The Channel Tunnel:A Project Management

PerspectiveSubmitted By:

Jay Oza(20141027)Parth Panchal(20141046)Vivek Mehta(20141073)Yash Maurya(20141074)

Submitted to: Prof. A.B.Raju

Project announcement:- Feb 1996 followed by signing of Treaty of canterbury

Project objective:- Undersea rail tunnel linking Folkstone in the UK with France

Transportation, Boost Business & Tourism and Connect Britain with mainland Europe are the major project reasons.

Business Model:- Public Private Partnership and BOOT (Built, Own, Operate and Transfer)

The govt. of France, The govt. of Britain, Eurotunnel Group, Citizen of France and Citizen of Britain are the major project stakeholder.

Project Background and its context

Inception Phase: Historical background, nature of project, political climate and pre-feasibility studies.

Development Phase: Planning, financing and conceptual designing.

Implementation Phase: Detailed designing, construction, installation, testing and commissioning.

Closeout Phase: Overall performance, settlement of claims, financial status and post-project evaluation.

Project Life Cycle Evaluation:

Inception Development Execution Closeout

Scope:Fixed transportation (51.5kms)Economic development

Pressures causing mishaps:Lack of scope causes resource planning, cost estimating & budgeting difficult.Air-conditioning costsFormation of intergovernmental commission

Finance aspects:Treaty says to no government aidPursued via equity &loan capital markets.

Scheduling:Activities related to activity definition, activity sequencing, activity duration estimates.Planning 3 tunnels which required 46 contractors to complete the design requirements.Changing safety rules created negative variances.

Inception Development Execution Closeout

Incompatibility issues could have been avoided by stating Initial quality requirement in more detail. Areas of improvement There was much interpretation for the agency like IGC .The IGC decision to change 600mm doors to 700mm doors itself delay the project to 9 months.

Teamwork & cooperation considering the scope of the project was very important. Contractual agreements made teamwork a complex activity.

It was very difficult to come to a mutually agreeable solution to material issues due to incomplete requirements, scope changes and thus , risk response strategies should have been considered.

Efficient communication is very important in preplanning, contract negotiations, financing and technical issues during the inception stage. Communication plan addressing horizontal and vertical communication channels should be in place. Communication seemed to breakdown in case of issues regarding organizational structure , finance and contracts as the issues were not timely solved.

Plan should also include information sharing, issue tracking and performance reporting.

Although , advanced project management tools and techniques were used, the decision-making ability to address critical issues from centralized position seemed insufficient

Inception Development Execution Closeout

In 1986 Anglo-French Treaty signed, Transmanche Link (TML) awarded contract and Eurotunnel declared owner for 55 years post completion of the project.

The proposal included a 32 mile double rail tunnel to accommodate both through-trains and special car and truck carrying shuttle trains.

Original cost estimation of the project was 5.5 billion USD which was eventually increased to 14.9 billion USD.

Financing was pursued via equity and loan capital markets forming a large scale 7,00,000 shareholders and a consortium of almost 220 lending banks worldwide.

English and French government being party to the project, had created a conducive environment to facilitate its success to boost European trade and economy.

Pre-feasibility study with high level design perspective and respective rough order of magnitudes of estimates were appropriated to certain extent.

State of the art laser and computer technology was used to bore the tunnel and to test every part of the rail system.

Inception Development Execution Closeout

Construction on the Tunnel began in late 1987, and was commissioned as fully operational in December 1994

One of the biggest challenge for this project was bringing together French and British engineers with different working methods, corporate executives from ten collabrotive companies under the TML umbrella, and close to 13000 workers who had to be train to various degrees within three years, into a single project team.

Main issue is related to communications barrier. Other main problem why it was delayed and increases expenses were attributed to

monopolistic power of TML consortium(Trans Manche Link). The IGC mandated that where there were differences in the two countries' standards, the

higher of the two should prevail. In theory this was a great idea, but contractors couldn't easily realize the decisions of IGC.

IGC were always escalating the safety requirements, and costly changes were dictated to the contractors at every step of the way inefficiently. The approval process went through too many steps, from TML, then Eurotunnel, then Maitre d'Oeuvre, to IGC finally.

First it was expected to be $ 7.4 billion but at the end it expected $ 15 billion

Inception Development Execution Closeout

Early tunnelling efforts also ran into some problems on both the French and British sides. There were poorer-than-expected geological conditions on the British side, leading to constant delays in favour of safety.

On the management side, there were significant delays due to conflicting priorities between Eurotunnel and TML (Costs, Risks and Financing).

Various problems occurred during the excavation, such as a slipping of muck on the belt conveyor, water splash from the screw conveyor, deformation of cutter head, muck penetration into the driving part of screw conveyor.

Due to the adverse tunnelling conditions, the rate of progress of construction varied on both sides. The English side progressed at an average rate of 150m/week while the French side progressed at an average rate of 110m/week.

To solve the overheating problem, a special air-conditioning system had to be employed to keep the temperature in the tunnel between 38°C to 50°C. In the Channel Tunnel project, the Fire Protection System was established, including fire detection system, water pipe system, ventilation system and emergency response teams.

Inception Development Execution Closeout

Controls

Financing Banks

Profit Maximization

ConstructionCompanies

Risk Minimization

NO IMPORTANCE TO OPERATIONS

Controls in wrong hands

Inception Development Execution Closeout

The immense amount of Litigation and Claim against project.

Scope: Scope of the project increases due to overall changes request through out the life of project.

Cost & Schedule Management: Max. Efforts to analyzing the source of overrun cost and blaming participating organization.

Team work and Communication: Team work and communication had broken down in several key area. Like Financial banker focus on minimizing their losses ,so they refused to negotiate any settlement. Clearly win-win negotiation far from mind between the parties.

Time Over shoot: the greatest impact of ROI.

Quality of project: Quality of a project is up to the mark as per engineering design and expectation. Even no. of accident was less as per industrial avg. during project running time.

Effective Change Management: They ready to make changes as per demand without additional funding during close out.

Cost Management HR Management

Time Management Risk Management

Boring Phase•No unified structure

Fitting Phase•Unified structure

Communication Management

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