Boston Big Dig Project Sample Assignment

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Introduction

Issues in Boston Big Dig Project and their Impacts

All the expectations and estimates made in the beginning of the project were very brighter and concise according to the NASA and they concluded that “no single catastrophic event or small number of contracts caused costs to escalate (Nicholas and Steyn, 2017). Multiple decisions by project management across all contracts contributed to the increment in the cost.” Following were the causes of the escalation in the cost and expected schedule:

The project management team was also responsible for such enhancement in the budget and the schedule as the project was heavily relied on the integrative and collaborative decision-making (Helbrecht, 2016). However, different decisions at different levels without having any consistency and precision affect the project to be delayed so much. During 1998 July, the project construction was almost completed up to 46% and 99 percent of the design was completed, after that the project was completely oriented with proper integrative and collaborative decision-making (Arcand, 2016).

There were many communication gap between the external and internal stakeholders that was another lagging factor for the growth and development of the project (Siebenmann, Yu and Bachus, 2015). There were 110 in total managers involved within the project for the successful delivery of the project, who were intensely complicated legal, technical and economic and many of the procedures and processes were based on the complex regulatory scheme. Big project might face some complex processes but facing many complex processes made it difficult to understand everyone on how to drive the project in right direction. This lead to the wrong estimation of the cost and schedule of the social and community involved during the development of the project (Kim et al., 2018). There was not any precaution plan against the total cost investment on dealing with the numerous regulatory agencies, auditors, media, neighborhood stakeholders, and community interests.

Mega projects do related to the series of the uncertain events those could have led to very changes in the planning and development of the project. These projects might face struggle with the technical complexities, unforeseen events, political challenges, environmental challenges, community concerns, and massive regulatory requirements. Following are the specific learnings gain from the Big Dig Project (Geroldi, 2017):

The Project integration has been a critical subject for the successful delivery of the project.

Recommendations

Following recommendations could be made those could have delivered the project in an efficient and effective manner:

Managing the milestones: Since all the milestones of the project were not being accomplished within the expected schedule and budget that was the main reason behind the failure of the project. If the milestones were some how managed within the expected schedule, it could have eliminated all the drawbacks of the project.

Proper and experienced leadership: The project was also lagging in the proper managerial and leadership attitudes and if the project was under proper leadership, he or she could have managed the project in an effective and efficient manner. He could have estimated the project risks of the construction and these factors would might have protected the project from being failure.

Glied, S. & Teutsch, S.M., (2016). How can economics advance prevention?. American journal of preventive medicine, 50(5), pp.S4-S5.

Helbrecht, I., (2016). From the Old Downtown to the New Downtown: The Case of the South Boston Waterfront. In New Urbanism (pp. 96-118). Routledge.

Nicholas, J.M. & Steyn, H., (2017). Project management for engineering, business and technology. Taylor & Francis.

Peleskei, C.A., Dorca, V., Munteanu, R.A. & Munteanu, R., (2015). Risk Consideration and Cost Estimation in Construction Projects Using Monte Carlo Simulation. Management (18544223), 10(2).

Siebenmann, R., Yu, H.T. & Bachus, R., (2015). Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.