Either from your own experience or by searching the Internet describe a well planned and executed project. Describe a disastrous project. What were some of the main differences between these projects?
The French attempt to construct a waterway across the Isthmus was foredoomed to failure because the project fell into the hands of promoters and speculators and little to no planning was done. A contributory cause was the very high sick and death rate among the French employees on the Isthmus. This added greatly to the cost of administration and resulted in an unstable labor force. Many of the best engineers left the Isthmus after short service, or died, and these constant changes made it difficult to pursue any regular plan to keep up an effective organization to carry on the work. The company had to pay high wages and offer special inducements to persuade men to take the chance of high wages and offer special inducements to persuade men to take the chance of one in five of surviving an attack of yellow fever which they were liable to contract. The only to keep the project moving was to a constant flow of dug up material using trains. Capital was also wasted here because the trains kept running off of the old tracks. Because of poor planning the budget was constantly being exceeded and the project ultimately failed.
By the time the Americans took over the defunct French canal project, the word was out about the perilous working conditions and high employee mortality, making recruitment difficult. The Americans also realized that the project could not be managed entirely by one person and employed project managers for each different aspect of the project. For example A doctor who had experience with yellow fever was placed in charge of the public health system and a rail road surveyor was placed in charge of the rail and digging issues. Unlike the French, the Americans spent a lot of time planning and recruiting the right people for each job. Spending was also reigned in. Unlike the French who spent 1/3, wasted 1/3 and had 1/3 of the investment stolen the Americans made sure that this did not happen by having requests for budget changes filled out in triplicate and analyzed. In essence the Americans succeeded because of better planning which led to better execution, monitoring and controlling and closing processes.
Either from your own experience or by searching the Internet describe a well planned and executed project. Describe a disastrous project. What were some of the main differences between these projects?
ReplyDeleteThe French attempt to construct a waterway across the Isthmus was foredoomed to failure because the project fell into the hands of promoters and speculators and little to no planning was done. A contributory cause was the very high sick and death rate among the French employees on the Isthmus. This added greatly to the cost of administration and resulted in an unstable labor force. Many of the best engineers left the Isthmus after short service, or died, and these constant changes made it difficult to pursue any regular plan to keep up an effective organization to carry on the work. The company had to pay high wages and offer special inducements to persuade men to take the chance of high wages and offer special inducements to persuade men to take the chance of one in five of surviving an attack of yellow fever which they were liable to contract.
The only to keep the project moving was to a constant flow of dug up material using trains. Capital was also wasted here because the trains kept running off of the old tracks.
Because of poor planning the budget was constantly being exceeded and the project ultimately failed.
By the time the Americans took over the defunct French canal project, the word was out about the perilous working conditions and high employee mortality, making recruitment difficult. The Americans also realized that the project could not be managed entirely by one person and employed project managers for each different aspect of the project. For example A doctor who had experience with yellow fever was placed in charge of the public health system and a rail road surveyor was placed in charge of the rail and digging issues. Unlike the French, the Americans spent a lot of time planning and recruiting the right people for each job. Spending was also reigned in. Unlike the French who spent 1/3, wasted 1/3 and had 1/3 of the investment stolen the Americans made sure that this did not happen by having requests for budget changes filled out in triplicate and analyzed.
In essence the Americans succeeded because of better planning which led to better execution, monitoring and controlling and closing processes.