOS
Report
Budget Time Functions & Features
Success Finished within the
defined budget
Moving as per the
required schedule
All deliverables have
been completely
achieved
Challenged
(O’Brochta, 2002)
Budget overrun Behind the accepted
schedule
Some deliverables have
not been achieved.
Impaired/Failed Incurred losses Cancelled All of features have not
been delivered
Project Success: A project is known to be a complete success when it’s completed in the
given timeframe, in the appropriate budget and with all the required features.
Project Challenged: If the project that is to be completed but remains still operational with
most of the features and functionalities met but exceeds the budget or timeframe, then it is a
challenged project.
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
Project Impaired: A project is said to be an impaired project if the project has been cancelled
at any time during the lifecycle of the project.
Chaos report would define all of the key failure and success factors for the project:
Success factors include:
• User Involvement: For a project to be ultimately successful, user involvement is
critical in different stages of the project such as gathering of requirements, performing
acceptance testing and so on. If the user involvement is not there and the ultimate
project is completed on time and budget, then it may still be failure (Salmon, 2009)
• Management Support: Support from all levels of management is essential for
ensuring smooth functioning and progress of the project (Attarzadeh, 2008).
• Clarity of requirements: Foundational level of requirement will not work in such
large project as each of the milestones can be extremely large and detailed in its own.
As a result, there should be an extensive level of clarity of requirements. These
requirements would be detailed in a way that they can be clear enough to understand
their impact, prioritize them and plan activities that are essential to meet such
requirements. In order to avoid failure most of the requirements should be gathered in
the beginning phase in a way to avoid problems that occur in later stages of the
project. (Nelson, 2007).
• Efficient Planning: An effective planning is the threshold for success of the project.
Everything right from scope definition, to timing, costing should be meticulously
planned and acted upon (Nelson, 2007).
Failure
• Planning and Estimation: The planning stage comprises of estimating the schedule
together with cost that needs to be incurred for the given project. If such estimates are
incorrect, then they will impact the project negatively.
• Implementation: Project implementation is the largest step in project management
and has to be followed through a careful methodology to fulfil the requirements.
Testing should be done to ensure all requirements have been met. If the investigations
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
or the testing are not effectively done then full-fledged development may not happen
and the project may be in peril later on (Hoffman, 2003).
• Human Factor: Project managers need to have essential skills so as to manage all of
the project properly. If project manager is unable to understand anything or unable to
apply project management principles, then the project may as well result in failure.
Apart from these, the project should be free from communication related errors and
technical errors arising out of the human factor (Elenbass, 2000)
Besides these, there are other critical success factors defined in the literature for project
management.
(Belassi & Tukel, 1996)
Critical identification of the criteria
The mentioned criteria in previous sections is appropriate in measuring the actual
performance and efficiency of the construction part (Sauter & Frese, 2003). The objective
and aim are the main aspect of a project which decide the success or failure of the project. If
the decided aim is achieved at the completion of the project, then the project is termed as the
“successful” project. However, if it is not achieved by the controlling and monitoring people
then effectiveness of the project cannot be judged by them. Before the planning and
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
designing of the building, the government was more keen on getting the monitory benefits
and expansion of its culture at international level (Nelson, 2007). At the completion of the
project, if the aim is satisfied and involving staff i.e. authorities are receiving financial
benefits or even increment of foreign exchange then the Burj Khalifa project can be termed as
it has achieved its objectives and goals. Without considering these factors, standard of the
project is not feasible to be measured by any person.
There is another tool which can be used to measure the performance of the project – Iron
Triangle. It uses three factors to measure the project’s performance i.e. time, cost and quality.
Cost and time are another set of major standard criteria being used in a research proposal. It
was noticed that construction of Burj Khalifa was started in 2004 year and finished in 2009
year i.e. took 5 years to completed. However, it was estimated to be completed in 57 months
but construction took much time and turned out to be very lengthy. In order to measure the
success of the project, Iron triangle could have been used by the project’s authorities. Cost is
3rd dimension of this tool which helps in evaluating the actual working of the project and Iron
Triangle can be used to measure efficiency of actual units of completion. The initial
estimated cost of the project was 876 million dollars. But the cost estimated at the end of the
project was turned out to be 1.5 billion dollars. It is the responsibility of the project manager
to find out the reasons behind the increasing cost of the project. There could be various
reasons which might have been overlooked by the project manager. It was found that between
2004 to 2009, there had been considerable number of changes happened in the currency
value. It was one of the key reasons as to why the price was raw material was going up. The
planning of the project happened in 2004 year but in 2009 Dubai had a setback of economy
downturn. Hence, economic value of the currency went down and resulted in increasing value
of raw materials. Apart from them, the cost of cement and aluminium also increased which
was another reason of increasing budget. It was a valid reason behind the increase in the cost
by using which the success of the project can be measured considerably (Lydon, 1993).
Another factor of the standard criteria is Quality. The key constructors of the project were -
Samsung engineering and Besix. They used advanced tools and techniques for the
construction of tower. Mixed reinforced concrete was used along with several other
techniques. The quality measurement of building can help in depicting whether the
constructed building is able to survive the nature’s extreme condition or not. This type of
testing was very important so that engineer can plan for further step in improving the tower’s
quality.
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
Critical evaluation
If the strategic objective of the project is aligned with the project’s efforts, then success of the
project can be measured. With the help of criteria of goal, it can be evaluated that whether it
has achieved its target. As per the planning of construction of Burj Khalifa, there were many
facilities for travellers such rooms and commercial space. They attracted considerable
number of visitors towards Dubai (Poulos, 2016). This resulted in increasing the economic
value Dubai to a higher extent. It also helped in achieving recognition in the world. Hence,
the project can be said to be successful proposal because it had accomplished its prime goal.
However, as per the cost parameter, it can be evaluated that budget of the project was not
framed accurately for the successful completion of the proposed project. As mentioned in the
earlier report, economic downturn led to increase in purchasing cost of the material. Also,
aluminium and cement prices were also increased which in turn increased the overall cost of
the construction. Hence, because of increase in the cost of budget, the proposed project was
not able to achieve values which were earlier expected by the government at the start of the
project. Hence, cost management was not planned effectively in this project. The initial cost
planning was not sufficient and efficient to evaluate that the project has not met with the
success.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that Burj Khalifa did achieve its initial objective of building design. It
was prepared as per the initial planning and there were rooms in all towers along with
entertainment facilities and commercial space. Also, Burj Khalifa did increase its economy
value but it was failure at cost front as it took 1.5 billion as compare to 800 million estimated
cost. When the project was completed, Dubai attracted considerable number of visitors and
became a landmark. And today it is the world famous tower. It took more time than estimated
hence it is not feasible to measure the success of the project on the basis of time factor.
Recommendations
Following are key recommendation for successful project management obtained from the
learnings of Burj Khalifa project:
 During planning phase, risk management is a key activity as it will help in identifying
and resolving the risks which are likely to occur in future. The project was planned
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
with required risk management strategies, hence team was able to mitigate the risks
on time and take appropriate steps.
 The initial time and budget must be planned accurately and carefully because if any
modification occurs in later stages, can affect the Iron triangle constraints badly. Cost
overflow can be adjusted using contingency plans which can be prepared at the
beginning of the project to resolve such issues.
 The increase in value of purchasing material should be forecasted before estimating
the cost as it can adversely affect the project at later stages.
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Burj Khalifa – Strategic Project Management
References
Attarzadeh, I., 2008. Project Management Practices: The Criteria for Success or Failure.
CIBIMA, 1(28), pp. 234-241.
Belassi, W. & Tukel, O. I., 1996. A new framework for determining critical success/failure
factors in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 14(3), pp. 141-151.
Elenbass, B., 2000. Staging a Project – Are You Setting Your Project Up for Success?.
Houston, TX, Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposiums.
Levy, F. (2010). Why The Burj Khalifa Doesn't Matter. [online] Forbes.com. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/2010/01/04/dubai-burj-khalifa-lifestyle-real-estate-tallest-
building.html#103713f49b23 [Accessed 19 Apr. 2019].
Lydon, F. (1993). Cast-in-place concrete in tall building design and
construction. Construction and Building Materials, 7(1), p.62.
Nelson, R. R., 2007. IT Project Management: Infamous Failures, Classic Mistakes, and Best
Practices. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6(2), pp. 67-77.
O’Brochta, M., 2002. Project Success – What Are the Criteria and Whose Opinion Counts?.
San Antonio, TX, Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposiums.
Poulos, H. (2016). Tall building foundations: design methods and applications. Innovative
Infrastructure Solutions, 1(1), pp.15-19.
Salmon, P., 2009. Projects Key Issue sin Success/Failure, Wellington: ISACA .
Sauter, V. & Frese, R., 2003. Project success and failure: what is success, what is failure,
and how can you improve your odds for success?, s.l.: UMSL.
Zeveloff, J. (2012). Dubai's Burj Khalifa Is A Complete Flop With Buyers. [online] Business
Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/dubais-magnificent-burj-khalifa-is-a-
complete-flop-with-buyers-2012-7?IR=T [Accessed 19 Apr. 2019].
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