Denver International Airport Baggage Report

Running head: DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BAGGAGE HANDLING SYSTEM
Denver International Airport Baggage Handling System
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Total words: 2052

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BAGGAGE HANDLING SYSTEM1
1. Introduction
The discussion in this report would majorly focus on the failure aspects of the Denver
International Airport Baggage Handling System and estimating the areas in which possible lacks
could be found. The Denver Airport case can be considered as one of the strongest case in
history that leads to an understanding that project failures happening at any step could lead to
tremendous implications on the organization proposing the project. The increasing capacity of
holding a large number of people had led the airport officials to decide over the best possible
approach to mitigate the occurring problems (Burge & McCall, 2015). Hence the city of Denver
had majorly decided for constructing a new airport hub for the city. This new state of the art
airport would bring in a great reputation towards the Denver city and further develop it into an
air transportation hub.
Despite of several kind of good intentions that were made within the planning approach,
the plan for the construction of the airport hub was mostly dissolved owing to a high level of
underestimation over the complexity involved within the project. Based on the consideration of
various kind of problems being faced by the airport officials in the development of the baggage
system, the opening of the new airport was majorly delayed by a term period of 16 months. The
involved project teams had failed to gauge the various involved risks and vast complexity that
was involved within the project. With the late taking decisions, which were a consistent factor
leading towards the project failure. The project management team had allowed for the baggage
system to be within the critical path of the airport. In order to manage for the planning opening
date of the project, there should had been an intensive form of planning towards the project
designing rate and hence it would need to complete within the two years.
2. Discussion
2.1 Review of Concepts and Theories
2.1.1 Model for Analysing the Denver Airport Case Project
Based on understanding of the project case, the Diamond model would be chosen that
would help in analysis of the project accordingly. The diamond model is further been used in
projects as it is considered as a disciplined tool for the analysis of risks and expected future
benefits. The diamond model would be helpful for analysing the Denver Airport case by
identification of the possible gap areas within the Denver Airport project. This model would
further help in explaining the fact in which the identified gaps were the leading cause of the
failure for the entire project. In case of the Denver International Airport, it could be perceived as
a complex form of construction project (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007). The technological aspects used
within the case is considered as low as compared to other projects in which more focus is given
to technology. Analysis of the Denver project with the diamond model would help in
understanding that the project was competitive, fast and comprised of low focus on technological
areas.

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BAGGAGE HANDLING SYSTEM2
(Figure 1: The Diamond Model)
(Source: Nicholas & Steyn, 2017)
The different dimensions within the diamond model based on which the analysis of the
failure of the Denver Airport are being discussed as follows:
1. Novelty – The novelty of a product defines the ways in which the new technology or
project would be accepted by potential customers and adapted to the changing face of the market.
This dimension helps towards representing towards the extent up to which the customers would
be familiar with the kind of new technology or system. Novelty helps in realizing the fact that the
customer and the requirements of the project needs to remain upfront. The platform products are
defined as new generation of the existing lines of product (Baghizadeh, Cecez-Kecmanovic &
Schlagwein, 2019). The new technologies and developed products help towards the replacement
of previous technology or products. The breakthrough products help towards bringing in a new-
to-world products. These further help in transferring towards a new concept that would not have
been seen by customer before.
In this case, it had been seen that the new technology of automated baggage systems at
the Denver Airport had been proposed for a new strategy (Felder & Thomas, 2018). However, in
the case of the Denver airport, there was a certain delay for the setting of a good form of strategy
for the running of the airport construction project.
2. Technology – The concerned dimensions primarily concerns towards the different
kind of technical activities included within a project. These include the design, development,
testing and future prototyping of projects. These might range from low-technology projects to
high-technology projects. Technology uncertainty has a major impact over the design and testing
aspects (Jonas, Goetz & Brady, 2019). It would also determine the interaction and