In this report, I will be looking at the Queensferry Crossing by linking it to Maylors 4D Management Model, which relates to this construction project well. The four D’s are Define, Design, Deliver and Develop. By using this model, I will be able to cover more aspects of the project and talk more of the challenging areas like the design and deliver stage.
The Queensferry Crossing is a road bridge in Scotland, it is the third Forth Road Crossing (Arup.com, 2017). The Queensferry Crossing is a three-tower bridge, with an overall length of 1.7 miles (Theforthbridges.org, 2017). It resulted in 2.5 miles of connected roads, which eased accessibility. There were numerous awards which were given to this project, one of them was for the longest three-tower, cable-stayed bridge in the world (Engineers Journal, 2017).
Define Stage
The first D is Define. This is where they would have to set and develop their aims and objectives and started identifying what the main visions were. (Changingminds.org, 2017) Proposals for the Queensway Crossing were originally put forward in the 1990’s, however it wasn’t until they discovered decaying of the main cables which had resulted in a loss of strength around eight and ten per cent (Watt, 2017). This rose fears that significant traffic constraints might be required, this is when plans moved forward for the Queensway Crossing. The decision to proceed with a replacement bridge was taken at the end of 2007, and the following year it was announced that the existing bridge would be retained as a public transport link. The Forth Road Bridge, was coming to the end of the product life span as it wasn’t being able to deliver the bridges purpose (BBC News, 2017). The closing of the bridge allowed the stakeholders such as the project manager and operations director to capture lessons developed from the first bridge and use this to make the Queensferry Crossing better.
Belbin identified nine different groups of behaviour that are displayed in the workplace, they are called the nine Belbin Team Roles (Belbin.com, 2017).To develop the Queensway Crossing, they had all the nine groups in the project these were: plant, resource investigator, co-ordinator, shaper, monitor evaluator, teamworker, implementer, completer finisher and specialist. In this project they also had a Liason and Working groups and Cummunity forums to oversee see all the external factors in the project.
Appendices 1, shows there is a hirearchy picture/diagram of the main stakeholders in this project. Stakeholders are individuals or groups who will be affected by either the conduct, the output or the outcome of the project. (Referance)
The stakeholders are categorised into two main groups. Internal which are stakeholders who are directly involved with the conduct of the project in some way, and external which is people who are not directly involved in the conduct of the project but have an active interest in it. The internal stakeholders in the Queensferry crossing are the project manager, clients advisors, principal contractors.The project director was David Climie who was the representitive for Transport Scotland Government managed the entire project (Watt, 2017). He was involved in all the stages of the project life cycle e.g. authorising, procure, design and construction. The client advisors were Jacobs and Arup. Transport Scotland chose Arup along with a joint venture with Jacobs Engineering UK Ltd, to develop the Queensferry Crossing. Arup is a professional services firm which provides design, engineering, planning, project management and consulting services for all aspects of the built environment and Jacobs is a ‘global provider’ of technical, professional, and scientific services, including engineering, architecture, construction, operations and maintenance (Watt, 2017).
Arup were also chosen to prepare the contract documentation and manage the project of the new crossing. This is where the project directors, Michael Martin and David Climie and the operations director, Iain Murray, estimated the time for the project to be completed, and also to identify any constraints and dependencies that were involved with the project (Watt, 2017). Arup’s team supplied an array of services. These included scheme appraisal, civil and structural design, geotechnical, mechanical and electrical design, maritime design, fire engineering consulting, security consulting and facade engineering (Arup,2017)
The principal contractors and designers were FCBC (Forth Crossing Bridge Contractor) and Forth Crossing Design JV (Watt, 2017). Other important internal Stakeholders were: Ronan Hayes MRICS who was the FCBC’s Survey Manager, Neil Robinson who was the FCBC’s temporary works co-ordinator for foundations & towers and Jim Woods who was the FCBC’s deputy laboratory manager (Watt, 2017). The external factors in this project were the local schools and community groups around the bridge. The stakholders were working closely with 10,000 school pupils to give them a chance to learn about how bridges are built in the modern era (Watt, 2017).
Shenhar and Dvir, present a model for understanding the risk and uncertainty in projects. This model is called the “Diamond Framework” (also called the NTCP model (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007). It analyses projects so everyone involved can get a better understanding of what needs to be done. The first factors for this model is Novelty, this is where they will understand the crucial aspects of the project and see if it will be viable. The second factor is Technology, it decided where the project lies between low-tech to super high-tech. The third factor is the Complexity, this is where the stakeholders understand how complicated the project will be and the process to finish the project. The last factor will be Pace, this is where they will consider how long the work will take and if it will be needed urgently or not. The purpose of this model is to figure out the structure of the project so that it can be executed successfully. The Diamond Framework model allows the executives to understand where the gaps are in the project, as this will allow managers to pick the right team members and resources (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007).
Appendices 2, shows the Diamond Model for this project. I believe that the Technology aspects for the Queensferry crossing, will be high-tech as they had to use special machinery to go underground to install the towers below sea level. I think the Novelty aspect for this project is derivative because it’s a revised offering of a successful product, like the Forth Bridge Crossing. Similarly, when managers are creating the project requirements it was pretty straightforward. The pace factor would be fast/competitive as the other bridge only had a certain amount of time before it couldn’t handle the weight of the cars, as it had lost strength of around eight and ten per cent, due to decay. The complexity would be assembly because the actual project isn’t very complex. As long as all the managers knew beforehand that specialist machinery was needed and the actual manual labourers along with it to operate the machinery, it would be fine.
Design Stage
The second D in Maylors 4DM Management Model is Design. This’s where the project managers organise, plan and design the project looking at all of the factors in the definition stage (Changingminds.org, 2017). One of the requirements for this bridge was that it would be as weather tight as possible as bad weather was a problem on the first road bridge as excessive winds have caused closures and restrictions and traffic (Theforthbridges.org, 2017). This is one of the lessons they learned when they were designing the bridge and they overcame this by fitting Perspex wind shields fitted on the side, so this would be reduced (Matthews, 2017).
There was also a problem with traffic on the old bridge, so to reduce traffic, the project managers introduced the idea of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) on the bridge (Watt, 2017). This will be used on the bridge and all the connecting roads as well, as similar systems have proven that the Intelligent Transport Systems reduces congestion and improves road safety (Watt, 2017). By having this mandatory variable speed limits will be applied when needed, for example when there is an incident on the bridge or when there is traffic occurring then the speed limits will be introduced which implied as evidence shows that systems like this reduces vehicle queues and can reduce accidents.
Deliver Stage
The third D in Maylors 4D Management Model is Deliver. This is when the Queensferry crossing was about to open for the public. The first risks and challenges when producing the Queensway Crossing was the external factor which was the weather, as this bridge should have been completed nine months before it actually was, because it was supposed to open the December before (Walker, 2017).
Jenny Symons who is an Engineering Geologist with the Forth Crossing Design, said that one of the main challenges was the “weather when they were doing the excavation process. This is a process where they have to create space underwater for the tower and pier foundations. The machine operators were carrying out work essentially blind because they are relying on the machinery to tell them about the work, as they normally can do this physically. When examining the work carried out under water was further restricted by the tidal and weather conditions.” (Walker, 2017). They overcame this by unfortunately waiting for the conditions to better. This caused delay to the project as workers had to be sent home because there was nothing to do.
Another risk were the financial budgets, as there was fears the funding wasn’t going to be enough. They began building the project in 2011 the price range for the Queensferry Crossing was £1.45bn to £1.6bn, however this was reduced in October 2014 when the upper limit was lowered by £50m to £1.4bn (Brocklehurst, 2017).
This could’ve caused serious problems as there wouldn’t have been enough funding for the project. However, with extensive planning from the directors mainly David, the final cost of the bridge is said to be £1.35bn, which is well within budget, but the opening date has slipped by nine months, mainly due to the weather. (Brocklehurst, 2017). This implies that if everything was on time the costs would’ve been reduced further.
One of the challenges that Michael, the project director of Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors, told Sky News: “People always think of the engineering challenges but, for me, one of the most difficult challenges that I have is ensuring that I get the right people working in the right way so that the expertise that they have can be brought together in a team, which is an international team which has never worked together before” (Watt, 2017). A good team is needed as this will help the team’s communication and the production as everyone will start to collaborate and work better as a team.
The project managers managed this project very efficiently as the project director focused a lot on communication and meetings because this made it easier for everyone to understand the vision of the project and how the project board wanted the project to be delivered. The Project Director used a more Democratic management style. Using this management style, is quite useful as when complex decisions needed to be made in the project, that require a range of specialist skills, everyone was able to give input and suggestions, this will mean quality of work will improve because everyone will be communicating and on the same page so the project will be more efficient.
Develop Stage
The fourth D in Maylors 4D Management Model is Develop. This is where the project directors review the whole project and identify the main challenges and risks that were associated with this project so that this can be used to help future projects (Changingminds.org, 2017).
The main lessons that were learnt from this project were, by planning ahead and having a contingency plan in place, extra expenditure would’ve been avoided. However as there are external factors like the weather which couldn’t be controlled did delay the project. By preplanning this would minimise the disruption making it easier in the future. This is also something they could do in the future as by maybe starting the project at a different date which would help minimise the bad weather. Another lesson that can be taken from this project, was that by having a requirements specification beforehand, project the project was helped a lot as most of the requirements were from examining the old bridge. By understanding the old bridge’s strengths and weaknesses, the aims and objectives for the Queensferry Crossing were better understood. A final lesson learnt from the Queensferry project was, by communicating more efficiently, using meetings and conference calls on a frequent basis made the communication better which implied that they had the same mind-set, and this worked as there was uncertainties about the funding, however by minimising costs by analysing the project to decrease e.g. labour helped this which is also why they did this in the in the budget even with all the challenges.
I believe this project did achieve their vision and strategy, as the project was a fully revised offering of a successful project like the Fourth Road Crossing and they built on the challenges and downfalls of that. Steven Brown, Transport Scotland’s roads infrastructure manager, said “the system is already working well and initial benefits are already being seen as traffic speeds at peak-time are being reduced on the approach to queues, helping to alleviate congestion and reduce the risk of accidents” (Watt, 2017). This implies to me that they did achieve their vision, as one of their requirements was to improve the congestion and traffic on the bridge and the surrounding roads.
Overall by looking at this project. I have learnt how they have made this project a success by using contingency plans to plan which helped to make the project more efficient. By using Maylors 4D project life cycle and linking to this project has helped me to gain a better understanding of the visions and strategies used in order to make this a success.