The idea behind the Glasgow Science Centre project was to project Glasgow as a significant high tech centre. The first element of the risk was constant changes in the scope of the project during implementation phase which resulted in the postponement of opening date number of times. One of the examples of scope is that once it was assessed that the glass pod on the top of the building would get extremely hot under the sun and it would be hard to clean (Anbari, 2009). To resolve this issue, the project management team changed the scope of the project by including carbon fibre, a narrow cut viewing window and a metal composite, that too did not last enough. The team also failed to take into account the risk of the weight of elevators with the raw materials. That is why the elevators were very heavy to operate within the tower.
All such delays and scope changes saw more than ten years for Glasgow Science Centre Tower project to complete at an unexpected cost of US $ 15 million (Kwak, n.d.). Therefore, schedule risk was not addressed properly in the starting phase. Also, the allocation of funding was made too early for the project before understanding the costs thoroughly. The allocation of insufficient funds made an adverse effect on other parts of this project. Therefore, the schedule was termed “loose”. When proper funds were allocated, nothing was mentioned regarding the date of completion and the opening dates during the initial stages of the project (Mishra et al.). However, the project team performed a risk analysis to manage risk but from a strategic point of view, no attempt was made to manage the risk. For example, there is a common practice to construct the tower to 6-7 times of the width of its base but the design of this tower was ten times taller, that is why technical risk arose (Sousa, A. I. F, 2017). As a result of the design complexity of this tower, the construction had to wait until the several wind tunnel tests were conducted. The tall salenders of the building were likely to cause turbulence to the visitors which would turn into an unpleasant experience for them. Also, the test that was carried out to demonstrate that design would work actually showed that final cost would exceed well beyond the allocated budget and all that was revealed before the actual start of the project (Sousa, A. I. F, 2017). this was the major loopholes of this project. The overall planning in the project was poor and as a result of issues related to cost and scope, the work couldn’t begin after the two years of the assignment of the project. Through proper planning and evaluation, the three aspects such as communication management, cost management and scope management could have been made batter (Senouci et al.).
Although, these areas were identified in the start of the project but the project management never addressed them properly (Bartoli et al.). Another failure of the team was the mismanagement in communication plan, they didn’t devise a strategy for effective communication with contracting firms and also there was a communication gap between them and the public which caused problems for them(Serpell et al.). As technical problems started arising, public started questioning about the overall budget of the project and its completion, the project management team didn’t have the satisfactory answers to these concerns of public. As for the communication with the contracting firm, the project management team improved this part during the closeout phase (Liu et al.). The careful consideration of all these elements especially in the initial phase of the project couldn’ve been avoided (Dahiru, A., & Bashir, A. M., 2015). There were many lessons for the project management team in this particular project especially in terms of risks that have been discussed.
| Impact | ||||
| Probability | High | Moderate | Low | |
| High | Financial Risk
Scope Mangement |
Schedule Risk | ||
| Moderate | Technical Risk | Communication Gap | ||
| Low | ||||
References
Bartoli, G., Betti, M., & Vignoli, A. (2016). A numerical study on seismic risk assessment of historic masonry towers: a case study in San Gimignano. Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, 14(6), 1475-1518.
Dahiru, A., & Bashir, A. M. (2015). Risk Factors Influencing Construction Procurement Performance in Nigeria. Arid Zone Journal of Engineering, Technology and Environment, 11, 77-88.
Glasgow-Tower-Science-Centre.pdf
Liu, F., Zhao, S., Weng, M., & Liu, Y. (2017). Fire risk assessment for large-scale commercial buildings based on structure entropy weight method. Safety science, 94, 26-40.
Mishra, S., & Mishra, B. (2016). A Study on Risk Factors Involved in the Construction Projects. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, ISSN, 2347-6710.
Serpell, A., Ferrada, X., Rubio, L., & Arauzo, S. (2015). Evaluating risk management practices in construction organizations. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 194, 201-210.
Senouci, A., Al-Abbadi, I., & Eldin, N. (2015). Safety improvement on building construction sites in Qatar. Procedia Engineering, 123, 504-509.
Schmidt, P., Von Arx, U., Schrimpf, A., Wagner, A., & Ziegler, A. (2017). On the construction of common size, value and momentum factors in international stock markets: A guide with applications.
Sousa, A. I. F. (2017). Exhibit Development in a Science Centre-Internship at the Glasgow Science Centre (Doctoral dissertation).
