Millennium Dome Project Management Analysis

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Many projects all over the world has built and designed through various strategies and for different objectives. Such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it was built for the world exhibition of 1889. The purpose of this construct was to show the world that how France has improved in science technology and architecture. And the Sydney Opera House, the Australians were willing to build a world-class opera house to increase the country’s reputation after the Second World War. The same thing happened in London, when British Prime Minister agreed to exploit the new millennium plan to construct an impressive building for the country in this circumstance. Therefore, the building is called the Millennium Dome.

Project management process

The Millennium Dome is a remarkable project. It was formed as a Millennium Exhibition of a scale and being achievement comparable with that of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival of Britain of 1951. The project was to provide the centerpiece for the nation's Millennium celebrations by opening on New Year's Eve and running through the year 2000. The project obtained the distinctive treatment of having been conceived under a Conservative government and raised to its full extent by New Labour. The project was planned to fund from three sources: the National Lottery; visitors; commercial sponsors. In 1996, it presented gradually that the private funds were unable to take the considerable risk in building, operating and maintaining the Dome project. As a result, the government took over the project, but their funding and appointing capacities are still insufficient referring to lack of accountability, financial balance and conflict of interest.

"The process that is followed in carrying out projects has four identifiable phases" (Maylor, 2003). They are described as project definition, project process design, project delivery and project process development. Firstly, project team should clearly understand what goals their project is going to achieve, and select appropriate organizations or people to do it. The aim of the Dome was clear as it mentioned before to build a structure which keep pace with the millennium occasion. Secondly, a defined plan should be come up and arrange specific staff to conduct different parts of the project. The Millennium Dome project was implemented by a major effort from the project commission which was supervised by the British government, the new Millennium Experience Company was responsible for running the millennium experience. The Millennium Experience was designed to be attractive, inspirational, entertaining and involved visitors and participants. 12 million of visits should be achieved by the end of the year 2000 to cover the estimated costs. Thirdly, project team need to supervise whether the project is proceeding properly, and solve the problem which is possible to occur. The project started in 1997, the Commission was operating according to the plan, and finished the Dome project to make it the largest single-roofed structure in the world. Content has been showed to people who visited the Dome, whilst it did not handle well with pressure and termed it a failure. The project manager needs to supervise the project from three main aspects, time, cost and quality. Finally, when the project is in progress, at the same time, project managers are responsible to assess the process and the outcomes of the project, in a word, evaluation, and project team need to decide if it is necessary to make improvement to adjust to the future changes. There is no doubt that the Millennium Dome project is a success in terms of time. Opening on time was a major achievement and large number of paying visitors was attracted to the Dome.

The formal responsibilities and accountabilities for the Dome project are involved many distinct parties, the new Millennium experience company, the shareholder, the Commission and the department for culture, media and sport.

large scale project VS small scale project

Large scale project is concerned with re-building a complete business area or is a cross-arrangement project that goes across many parts of the organization. The characters of this are likely to be longer term timescale and substantial resource required. In detail, it requires a high level steering group and design and implementation stage by stage.

Small scale project is concerned with a specific business process or defined business area and the timescale is likely to be shorter term and make use of existing available research. Compared to large scale project, it requires quick implementation and to divert existing resources rather than allocate substantial new ones.

Critically evaluate planning and carrying out

Planning and execution stage are likely closely associated with the second and third stages of the whole project process which can be situated them in the middle of the project procedure. In this position, planning has the substantial potential to add value as well as the level of influence throughout the following phases. However, poor execution contingencies can also cause the undesirable reaction to the planning. "The planning process communicates planning information to the project team and stakeholders and obliges them to ‘sign-on’ and pledge their support" (Burke, 2003). Planning is also about thinking forward in time. As soon as the project manager has received project instructions, he should analyze a vast amount of information and transform them into a concise and well-organized plan that can be distributed to all members of the project team, indeed including stakeholders in the project. During the earliest phases of a project’s life cycle, most planning will have to be target-oriented because project managers do not know enough the detailed tasks to be come. Efforts to produce a plan covering every detail usually wait until more detailed information can be gathered. Poor management may be installing over or under estimated value of the project and irrational objectives may be created. Moreover, the irrational objectives can result in internal conflict. As the project team wants to keep the objectives, the conflict can bring about bottlenecks especially in coordination. Opening the Dome on time was a major achievement. The Dome has also attracted a very large number of paying visitors: by July their number had beaten the record for 1999 (2.65 million) for a UK 'pay-to-visit' attraction. A recent survey showed that 87 per cent of visitors were satisfied with their visit. In addition 86 per cent were satisfied with the services provided by the Dome's hosts.

However, when the project was proceeding, it has involved many and varied risks, including concerns about the linking with transport, and the public response. The problem arose from the incapability of the management to achieve their performance targets particularly on the number of visitors which should be at 12 million. During the whole year of 2000, paying visitors only reached 2.65 million, although this figure stood as the national record for pay-to-visit attraction, the project management had to face to critical limitations against its financial position.

It is considered that the Dome project’s management both at the government and on the ground market aspect was flawed. The main problem is that there is an obvious sense that both of The Dome’s stakeholders were thought of that the Britain was possessing the benefits of a relatively strong economy and enhanced international position would contribute the Millennium Dome project and support it willingly as a matter of national pride. The decision to plan on the basis of 12 million visitors meant the Dome having to attract more than four times as many visitors as the next most popular UK ‘pay-to-visit’ attraction, Alton Towers, achieved in 1999(national audit). Furthermore, that large number of visitors would be just as a standing start that has to be attained within one year of operation. During the year 2000, the Dome project team made efforts to increase visitor revenue. For example, a new CEO with visitor attraction experience was appointed to change and enhance visitor stream flow capacity within the Dome, and also further marketing procedure was supported by additional funding from the Commission.

It is not clear in advance for the main parties of the project team that how they would respond if visitor income fell significantly below the required levels. The possible necessity to seek an extension to the funding life of the Commission had been recognized in 1997, but the project team had difficulty in identifying its funding requirements and the Commission could not acquire enough investments in advance of need.

Project evaluation

"A project evaluation appraises the progress and performance relative to the project’s initial or revised plan" (Mantel, 2003). The project evaluation is a useful way to conduct a measurement at a number of crucial points throughout the project life cycle. So it should not be limited simply to an analysis as a matter of post-project. Because the primary purpose of a project evaluation is to give feedback to managers for making decisions and controlling the project, it is significant for the evaluation to keep an eye on both managers and the project team. The control function is intended to improve the process of carrying out projects.

In evaluation, actual performance is compared with planned performance. The gap or difference happened, will be analyzed and investigated. It is likely to compare what was expected with what has actually happened and work out what should have been the position under the circumstances, then take action to improve the situation, if required, for penalties or rewards and for future guidance.

On a strict expenditure basis limited to the site and facilities themselves it is indicated that the Millennium Dome project is difficult to consistent. The financial experts retained to oversee the liquidation of the project assets noted that it is extremely exceptional for a public sector company to be the subject of a termination. A lottery grant of £628 million was used to finance the project; little was realized from the sale of exhibits or supporting aspects of the project (National Audit, 2). Ultimately, the Dome was sold to a private commercial entity, the argument is there to be made that the public benefit of a one year exhibition to which significant admission fees were charged is not worth the cost. The Underground is an entirely separate expenditure. The public discussion and energy expended in finding out the reasons why the Dome project failed to live up to expectations are the further hidden costs that are never recovered.

However, one may also quantify the benefits of the Dome project over the longer term. It is noteworthy that in addition to the technical or infrastructural benefits noted above, contemporary opinion of the renewed O2 entertainment facility appears to be more concentrated on the visitor experiences measured during the Millennium celebrations. The fact that few people are likely to be a taxpayer during the periods of greatest financial controversy concerning the Dome is an important factor.

The project is not perfectly funded, scheduled and customized according to specific needs of individual stakeholders.

1. The target of 12 million visitors was an uncertain estimate, and was not based upon a clear foresight of the Dome’s content. The Millennium Commissioners adopted a plan with a visitor target of 12 million in the company’s May 1997(National Audit, 2000), although the Company considered that the revenue contingency intended to balance the budget with around 11 million visitors. But at this stage, the necessary strategy had not been taken to manage on the content of the Dome, ticket prices, and whether visitors would have convenient ways to park and pick up. The company recognized that the Dome would face high competition pressure from other similar attractions and need to build a positive reputation and public interest to achieve the total number of visits. In short, there still are some accurate visions existing in a not ideal project.

2. Unexpected lower and slower sponsorship was making an influence on whole project process. Over the period of May 1997 to January 2000, the company suffered a downwards of financial support from £195 million planned to revised £122 million. Because throughout 1998 many companies had been reluctant to provide the large sums of money required, and they needed the project to show a commercial and economic return for their financial contribution to the Dome to make them feel more confident about the project, the project team had struggled to achieve its schedule for converting sponsorship into real contracts, liquid fund and investment for operations. Things are even worse that by the end of 2000 the company had reduced its budget to £115 million.

3. Even though the company had made much marketing efforts, there are still negative sense about the Dome and a lack of awareness of its content. The company’s May 1997 business plan included £27 million budget for marketing, advertising and communications. Afterwards, the number had increased to £40 million. To remain up how the public realized the Dome, the company commissioned consultants carried out a survey about on-going programme of market. The survey results demonstrated that nearly all the respondents were aware of the Dome, but there has been a lack of interest in visiting the Dome and clear understanding about its content. So this result in that visitors thought tickets do not need to be bought in advance. According to actual visitor numbers, the company concluded that there had been not enough time to build and establish a reputation and brand for operating in a strong competitive market of appealing the visitors.

4. Inappropriate arrangements for sale and ticketing which were on the basis of expected high demand. The company set up arrangements for "selling tickets through two main channels, as is direct to the public and through intermediaries" (National Audit, 2000). The company originally planned to manage demand by selling tickets in advance during the year, but when the Dome opened, the company reversed this decision due to prospective visitors were attending without tickets. Since the previous plan to manage attendance through advance sales, the company paid little attention to sell tickets at the door and wholly emphasized the need for advance booking. Later, the company started ‘door sales’ and subsequently it represented 20 percent of all sales.

5. Lack of additional operational expertise. To reach and run prospective visitor attractions require the project team having different skills, though clearly it is important to have the abilities from operational experts during the plan and execution phase. During the Dome’s project development stages, the company employed a number of outstanding individuals with experience in the visitor attraction industry, including project publicizing, its architecture designing, and some other specific subject areas. However the company was short of senior staff with experience of managing a large visitor flow. So the company needed additional operational expertise. In the light of the problems experienced on opening the Dome, the company realized this issue and re-organized some of its key operations to reflect the demand for the Dome to be more operational efficient. A team based support to proceeding the project was introduced and established revised business operating targets for implementation.

6. The company did not realize its financial flaws at once, so there had been lack of controlling at the company. During the year 2000, the company appointed auditors and consultants to identified affect about quality of financial control and forecasting its direction at the company. And these auditors and consultants found out that significant potential weaknesses were hidden in internal control over the level of creditors and other liabilities. In addition, they also found that "many departments within the company were unable to specify the level of spending commitments the company had set up as well as lack of control over incoming invoices" (National Audit, 2000). Thus, the company’s finance function was really under great stress. The predicament resulted from not only the crisis situation in which it fund itself, but also a great burden being existed on the resources available. The company recognized these risks and took a series of actions to supplement the finance department resources.

Recommendations:

To aim at solution to the above problems, the Dome project team should take up some improvement approaches. Firstly, the structure of management should be straightforward and clear, developing a defined focus on delivering the project. It is essential for the management structure to have strong and effective corporate governance and be able to adapt to meet different phases’ specific requirements of a project immediately. Secondly, project should be organized and proceed with a fully integral understanding of the project costs. These should include sale costs, closure costs. And the project should keep abreast of the cost change. Thirdly, the most necessary factor for a project to proceed successfully is income. The financial success of a project depends on generating income from visitors, and it requires the project team to make practical judgments about possible visitor numbers and determine the proper approach to put it into marketing effectively. On the other hand, sponsorships are likely to involve uncertainty over the level of financial contribution, the risks need to be taken into account in project planning. Fourthly, project managers need to respond flexibly if things do not follow the plan. It is planning to make the best of a bad situation. Finally, all expenditure happened within the project process should be recorded by the company’s auditing office and matched the received invoices against these spending. Simultaneously, the financial position should be reported accurately and opportunely to staff who are responsible to be with oversight role in relation to the project.

Conclusion

It may be an important ultimate property of the Millennium Dome for British. The public investment spent on the Dome cannot be just presented in a form of balance sheet, the ultimate worth of the entire project will be measured by how well the government makes use of the project in the future, and whether they can avoid the recurring of financial crisis and satisfy the need for enough data supported projections.