Critical Analysis of Sydney Opera House Construction Project

Sydney Opera House
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Table of Contents
Background of the company and the project case......................................................................3
Discussion of standard criteria, such as those emerging in the reference section......................5
Critical identification and justification of the criteria you think appropriate.............................6
Critical analysis of the case based on the criteria chosen..........................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
Suggestions or recommendations...............................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10
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Background of the company and the project case
Sydney Opera House is one of the best iconic buildings commonly regarded as Australia’s
global symbol. The construction of the Sydney Opera House started in the year 1959.
Architect Jon Utzon from Denmark won in the architecture competition organized by the
government of New South Wales for new building in the year 1957. The project of
constructing Opera House in Sydney was scheduled originally for four years. AUS $7 million
was the budget allocated for the Opera House construction project. The construction of the
Opera House took 14 years and AUS $102 million was the total cost of the construction
(Irvine, 2013).
Sydney Opera House is one of the most disastrous projects of construction. The construction
project of Opera House in Sydney was not only disastrous in term of finance management
but the management plan for its construction was also not effective, which resulted in the
project management failure of the Opera House in Sydney (MIT OpenCourseware, 2011).
It is important to clearly define the objectives and the goals of the project by the client, in
order to provide with the accurate guidelines. The three main factors in the project
management are: quality, time and cost. In Sydney Opera House case, the quality was most
important and it was an unrestricted goal of the project due to which, the project was
launched. There were no indications related to the cost and the time limits provided for the
competition. The architects had freedom to design the Opera House according to them. Utzon
presented the report containing the indications related to sections, plans and the reports by the
consultants. The funds were obtained from lottery and hence, there was no financial burden
on the government (ABC Innovation, 2012). In terms of time planning, the goal was defined
to complete the construction project till the end of 1962. It was decided that the grand
opening of the Opera House will be commenced in the beginning of 1963. The construction
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of Opera House should have lasted for four years only however, it got extended greatly owing
to inefficient planning and management.
Utzon was more focused on the designing of the Opera House and he completely ignored the
factor of time and cost which created problems. There was no such project manager
appointed for managing the entire project. There was just collaboration among Arup and
Utzon (Khan, 2017). For the purpose of the supervision, a part time executive committee was
formed. The members had the lack of the technical skills. For the project team, the
government became an obstacle as the changes were made by the government during the
operations, which resulted in the delays and the cost overrun. The public was also an indirect
stakeholder as they were worried about the project success.
The problems were faced since very beginning of the project. It was protested by Utzon that
the designs for Opera House structure had not been finished. However, it was still insisted by
the government that the construction had to get started. Along with this, the requirements of
the clients related to the design were changed after the construction was over. They wanted to
construct four theatres instead of two. This had demanded the modification in the designs and
the plan in the later stage (Swmoore, 2009).
The initial financial estimation for the project was drawn for the incomplete designs and
hence later, the contractors claimed AUS $ 1.2 million more in 1962, because of changes in
designs. The first stage of the project completed in 1963 and consumed extra cost and
resulted in project delay
In the second stage, the new government stepped in. All the payments were monitored by the
new government. The architect submitted the project estimate of AUS$ 12.5 million. More
payments were delivered but no such progress in the construction was seen. Due to the cost
overrun, the government began holding back the payments and forced Utzon to resign in
1966. After that, the project was undertaken by three engineers and the second stage was
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