Complexity Parameters of GERD Project

Running head: COMPLEXITY PARAMETERS OF GERD PROJECT
COMPLEXITY PARAMETERS OF GERD PROJECT

COMPLEXITY PARAMETERS OF GERD PROJECT 1
Table of Contents
Discussions......................................................................................................................................2
Diagram and Analysis......................................................................................................................3
Evaluation of Parameters.................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

COMPLEXITY PARAMETERS OF GERD PROJECT 2
Discussions
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was earlier known as the Millennium Dam is
located in Ethiopia on the river Blue Nile and is a dam called gravity dam. The two articles that
have been provided regarding the context of the GERD serve in a very significant way, which is
to assess the various complexity parameters of a project and the tools to manage them. The
complexity that can arrive from a massive project like GERD that started out in the year 2011
can be of various types. There are issues of politics and of geography, transportation and
communication is another risk to be mitigated, the structure of the project or the dam and the
time taken to complete it are all the different types of complexities that may arise while building
the dam.
According to Dao et al. (2016), the Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards
initiated a standard for managing projects along with a tool for measuring complexity called
CIFTER that shows issues in infrastructure size and connectivity, newness and uncertainties of a
project. However, the specific article discusses PCAM Tool that weighs factors of complexity
and is applied to find the potential impact of issues of design, scope, concept, construction, etc.,
on a project (Dao et al. 2016). It further manages to provide a structure and understanding of the
complexity issues through charts and diagrams.
The article by Gransberg et al. (2013) provides a five dimensional complexity of
transportation on projects through graphs and charts (Gransberg et al. 2013). It defines the theory
of complexity, which is the management of infrastructures and how transportation is a significant
part of it, through different case studies of complex projects in countries like U.K., U.S., Canada,
or New Zealand the article defines the impact of various dimensions. It clearly defines how

COMPLEXITY PARAMETERS OF GERD PROJECT 3
transportation project is a work of public that follows regulations related to the public funding
and can be influenced by politics, opinion, or other external factors (Gransberg et al. 2013).
These articles presents scenarios, which provides us with a clear understanding of what kind of
complexities might affect and hinder the construction of the GERD project.
Diagram and Analysis
The construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam started in the year 2011 and it lies
in region of Benishangul-Gumuz, which is located at a distance of 15 km from the border of
Sudan (Abdelhady et al. 2015). The dam is supposed to be the largest power plant producing
hydroelectric power after it is completed and is about 6.45 gigawatts. However, when such a
huge project is under construction then the people related to it have to face a number of issues
and problems that has to be solved for the work to continue properly. The kind of issues and
complexities that are possibly hindering the completion of the GERD project can be identified as
the following:
 Structural changes have occurred for several times and have included two dams and three
spillways amounting to about 40% variation from the initial design of the project
(Abdelhady et al. 2015).
 Technical variations have taken place as well with the changes in the capacity of the dam.
While it has increased in the year 2012, it decreased again in the year 2017. That can be
accounted for a 30% variation of the techniques involved.
 Temporal changes or the impact of time on a project is a very crucial aspect as well as a
very significant complexity that has to be under control at all times. The mismanagement
of time is a very common thing as there lays various possibilities for the time being