Project Management 10 Project Management of the Sydney Harbour Opera House

Project Management 1
PROJECT MANAGEMENT OF THE SYDNEY HARBOUR OPERA
HOUSE
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Introduction
Project management has, for a very long time, been regarded in terms of evaluating the
success or failure of the project in concern. The Sydney Opera house is often considered as a
masterpiece of twentieth-century architecture. Despite all the underpinnings of the project, it is
both nationally and internationally admired. As such, it garners a lot of tourists who play a
beneficial role in the structure. It is a multi-venue iconic masterpiece in Australia with
accommodation of various genres of arts. Opera house started its construction in 1957 under the
supervision and knowledge of a Danish architect called Utzon (Landorf, 2019).
He managed to land this project by winning an architectural competition organized by the
south wales government. The most intriguing thing about this project is how it was under-
budgeted at 7 million, and then it skyrocketed to over 100 million dollars. The blowout in cost
brought a lot of issues that contributed to the success or the failure in terms of risk, change, and
governance. Consequently, this paper shifts its focus on evaluating the success and failures of the
Sydney harbor opera house. It focuses on the three primary risk factors, as well as change and
governance.
Successes and failures in terms of the three areas of risk of the Sydney harbor opera house
Failures
Even at the start of the project, various factors were mandatory for consideration. In this
context, there were a lot of uncertainties and risks associated with the opera house project. First,
Utzon won the project even though his design was not completed at that moment. It, therefore,
meant that risks relating to cost, scheduled timeline, and performance were not clearly outlaid.
Typically, risks relating to the price is crucial as it helps to know the estimate of the budget
required. Also, it helps to avoid escalation of the total cost, as seen in the Sydney opera house

harbor project (Dwyer, 2017). Schedule risk is concerned with the duration through which the
project will take. Ideally, it can be significantly affected by cost risk if it is not clearly outlined.
Moreover, the entire project relies on its ability to accomplish specified objectives. If the project
fails to produce results that are consistent with the project specification, then the project will be
affected to a great length.
Nevertheless, various proponents of the Sydney project deceived the lawmakers by
lowballing the project to be given the contract. Doing this does not consider the risks of cost. As
such, as the project continued to advanced, extreme cost issues started to arise, which led to the
significant delay of the project. Financially, this project is considered the most disastrous project
in the history of architecture. For analysis purposes, failing to consider the cost factors means
that financial and management plans were not streamlined (Chiu, Kılınçer, and Tabrizi, 2019). As
mentioned herein, Utzon won the contract has not completed the design itself; as such, it was
challenging to make a concise decision on the project goals. There was no identification of the
cost limits, even as presented in the competition. A closer look into this project clearly illustrated
a total lack of financial goal setting mechanism regarding the project. For instance, during the
construction process, the sails that were used for the roofing were mostly made from pre-cast
concrete.
However, the resultant was not highly appreciated as it was considered heavy to the
extent that it had to be demolished and rebuilt. It sums up to the costal factors before extensive
failure. Besides, doing this affected the schedule of the project as it did not have to take a longer
time. Initial planning and execution processes created a significant setback that affected the
time, method, and cost of the Sydney opera house project. Either way, cost factors were coupled
with political disputes as a result of a dented relationship between the manager and the financer
of the

project. As such, the government started relenting on providing funds for the project. As the
project continued, there were constant problems and arguments on the cost and the interior
design between Utzon and the government.
Choosing the very conceptual model design created exposure to various risks in project
management. On the side, inexperienced judges flopped in deciding since Utzon's diagram was
very schematic and rudimental. It means that the project had the uncertainty of scope and the
desired quality of the plan (Anderson and O'Connor, 2019). Either way, Utzon had limited
experience with large buildings. In essence, in the past, Utzon had not yet supervised the
construction of such a structure before. Besides, a bright look into his designs illustrates that the
plan did not meet the minimum requirements of the competition.
Furthermore, he had not consulted any specialist or structural engineer concerning the
baseline of the project. As such, his design was being operated on a shadow with no prior
knowledge of the plausibility of the construction. As such, poor judgment was a failure in
exposing the project to a considerable length of risks. It led to significant changes in the quality
and scope of the project. Regarding the project management risk, Utzon's designs were well
ahead of their time. As of 1959, when the project was beginning, there still existed no known
methods of construction (Abyad, 2019). To further complicate the existing problem,
complications regarding conflicts in the design erupted in many instances. Surprisingly, the
Sydney project had no project manager to run all the processes.
Even still, it was considered that Utzon would analyze and make decisions concerning the
project. Nevertheless, this was not the case, as the project structure kept changing over time,
depicting a lack of consistency. Redesigning the initial design seemed challenging and
expensive, to the point of affecting the project implementation procedure. The opera house