The Problems Faced by Denver International Airport
The Denver International Airport was opened in the year 1995 and was critically acclaimed for its beautiful design and layout because of its passenger friendly despite of its huge size. Apart from all these, there was a delay of about sixteen month of DIA’s grand opening. The airport planned for fully computerized baggage transport system which would have minimum human interaction it can be moved around the twenty two miles tracks but was never achieved in time so regular traditional tug and cart method was used. There were many attempts to go fully computerized but was later dropped after several failures (Denverpost.com 2017).
The following report states what the problems were and how it can be fixed with the help of Project Management System.
Project Management is the way in which changes are made in an organization so that it works more efficiently. Companies achieve their goals by completing the objectives. It involves planning and organizing the tasks in order to complete them. The information is usually stored in the project manual which is described at the very beginning of the project. These are defined into two constraints- Primary and Secondary. Scope, Time, Quality and Budget all fall under the primary constraint and secondary constraints involves in the necessity to meet pre defined objectives (Heagney 2016).
Project Management is very much important in an organization as it helps the company officials to deal with the responsibilities of the organizations. Understand the project management helps any organization to deal with large scale projects, with minimal budget and disruption to the rest of the business. With the help of project management, unique product, services or process can be achieved. In this form, only experience is required and no blueprints are made. With this, many large scale business plans can be made possible. Completing a task within the given timeline can be achieved with the help of project management. It also keeps a project on budget and price can be anticipated early (Burke 2013).
The main purpose is to evaluate all the shortcomings that the airport faced after its inauguration in the year 1995 and why there was a delay of sixteen months. It also focuses on why the airport stopped after so many trails of automated baggage system and what could have been done in order to stop that public humiliation from occurring (Denverpost.com 2017).
There were many problems that the airport had to face during its grand opening. The first one is the cost. The system they planned on doing was fully automated baggage system but it malfunctioned and to recover that, the airport needed much more money which ultimately resulted in the over budget of the project. The second one is the time. They thought that making the baggage system automatic, they would reduce the time by thirty minutes and this whole thing was meant to be complete in the short time span of two years. Due to this fact, there was a delay of about sixteen months as the system malfunctioned at the last moment. The third problem is the quality. DIA was unable to give the quality of services to their customers which they promised. The last problem was result. They failed to anticipate the complexity and resulted in public humiliation (Heagney 2016).
What is Project Management?
Without better planning and having a contingency the project can go over budget and it could prove to be a failure. Also one should maintain the consistency from the very beginning of the process. Managers should have made a good project planning before moving further. The network designers did not estimated the complexity of the project and neither backup plan nor any recovery plan was build to cope up with the problems. Also what the airport official touted about their airport was not achieved and for this the officials had to face public humiliation (Johnson 2017).
Due to poor project planning and inefficient cost estimation, there was a delay of sixteen months for the opening of the airport. The baggage system designers did not expected the system malfunctions (Schwalbe 2015). This was mainly due to the fact of improper planning. Also, the cost planning was also miscalculated due to which the airport had to face severe loss. This mainly caused due to the fact that the project needed more time but it was slated to be complete within two years and due to this hurry, the officials did not get the time for maintenance of the systems and failed miserably (Denverpost.com 2017).
The next problem was the failing of systems due to poor maintenance and poor judgment. The problem with the line balancing was that it was expected to receive all the bags in the carts and sending them to the destination but it was not fulfilled as the algorithms needed to do so was not fully optimized which resulted in a large queue of carts in the line. The algorithm failed to see how many carts were there and even if they were there, there was a delay of delivering the bags to the spot where it needed. This mainly happened due to poor optimization of the computer systems (Johnson 2017).
The managers who are involved in this project should have made a better project planning. This also includes the cost efficiency and risk management of the project which has to be evaluated and looked upon into the matter more closely. The systems that were managing all the things in the airport should have been maintained properly (Flyvbjerg 2014).
Project life cycle consists of four phases namely Project Initiation, Project Planning, Project Execution and Project Closure. To avoid any sort of problems, the managers at the airport should have followed the project life cycle and made their plans accordingly. The main advantage of following the project life cycle is that with this, the managers would not have to face any problems and the project would have been completed in a timely manner. Also the managers should have come up with a backup plan in case if there is some malfunctioning of electrical devices, it could have been corrected (Kerzner 2013) (Walker 2015).
Importance of Project Management in an Organization
It is very useful to use controlling and tracking so that the teams knows the project is moving with the plan and if there is any problem, they can act and save the project. This was not the case when it came to building the automated system. There was a hurry of finishing the work and no plan was made and no communication with the experts also with led to the failure of the project and in order to save that happening, there was an over budget of about $600 million USD (Johnson 2017).
Communication also plays a vital role in the project management. Without communication, no work can proceed further and the team members would not know what is happening. Also if there is any problem, it should be discussed in order to act quickly. Also while maintaining the systems, the team members should keep in touch with each other and give all the necessary information needed. All the final result should have been collected and send it to the managers to take any further action regarding that. In this way, they could have avoided the large queues of carts that were unnecessarily waiting there (Johnson 2017).
Conclusion
The Denver International Airport was supposedly to become the world’s most advance airport with its fully automated baggage system but at the end it was never achieved. The main reason of failing of the project is because of poor management system. Also lack of understanding the complexity of the systems was also a cause of the failure. The project was completed in a very short period of time without proper planning and due to this there was malfunction in the system and to fix this, the budget went over what was expected. No risk management was taken under care of and poor design was also a reason for the failure.
References
Larson, E.W. and Gray, C.F., 2011. Project management: The managerial process.
Johnson, K. (2017). Denver Airport Saw the Future. It Didn’t Work.. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/27/us/denver-airport-saw-the-future-it-didnt-work.html?_r=0 [Accessed 2 Mar. 2017].
Denverpost.com. (2017). Denver International Airport: Lessons revisited – The Denver Post. [online] Available at: https://www.denverpost.com/2015/02/27/denver-international-airport-lessons-revisited/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2017].
Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.
Flyvbjerg, B., 2014. Megaproject planning and management: Essential readings, vols 1-2. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Bal, M., Bryde, D., Fearon, D. and Ochieng, E., 2013. Stakeholder engagement: Achieving sustainability in the construction sector. Sustainability, 5(2), pp.695-710.
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