Sydney Metro Project Sustainability

This assignment analyzes the Sydney Metro project in Australia, focusing on how sustainability is integrated into its planning and execution. It outlines the project's success criteria – schedule adherence, resource management, and quality – and identifies critical success factors for achieving these goals. The essay also delves into the Waterfall model as the chosen project management approach, detailing its steps and implementation within the context of the Sydney Metro project.

Running head: INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
Integrating Sustainability in Managing Projects
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
Sustainable development can be defined as the arrangement of theories and principles to
achieve several project development goals and simultaneously maintaining the natural systems
ability to give several resources and services to the society (SILvIuS and SChIPPER 2012).
There is an extreme necessity of sustainability in every project. Sustainability brings success to
the project by providing proper guidelines to the project. The purpose of this essay is to discuss
about the importance of sustainability in any project. The essay also highlights the way of
integrating sustainability in a construction project.
The following essay outlines the method of integrating sustainability in a construction
project. Sydney Metro is an automatic system of rapid transit, which is under construction in
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The essay focuses on the integration of sustainability for
the construction of the Sydney Metro (Abdou 2014). It covers the logical arguments of the
construction project. It also covers the analysis of the necessary research studies. The essay
further discusses about the managerial implications on the project.
Sydney Metro
The biggest public transport project, the famous Sydney Metro is under construction. It is
one of the biggest construction projects in Australia. The Stage 1 operation is supposed to start in
the year 2019 and the stage 2 operation is supposed to start in the year 2024. The Stage 1 will
have 13 numbers of stations, while the Stage 2 will have 17 numbers of stations. It is an
automatic rapid transit system (Sydneymetro.info, 2017). The construction has started for the
Sydney Metro city & Southwest. It is an adjunction across Sydney Harbour and via CBD or
Central Business District that would lead the trains to Bankstown. Once this construction is
completed, Sydney would be the very first city in Australia to construct a complete automatic
rapid transit system.
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development can be defined as the arrangement of theories and principles to
achieve several project development goals and simultaneously maintaining the natural systems
ability to give several resources and services to the society (Sánchez 2015). There is an extreme
necessity of sustainability in every project. The word sustainability comes from two different
words of sustain and ability. For a construction project, sustainability is an important term that

2
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
discusses how to execute the actions of the project without having dangerous impacts or without
exhausting the resources (Müller and Jugdev 2012). It means the project should reach the
requirements without any kind of compromise with the ability of the future to reach the
necessities.
Success Criteria
The success criteria for any project are nothing but the standards or policies through
which the particular project is judged after the execution to take the decision that whether it has
met the requirements of the project plan and the shareholders or not. The success criteria for the
project of Sydney Metro depend on three major criteria. They are as follows:
a) Scheduled Time: This is the main criteria for any project. The project Sydney Metro in
Australia is one of the biggest construction projects until date. The main requirement or the
major criteria for this particular project are the completion on time (Kerzner 2013). The Stage 1
of the project is supposed to be completed within the year 2019 and the Stage 2 operation of the
project is supposed to be completed within the year 2024. This criterion of the project should be
fulfilled as extra time may incur more costs.
b) Resource: The second criterion of the Sydney Metro project is the use of resources.
The most important resource of the project is the budget of the project (Todorović et al. 2015).
The project should be completed within the budget that is mentioned in the project plan. It is the
responsibility of the project manager and all the workers to complete the project within its
budget. As Sydney Metro is a huge project, it is evident that the cost of the project would be
much bigger than any other construction projects. The budget sometimes depends on the
scheduled completion of the project. When the time of the project will be increased, the overall
costs will be increased. The stage 1 of the project is supposed to be completed in the year 2019
and the stage 2 of the project is supposed to be completed in the year 2014 (Silvius and Schipper
2014). The stages should be completed within the time.
c) Quality: The third criterion of the Sydney Metro project is the quality of the project.
The second criterion mentions about the budget of the project. While focusing on the budget, the
quality of the project should not be neglected at all (Walker 2015). The metro will carry about

3
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
thousands of people every day. Therefore, the quality of the project should be the best and up to
mark.
Critical Success Factors
The critical success factors of the Sydney Metro project are those factors that will help to
fulfill the success criteria of the project. The three criteria of the success of the project are the
scheduled time, resource and quality. The factors to achieve the criteria of scheduled time,
resources and quality are as follows:
i) Planning: This is the first and foremost step for any project. Sydney Metro project
started in the year 2017 (Kerzner 2013). A huge project requires good planning. The planning of
the project started in the year 2015. This is the most important factor for the success and
implementation of the project.
ii) Design: This is the second important factor for the success of any project. The
designing is done based on the plan made for the project (Todorović et al. 2015). The architect in
presence of the project manager does the designing of the project.
iii) Defining Roles and Responsibilities: The third important factor for the critical
success of the project is to define the roles and responsibilities of the employees and the workers
of the project.
iv) Risk Assessment: This is the fourth important factor for the critical success of the
project (Müller and Jugdev 2012). The risk is calculated and evaluated through this factor.
v) List the Deliverables: The deliverables should be listed in a proper way and all the
project members of the Sydney Metro project should be familiar with the list.
The above factors will help the project to be successful in future.
Project Management Approach
There are several project management approaches for any type of construction project.
The project management approach used for the Sydney Metro project, NWS, Australia is the
Waterfall model (Tuteja and Dubey 2012). The Waterfall model is the non-iterative design

4
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
process that is utilized in the processes for development of software. There are eight steps for
this development cycle. They are as follows:
i) Conception: In this step, the concept of the project is brought. The project manager
hires the project members for the project.
ii) Initiation: The project plan is made in this step (Model 2015). The project manager of
Sydney Metro project has made the plan in the late 2015.
iii) Analysis: The analysis is done in this step. The Sydney Metro project has to analyze
all the necessary documents and risks in the analysis step.
iv) Design: The design of the project is done in this step. The metro project needs good
planning and design. The design involves everything of the project.
v) Construction: The Sydney Metro project is currently in this step of the waterfall
model. This is the longest step of any project (Bassil 2012). For this particular project, the
construction will take around two years.
vi) Testing: The next step is the testing of the software. The testing is another important
step for any project. If the testing fails, the entire project will be a failure and the manager will
suffer major losses.
vii) Implementation: In this step, the implementation of the project is done. This step is
only possible when the testing is done successfully. If the testing is not successful, the project
will stop at that very moment.
viii) Maintenance: Maintenance is the most important step for any project. Maintenance
helps to maintain the longevity for any product (Tuteja and Dubey 2012). The Sydney Metro will
be carrying thousands of people every day. Therefore, it is necessary to do the maintenance from
time to time.
The above steps clearly defines the project management approach for the Sydney Metro
project, Australia. The sustainability of the project is integrated by the above mentioned success
criteria, critical success factors and the project management approach.

5
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, Sydney Metro project is
one of the largest projects in Australia that is under construction. The essay outlines a brief
discussion on the integration of sustainability of the Sydney Metro project. The success criteria
of any project helps to attain the objectives and goals of the projects. The success criteria for this
particular project are the scheduled time, resources and quality. The essay also covers the critical
success factors that will to attain the success criteria. There are several success factors for this
reason. The project management approach for Sydney Metro is the Waterfall model. The essay
provides a clear description about the steps of the waterfall model.

6
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
References
Abdou, S., 2014. Sustainability of Project Management. Lulu Press, Inc.
Bassil, Y., 2012. A simulation model for the waterfall software development life cycle. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1205.6904.
Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Model, W., 2015. Waterfall model. Luettavissa: http://www. waterfall-model. com/. Luettu, 3.
Müller, R. and Jugdev, K., 2012. Critical success factors in projects: Pinto, Slevin, and Prescott–
the elucidation of project success. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(4),
pp.757-775.
Sánchez, M.A., 2015. Integrating sustainability issues into project management. Journal of
Cleaner Production, 96, pp.319-330.
Silvius, A.G. and Schipper, R.P., 2014. Sustainability in project management competencies:
analyzing the competence gap of project managers. Journal of Human Resource and
Sustainability Studies, 2(02), p.40.
SILvIuS, G.I.L.B.E.R.T. and SChIPPER, R.O.N., 2012. Sustainability in project management.
Gower Publishing, Ltd..
Sydneymetro.info. (2017). Sydney Metro | Sydney Metro. [online] Available at:
https://www.sydneymetro.info/ [Accessed 9 Sep. 2017].
Todorović, M.L., Petrović, D.Č., Mihić, M.M., Obradović, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015.
Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project
management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.
Tuteja, M. and Dubey, G., 2012. A research study on importance of testing and quality assurance
in software development life cycle (SDLC) models. International Journal of Soft Computing and
Engineering (IJSCE), 2(3), pp.251-257.

7
INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY IN MANAGING PROJECTS
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.