FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE.

Running head: FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
Failed Project Analysis of Sydney Opera House
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE1
Table of Contents
1. Project Snapshot..........................................................................................................................2
2. Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
3. Major Issues.................................................................................................................................4
4. Control Systems...........................................................................................................................5
5. Analysis of cost or schedule overruns.........................................................................................7
6. Analysis of project execution team..............................................................................................8
7. Analysis of relationship between overruns and the stakeholders................................................9
8. Analysis of possible actions for success....................................................................................10
9. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................16

FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE2
1. Project Snapshot
(Figure 1: Snapshot of the Project Failure News)
(Source: Newton, Skitmore & Love, 2014)
2. Introduction
The Sydney Opera House has been considered as an identical landmark, whicha is
situated in Australia. It is considered as an arts centre that hosts large number of performances on
an annual basis. The opera house has the record of holding nearly 1.2 million people. The
building has thus been recognised as a world heritage site as mentioned by UNESCO in 2007.
The primary phase of construction for the project had initiated in the year 1959 by a Danish
architect who was named as Jorn Utzon (Lines et al., 2015). However, the Sydney Opera House

FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE3
had been inaugurated in the year 1973. In the present times, the building has been considered as
the most distinguishing and famous buildings in Australia.
The project concept based on the construction of the Sydney Opera House was primarily
launched based on the initiative presented by the New South Wales Government in the year
1955. The project is often considered as an example of failed project case. The primary reasons
that are declared for the cause of failure are a high amount of cost overruns and scheduling
delays. According to pre-estimations that are made for the project plan, it had been estimated that
the project would had been completed within a time frame of 26 January 1963 (Yaneva 2016).
The initial cost had also been estimated to be around 7 million dollars. These estimates were
made on paper-based document but in reality, the project had crossed these boundaries and thus
the project had crossed these estimates.
Many project management experts had claimed the fact that the construction planning for
the Sydney Opera House could be regarded as an example of bad or poor form of project
management approaches been used. Every project, which is been undertaken should have a clear
scope in which the deliverables of the project needs to be determined and there should also be a
clear estimation of the time and budget allocated for the project (Cheng et al., 2019). Those
projects, which often fail to meet the desired outcomes are generally considered as losses to the
organisation. Hence, a proper estimation of avoidance from the risk is a necessary strategy. The
following sections of the report would thus discuss the major reasons in detail that had led to the
failure. A proper analysis over the cost or time overruns would also be presented (Newton,
Skitmore & Love, 2014). After a discussion over these factors, the necessary actions based on
project management that could be taken for successful delivery of project would be discussed.

FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE4
Based on these understandings, a clear conclusion of all learned lessons would be outlined
properly.
3. Major Issues
There were many kinds of risks and uncertainties in association with the construction
phases of the Sydney Opera House project. Firstly, there was a major competition in terms of
design aspects. The managers who were working over the project had a low estimation and
experience based on identifying the key entrants in the market who had designed and involved
with large-scale construction projects (Chen-Yu, C., Myers & Goad, 2014). Although the
construction designs that were made by Jorn Utzon were comprised of a shell-type structure,
there was no clear description of the proposed structure of the roof. The issue was further made
complicated based on the fact that Utzon had proposed for an open rooftop area and a ceiling,
which would be comprised of structural rib-like architecture. Another important aspect was
based on proposing the design for the open roof of the opera house. According to the reports
published during that time, it was mentioned that there was no single process to bring in the
implementation of the original design (Rolstadås et al., 2014). Hence, Utzon had planned for
revising the design, which also proved to become an expensive and challenging task to be
implemented.
The second major issue that was discovered with the failing aspect of the construction for
the Sydney Opera House project was that there was no proper designation of a project manager.
It had further been estimated that Utzon would mainly be held responsible for taking all forms of
necessary decisions in relation to planning, designing, construction and final project
development (New & Hall, 2014). However, there was no such kind of measures based on
project evaluation, which would be officially posted. Hence, the plans based on implementation

FAILED PROJECT ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE5
and goalposts were in the constant process of getting changed. The Government had also made
several changes over the plans designed by Utzon. In the initial process, Utzon had gave
suggestion of constructing only two theatres for the opera house but at a later phase, the NSW
Government had revised the construction plan by proposing another two theatres within the
construction plan.
The government expectations from the project did not match with the designed plan for
the project. In the initial designed plan, there was a requirement to construct only two theatres
but in the later stage, the Government had proposed Utzon to design four theatres (Anderson &
O’Connor, 2019). The new presented requirement had created a redesigning process over the
construction plan, which further resulted in delaying of the construction process. Due to the
major delays and specific changes made over the business blueprint, the estimated time and
original cost of AUD $7 million dollars had seemed to be uncertain during that moment. With
the increasing cost factors, a certain problem had risen about the ways in which the large scale
project would be funded.
The project did not have a finalized design plan and hence there was no finalized project
budget that could be estimated. Immediately after the start of the project, the costs for the project
began to escalate (Logan, C., & McLaurin, 2016). Primarily the budget had escalated with
change in orders and at a later phase, it increased as the surveys made for the site had gone
wrong.