Today we know the Sydney Opera House as one of the most recognised architectural pieces in the world. It is located on Bennelong Point at the foot of the beautiful Sydney Harbour and adjacent to the Sydney Botanical Gardens and it has hosted many iconic moments.
In project management there are three significant aspects of any project that need to be considered. These are the triple constraints of time or scheduling, the cost of the project and the scope. The scope of a project is its deliverables. Essentially it provides the vision for the project. Unfortunately, in the case of the Sydney Opera House there was no defined scope. No clear deliverables in place led to a massive blow out in both time and cost..
We are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning….
The idea of an Opera House was first floated by Sir Eugene Goossens an English composer who felt that Sydney deserved an Opera House measurable to any others in the World. He had been living the previous 20 years in America with purpose-built halls for orchestras. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra in contrast was performing in the 1889 Sydney Town Hall.
The vision for the Sydney Opera House gained traction through the 1950s. It was a transformational time in Australia and it was during this time that enough political support was gained in order for the idea to be a reality.
Sir Eugene received support from the newly elected NSW Premier Joseph Cahill who believed that no matter the class or background of a person they had the right to enjoy fine music.
There was a conference that was convened in 1954 for the purpose of building support for the project. In a moment that gave a glimpse into the future of Sydney, then Premier Joseph Cahill said “ Surely it is proper in establishing an opera house that it should not be a ‘shadygaff’ place but an edifice that will be a credit to the State not only today but also for hundreds of years.”
It was in 1955 that Bennelong Point was declared the site for the proposed Opera House and in February of 1956 Premier Cahill commissioned an international competition for the building of a National Opera House.
Of the 233 entries there were a set of twelve drawings sent in by a Danish architect by the name of Jorn Utzon. He submitted these drawings in December of 1956. Jorn’s entry was numbered 218. Judging began in January of 1957 with a panel of four men charged with the responsibility of finding a winner.
The winner was decided in a less than transparent way. Nevertheless, Premier Cahill announced the winning design on January 29, 1957, as entry number 218, Danish architect Jorn Utzon. It was initially forecast to cost 3.5 million pounds (around $7 million) and expected to take 4 years to build.
The Sydney Opera house is a case study on how not to build a construction project. Numerous research has taken place on why the Sydney Opera House project was a failure. There are four critical factors which can largely explain this.
There was no cooperative project team
Communication was extremely poor between Jorn and the engineers for the project. Going as far as refusing to install a phone in his office in order to avoid talking with them. There was also a lack of oversight by the client (NSW Government) with the responsibility of driving the project given solely to Jorn.
A lack of competency and commitment
The question must be asked whether Jorn was indeed the right person to project manage the Sydney Opera House. Although his drawings were good enough to win the design competition this was not accompanied with the competency to oversee the project. No recognition of stakeholders led to poor communication, lack of clarity on the scope of the project led to significant delays and a blow out in costs. This led eventually to Jorn’s position being terminated and him returning to his home country of Denmark.
Poor risk assessment
The identification of risk was lacking form the project documentation. This means there were no mitigation or contingency strategies in place. The thought process at the time was that this was such a bold architectural piece that mistakes would occur, and issues would have to be fixed as the project went along. Unfortunately, this brought conflict to the project as different teams were blaming each other for the blow-out of time and cost.
Continuity issues related to movement of key personnel
Once the problems with the project became apparent the Government stepped in and stopped Jorn’s payments as Chief Architect. Jorn left soon after and never returned to Australia to see his finished project.
In 1966 another architect Peter Hall was appointed to take over the project. The transition and complex designs and a lack of documentation accounted for further delays and costs as Peter and his team needed to be updated on the project. The Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on October 20, 1973. This was ten years later than originally forecast and at a final cost of $102 million was almost 15 times more than originally budgeted.
A large crowd were in attendance for the grand opening which included a large firework display and a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Jorn Utzon was not invited to the opening and in fact he never returned to Australia again.
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