Project Management: Quality Issues Analysis of Royal Adelaide Hospital

This case study examines the project quality issues surrounding the construction of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, focusing on the cost and time overruns that led to a partially unsuccessful outcome. The analysis delves into the factors contributing to these issues, including inadequate planning, lac...Read More

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

Introduction:
In many recent projects it has been seen that a project has become a failure due to
various of quality aspects which includes time, cost, scope or reputation (Kerzner & Kerzner,
2017). In such type of scenarios the time and the cost has become most challenging part for
handling the project as in most of the cases it has been seen that the project has faced quality
issues due to the time and cost overrun and due to that in many cases it has been seen that the
project has become a total failure. When a project does not completes within the limited cost
and time it might not holds the value that it should provide.
One example of this type of project in Australia was the project of new Royal
Adelaide Hospital which has also faced quality related issues as cost and the time for the
project both overrun in the same time and the budget for the project actually raised to 35%
more from the initial budget. Also, it missed its initial completion data and delayed by 76
days. Thus in this essay a wide range of information will be explored for analysing the
project quality issues regarding the new Royal Adelaide Hospital for a deep level
understanding of the selected case.
Literature Review:
The project quality management is the activities and processes which are used for
finding out the quality deliverables of the project. Here in this case a quality project means
ensuring some basic things for the project that are quite important. These basic needs for the
project are the scope, reputation, cost and time required for the project and in this case the
most important ones are the time and cost that are most important quality factors. Here the
chosen project for the analysis is the construction project of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital
which faced quality related issues as both of the cost and the deadline for the project was

overrun (Kearney et al., 2016). Thus in this aspects project management quality framework
will be assessed and various of quality issues will be demonstrated.
According to the authors Sunjka and Jacob delay in the project occurs when the
stipulated duration of the project completion does not achieved. Project delays can be various
of types in the project that are non-excusable delays, excusable non-compensable delays
excusable non-compensable delays and excusable compensable delays. Excusable non-
compensable delays are considered as the delays that are out of control form both of the
contractor and the owner (Ibironke et al., 2013). Non-excusable delays are considered as the
delays that occurs due to the contractor of the project. Excusable compensable delays are
considered as the delays that occurs due to the project owner and lastly the concurrent delays
are the delays that occurs due to the mistakes of both the owner and the contractor of the
project. Here for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital the owner of the project was state
government of the Australia and the contractor of the project was SA Health Partnership Ltd.
In this case it has been assessed that the project was delayed due to the SA Health Partnership
Ltd. which was the project contractor. This contractor has failed to assess the project
requirement and due to that the project was delayed. Thus as per the authors inadequate
planning is the main reason behind the failure of this project (Harrison & Lock, 2017). The
authors also described that inadequate type of planning not only lead to the project delay but
also it is one of the prior reason of project budget overrun that is also faced by the
construction project of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.
As per the Project Management Institute, quality management of the projects are very
much important for a successful completion of the project. As per this, quality defines an
attribute or characteristics of something which is degree or grade of excellence (Mir &
Pinnington, 2014). In the scope of quality, the quality management is scoping, planning,
monitoring and implementing quality in all phases of the project. The quality management

includes the skill of managing and forming a group or team of people for achieving
qualitative goal within the given timeframe and cost. The next is quality assurance and this
begins with proceedings and planning of design, engineering, materials and speciation of
project scheduling and planning. The quality control defines it is the monitoring process with
the contractors for strictly following the specification of the project and testing of the
methods that are used in the project. Cost effectiveness is another factor regarding the quality
and it is achieved by building a quality project. Cost effectiveness can be achieved through
subsequent operation of a project. If there is no quality throughout then no cost effectiveness
achieved in the project. In the case of new Royal Adelaide Hospital quality control is not
maintained throughout the project and due to that it was obvious that the project will not
become a cost effective one.
A recent research on the project of new Royal Adelaide Hospital has stated that this
project was a public - private partnership project which was done between the Australian
Government and the SA Health Pty Ltd. While the project was in the development stage this
project was facing several of challenges that has affected the project. As per the auditor report
of 2015 different types of changes was initiated in the project for assurance service that
impacted transition, operational progress and the planning of the project (Jelodar, Yiu &
Wilkinson, 2016). From the audit risk management report of the project it has been identified
that several area of the project was demanding improvement and the decisions that are taken
by the management of the project caused cost pressures and high potential of project delays
that resulted failure of meeting the PPP contract and due to that the condition of the project
becomes more critical.
The auditor general supplementary report regarding the new Royal Adelaide Hospital
presented different types of risks that were presented in the project and due to this risk the
project was compromising with the quality. In this report it was recommended to modify the

ICT services to improve the current situation but due to miscommunication this thing ignored
and the overall risk increased. For any type of project the success of the project based on its
quality factors and it was clear that the project failed to meet the quality factors. Thus in this
case the auditor recommended to provide regular updates on the progress report for
successful tracking of the project progress. A constant report was able to find solution to any
type of difficulties that have found in the during the project execution.
With the time overrun, budget or cost overrun was also a big issue in the new Royal
Adelaide Hospital and quality of the project was also compromised due to that. There can be
various of reasons behind the budget overrun of a project and the most common reasons is the
project deadline overrun. It is normal if the timeline of the project increases then the cost of
running the project will also increase. It has been assessed that the main reason behind the
budget overrun for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital was the project delay (Walker, 2015).
Though the project delay was the main reason behind the budget overrun, there were some
another reasons also which influenced the budget overrun of the project which were lack of
coordination and lack of contingency plan. In the middle of the project the PPP agreement of
the project broke down and due to that lack of coordination occurred. Also, there was no
contingency plan due to which it was impossible to change the project planning for avoiding
project budget overrun. Thus it is very much important to manage this type of risks in the
projects for getting utmost quantity from the project.
Quality control and quality assurance plays an important role in the construction
project. However review of the industry report related to the construction project shows that
maintaining quality in the construction project is not easy at all and most of the time project
managers find it extremely difficult to ensure quality in the overall project (Koh, Rowlinson
& Shen, 2018). Here from the industry report this issues has been identified which occurred
within the project of new Royal Adelaide Hospital. Although reason for the quality variation

varies project to project, those issues are classified four categories such as managerial or
stakeholder, technical, environmental, material or equipment or sometimes it is due to the
cultural or political issues as well (Simatupang & Sridharan, 2016). These issues are
discussed in details in this context.
Managerial/Stakeholder:
Lack of contractor supervision: supervision plays an important role in the construction
project which supervise construction sites to identify if health, safety and quality guidelines
are properly followed (Kamaruddin, Mohammad & Mahbub, 2016). Sometimes lack of
supervision results in bad quality in the construction projects.
Subcontractor neglects responsibility: subcontractors often does not seems to bother about
quality of materials and instead focus on profit which results in supply of low quality
materials which leads to low quality construction
Poor quality procedure: it is often seen that constructions projects often lacks dedicated
quality procedures (Ekeskär & Rudberg, 2018). Due to this projects often fails to ensure
quality in the design and development of the construction projects.
Lack of quality department: another important reason that is responsible for low quality in
the construction projects.
Lack of auditing system: improper or lack of auditing makes it difficult to identify issues in
the quality of the projects which leads to the quality violation (Ramlee et al., 2016).
Apart from this important factors, some other significant factors leading to quality
issues in this category are lack of process improvement, poor training system, supplier
impact, lack of quality policy, low effective project management system, lack of management
commitment, and bureaucracy.

Technical:
Lack of quality in drawing and specification: this issue is often seen in large and complex
construction projects as design needs to be highly accurate and issue in the design means that
the entire project is affected.
Design complexity: design complexity often crates confusion within the workers and due to
this quality in the project is often compromised (Mubarak, 2015) which leads to a poor
construction project.
Quality tools and techniques are poor in performance: detailed assessment of the industry
reports makes it clear that in some projects although quality tools and techniques are
deployed, they are of poor quality and lack in performance which is another reason for
quality issues in the projects.
Environment / Material / Equipment:
Project size: it is also identified that sometimes projects are so large in size that it becomes
difficult to maintain quality measures in the project execution.
Project complexity: complexity in the projects is another important reason for lack of
project quality.
Material/Equipment specification is not clear: this makes it difficult for the workers to
maintain quality in the construction work.
Cultural / Political:
Lack of motivation: due to lack of motivation, workers often neglect the assigned work and
does not care about quality of work which leads to lack of quality in the construction projects
(Francom & El Asmar, 2015).

Low tendency to teamwork: this is another important reason which affects quality of the
construction projects.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that the project of the new Royal
Adelaide Hospital become partially failure due to not maintaining the quality factors of the
project. It has been assessed the two quality factors that have been missed in this project was
the time and the cost. In the case of the project time it was overdue by a huge margin of 76
days which made this project partially unsuccessful. Costing factor was also an issue for the
project as the total cost of the project increased by 35% which also contributed in the failure
of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. In this literature review first the project management
quality framework has been identified. In this case it has been assessed that the four main
quality factors are the reputation, cost, scope and the reputation. The audit report of the
project shows that there were various internal mistakes have been made in the project due to
which the project got delayed. In this report also various of industry report has been identified
for the identification of the quality issues. Thus from the research the most important quality
factor that have been found are the costing factor and the budgeting factor.

References:
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