The Wembley National Stadium Project - Case Study Example

Project Management Introduction Organizations are involved in various projects, relatively small to big, which require a commitment of time and money in order to achieve expected outcomes. This calls for application of skills and techniques in the process of managing the project. Project Management is described as “the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements”1. Tinnirello2 defines project management as the knowledge, techniques and tools “for controlling requirements, setting a realistic scope, creating feasible schedule, defining responsibilities and managing expectations.”3 A project management is described as successful when the project is completed within the time stipulated, within the set budget and meets the specified performance levels and delivers to the satisfaction of the client.4 This process is used to predict of foresee the problems and dangers of a project. Therefore project management involves planning, organizing and controlling activities so that projects are delivered successfully regardless of all the risks involved. The work of project management starts before the initiation of the work and before any resources are committed and it continues until the project objectives are met. The project manager’s primary objective is to deliver a project that satisfies the “the project sponsor and all the other principal stakeholders, within the promised timescale and without using more money and other resources than those that were originally budgeted.”5 This paper critically assesses the project management process; initiating, planning, implementation, monitoring, control and closure and appraises the applied managerial skills that are important to effective and efficient project management. It also evaluates the personal qualities and attributes required of a project manager. This assessment uses the Wembley National Stadium’s project as a case study. It will provide an analysis of the project management method used, its successes and failures. Finally it offers recommendations using Prince2 as a model. Case Study The Wembley National Stadium project involves the construction a new national stadium within the time window of 1999 to 2002. This project is an advancement of the already existing Wembley Plc. to a new stadium on England for football, rugby and partly athletics. The English Sports Council came up with an initiative to develop an English National Stadium in November 1994. In 1996, the English Sports Council (Sport England) confirmed Wembley to be the site for the proposed national stadium.6 The project was to be implemented by The English National Trust (ENST) which later became The English National Stadium Development Company Ltd (ENSDC). ENSDC became Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL) in 1999. The initial cost of building the stadium was set at £120 million which was provided through the Lottery grant. Between 1996 and 1999, £3.2 million was spent on the initial design work and the expenses that were incurred during the negotiation of the purchase of the old Wembley stadium business.7 The project was initiated in July 1999. The contractor decided that athletics would not be a part of the new stadium. This required the Football Association (FA) to refund the £20 of the Lottery grant that had been offered to Sport England. Contractactual problems later erupted which resulted in a court battle between WNSL, FA and Sport England. The project was reviewed in 2001 under the directive of The Secretary of State after FA proposed a partnership with the government on the project, which would include a £150 million financial assistance.8 The review led to suggestions of a design revision. The Secretary of State also decided that the athletics events would still part of the project. Later there were changes on the number of seats in the stadium. The initial approach was to use the private sector to fund the project which failed, the request to the government also failed which resulted to revision of the design and it excluded visitor attraction, hotel and office accommodation. The report on the review requested by the Secretary of State led to a change in the corporate governance. The representative board structure was abandoned and a reduced team was appointed under a new chairman. The Culture, Media and Sports Committee report estimates the total cost of the finished Wembley project at £715 million which was spent on “land, design, finance costs, infrastructure, legal fees, WNSL running costs and other matters”9 The culture, Media and Sport Committee had the mandate of examining the expenditure, administration and policy of the Wembley Stadium Projects, a project of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.10 Problems of the Wembley Project Management The Wembley project started on a bad note with a delay of two years due to financial and political problems. The major failures of the project are on cost management and delays (time management).The project was completed one year late and the budget was more than £300 million above the stipulated budget. In addition, there were contractual issues between WNSL and Tropus which resulted to a dispute. Furthermore, The Lottery Funding Agreement was breached. There several bodies that were involved in the Wembley project; the WNSL, FA, Sport England and DCMS. There was no clear distinction of roles especially those of the public funders and private enterprise. The report by the Culture, Media and Sports Committee suggest that there was a blurring of responsibilities which resulted in confusion of the objectives and the responsibilities. Report shows that the foundation was built using the wrong type of concrete. The arch design was also changed. The project saw the death of a scaffold worker. In addition, there was the strike of workers that resulted after 200 of them were released after a disagreement on breaks and working hours. Furthermore, the chairman of the contractor was changed and the company almost collapsed. WNSL was founded on £120 million Lottery money, a private approach, which was not wise considering that the Wembley project was a high-profile and complex kind of project. It was the responsibility of Sports England to monitor the progress of the project. It shouldered the decision making role. However, reports show that it was sloppy and slack in this role. Sports England did not make it certain whether athletics was to be included in the project. This left WNSL to assumptions that later brought problems. The management structure and the procedures espoused were inadequate for such a complex project like Wembley stadium’s. The Culture, Media and Sports Committee observes that “the design of the stadium and the ancillary facilities was not subject to robust budgetary control; the design was distorted, and made more costly, by the structure of the land purchase deal”11 In addition, the procurement process cannot be termed as competitive nor accurate. The committee also report that “the management of risk, the construction programme and the value and viability of the project were poor with options for improvement not pursued.”12 Tropus supplied contract staff who worked at a junior level in WNSL and they knew very little about the company’s affairs. WNSL agreed that the Tropus report fell on three major areas; there was a problem with the process used to obtain the construction contract, corporate governance and the management style. The review revealed that there were poor standards of practice in the construction contract procurement and the board is to blame for lax oversight in the process. Recommendations Based on Prince2 method Most of the project management methods show that the project goes through a lifecycle which is classified into different phases. The basic phases include initiation, planning, implementation and termination. The planning and implementation stages are the most complicated and the success of the project is determined by how well these stages are managed.13 The many areas that can go wrong in a project have been categorised in four broad categories; planning, people control and execution.14 The people involved in the project can influence the outcome of the project. This calls for people management skills on the part of the project manager. Planning is one of the most essential aspects of the project. Without a specific need that and stipulated achievable targets, the project is likely to fail. There are many project management methods that are used but Prince2 is acclaimed to have best practices in project management. Prince2 is a structured process-based project management method. It shows the management activities to be carried out in each process in the course of a project. It specifies eight management processes that are involved from when a project is initiated to its completion; starting a project, initiating a project, planning a project, directing a project, controlling a stage, managing product delivery, managing stage boundaries and closing a project. Through the phases there are components at different stages of the processes. They include the business case, organization, plans, controls, management of risk, quality in a project environment, configuration management and change control. PRINCE2 is able to work with some of the techniques which put into practice project management best practice. PRINCE2 specifically uses the Product-based Planning, change control and quality reviews.15 One of the problems that the Wembley stadium project experienced is ambiguity of the roles that the different bodies were supposed to play. The Prince2 manual16 specifies that this should have been done in the starting up stage. This process has the objective of ensuring that the authorities for the project management exist. In addition, it is at this process that individuals who will take roles in the project are appointed, the work required for project initiation is planned and the hosting organization for the project is informed. Although the rest of the things were done, lack of defining the key roles of each group involved in the project was overlooked or loosely done. The project manger should ensure that every party that is involved in the project know certainly what their roles and responsibilities are to avoid conflicts. It is at this stage that the process description is done; the customer expectations are drawn out, the acceptance criteria for the project is determined, an early analysis of risks facing the project and the outline of the business case is drawn on the information that the project mandate provides.17 The project manager is expected to plan for this stage. Initiating a project is the next stage in the Prince2 method, in this stage, WNSL should have planed hoe the right quality of product would be produced, plan the project, put the business care in perspective or expand it and re-assess the risks. In addition, it is at this stage that they could have identified how the products would be controlled and set up the necessary controls. This process was marred in the Wembley project because it was not done adequately. The cost of the stadium from the Old Wembley rose so high that should this step had been followed well enough and risks should have been identified, especially in view of the business case. It is in this phase that a finite time could have been projected, for every stage of the process and when the project could have ended. WNSL did not adequately perfume the role of directing the project. Directing the project is a process that takes place from the starting to the closure of the project. This is a day-to-day basis task that should take place in every stage. As much as this process was to be overseen by several bodies, the project board is responsible for ensuring that this process is adequately carried out. The project manager’s input is highly required and his ability to liaise with the different departments on decisions made and the reason behind the reasons greatly impacts on the success of the project. The failures of the Wembley project in the different phases lie on the ability of the project manager to control the project. Control, according to Office of Government Finance,18 means that the project management team is to deliver on the project within the tolerance that is already set. The quality has to be maintained, the cost, effort and time agreed has to be adhered to and the ultimate goal is to achieve the stipulated benefits. Rodrigues and Williams19 agree that the effects need to be analysed and quantified to make certain that the time and costs of the project does not run out of control. The foundation of the Wembley project being built on the wrong concrete, the cost going to over £300 million overboard implies a lack of adherence to good management practices. Control involves assessing progress at every phase. This would reveal how far or close the project is to the desired outcome. Resource utilization should be monitored as well as the product development. Prince2 method uses the managing stage boundaries process to ensure that before one phase is considered complete and the team moves to the next one, the correct focus of the project is confirmed. The transition of one stage to the other should involve a planning of the next stage, a review of the previous one and an update of the business case. The risk situation is also assessed and the project plan is rechecked. The Wembley project management does not do this until there is a dispute between WNSL and Tropus. This stage by stage reviewing, planning and refocusing on the project could have kept the project within reasonable time and would direct to risks to be planned for. The problems in the Wembley project demonstrate serious flaws in the planning process. Planning advises all personnel on what is required, how it will be achieved, by whom and when.20 Prince2 employs the Product-based planning technique in this phase. This process requires the team to have planning tools especially cost estimating tools. The project manager has the task of ensuring that every department and team has a working plan that shows the time to be used, the resources to be employed for the particular job and the product quality. Prince2’s philosophy is that the project must be driven by the business case. This is the description for the case and the justification for undertaking the project. It is founded on the estimated costs, the risks involved and the benefits in the outcome. The business case should focus on the overall business not just some elements. McRudden asserts that projects have many risk factors, but what underlies them are “the skills, knowledge and preparedness of the project manager.”21 Proper practice in Risk analysis could have suggested to WNSL on the risks involved with its chairman leaving and lack of people management. In addition, this component could have foreseen the dispute with terminating the contract with Tropus. The risk of a lawsuit should have been envisaged and necessary steps taken to avoid the cost and time lost in the process. Without proper and careful control, changes in the project greatly ruin the project. There were so many changes in the course of the Wembley project. Change control means the assessment of the impact of the changes, the cost they will add on the overall budget and making a decision whether to include the change or not. The changing of the stadium initial design as well as the cost design added more cost on the Wembley project since change control management practices were not adopted. WNSL board is blamed for a lack of sufficient monitoring. They also failed to meet the expected standards of governance. In regard to this, The Culture, Media and Sports Committee report that, WNSL did not follow a sufficiently formal procurement process, “they conducted parallel procurement processes for the same contract, making it difficult to have a fully competitive process.”22 In addition, it was disputed that WNSL favoured Multiplex over other contractors. Should they have observed the set standards, any potential conflicts could have been envisaged and ways of dealing with them devised. Wembley National Stadium should have adopted transparency, accountability and high standards of conduct. Client management skills are important is a project is to be successful. Initially as Aritua et al23 observe, the work of a project manager in construction project was to control and coordinate between the building professions and the production process on-site. However, client management has become increasingly important to the success of the project and especially a project like the Wembley Stadium project. Such projects are run by chairman and a board of directors who are the client or they promote the project. This project called for high client management skills which would have reduced the number of conflicts experienced among the parties involved. Therefore the project manager is required to have people skills in order to relate with the diverse clients to the project as well as the other personnels on-set. Closing a project is the last phase in Prince2 where the desired product, in this case the finished Wembley National Stadium, is delivered to the customer. The achievements of the expected benefits are examined and the project manager reports on the project performance. The main aim is to find out whether all the objectives of the project are achieved. Prince2 uses techniques that could have helped the project manager in the Wembley project to avoid some of the problems that the project experienced. One of them is change control approach. The project involved a lot of changes. The change to exclude athletics in the project seemed very indecisive. At one point it is excluded, at another, the State Secretary maintains it has to remain. Doing a change impact analysis could have helped the project manager determine that excluding athletics only escalated the cost problems they already has since they had to refund some of the money in the Lottery grant. Finally, carrying out a quality review, another technique that Prince2 uses, helps in early identification of defect in the product. This allow for improvements to be made. This process could have given an objective measurement of the management progress as well as provide an opportunity for all the groups with interest in the project to work together. Office of Government finance carried the quality review for the Wembley project, however, it was done at the end the project. Prince2 however recommends that it should be carried in the planning process, managing product delivery, authorising the work package and assessing progress. Managing product delivery is the one process that covered the construction of the desired stadium; hence reviews should have allowed the project manager to determine whether they were making the desired product. One of the most important areas in quality reviews for the Wembley project would have been in the process of assessing progress which deals with progress monitoring and reporting. The reviews would ensure that problems are identified and dealt with early in every stage thereby minimizing the problems that marked the Wembley project especially cost and time. That is why, a project manager should be efficient and well organized, able to delegate, have a drive, have a wide repertoire of experiences as well as communication skills and most importantly understand business and technology. Conclusion Project management, especially of a complex nature like the Wembley stadium project, requires professional project managers with qualities and attributes that will ensure effective and efficient project management. Although the project involves a lot of people from its initiation to completion, it is the project manager who is acclaimed when the project succeeds or blamed when the project does not measure up to standard. Wembley stadium project was marred by many problems. This means that projects need an appropriate method to manage its processes of implementing, monitoring, directing and controlling a project. Prince2 method is a good model to adopt in such high-risk projects and following it ardently would ensure better outcomes and successful projects. References Aritua, B., Bower, D., and Turner, M, 2008, Managing the Delivery of Iconic Football Stadiums in England, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers Management, Procurement and Law, Issue MP2, PP. 55-60. Brill, J. M., Bishop, M. J and Walker, A. E., 2006, The competencies and Characteristics of an Effective Project Manager: A Web – Based Delphi Study, Educational Technology Research Development, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 115-140. Lock, D., 2007, Project Management 9th Ed, Gower Publishing Ltd, UK. (p. 1) Culture, Media and Sport Committee, 2002, Wembley National Project: Injury Time, Sixth Report of Session 2001-02, Vol. 1. McCrudden, N., 2010, Project Management: a Vital Skill, Leisure Review, Available online at: http://www.theleisurereview.co.uk/articles10/projectmanagement.html Office of Government Finance, 2002, PRINCE2, The Stationery Office, London. Project Management Institute, 2004, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 3rd Ed, Newtown Square, PA. (P. 8) Behaviour on Project Performance, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 2-15. Rodrigues, A. G. and Williams, T. M., 1998, Systems Dynamics in Project Management: Assessing the Impacts of Client Behaviour on Project performance, Journal of Operation Research Society, vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 2-15. Tinnirello, P. C., 2000, Project management, New York: Auerbach Read More