The Sydney Opera House (SOH) is a modern musical arts center on the shores of Sydney Harbour in Sydney, Australia. Despite the beauty and majesty of this structure, the design and construction process took place with a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings within the working teams. The project of the Sydney Opera House is considered a controversial process since it resulted in major expenditures due to poor planning but became the cultural symbol of Sydney.
High-level competitiveness can be considered as the factor that made the project different from conventional elaborations and added problems to its implementation. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) was operating at the time at the Sydney Town Hall, which lacked essentials, including heating, and did not provide consumables to its audience (Su et al., 2021). The SSO’s conductor, Eugene Goossens, managed to push for a new music hall, seeing it as a way to encourage innovation of local artwork and enable Sydney to compete with other cities worldwide (Su et al., 2021). Therefore, the factor of focusing on international praise and admiration became essential in the emerging issues.
One of the main challenges in the field of project management of this construction was an irrational and often irresponsible attitude to project resources and operational activities on the part of the governing body. The Sydney Opera House Executive Committee had to approve all design choices and budget clearances; however, it was sometimes slow to reply to requests for permission and improvement suggestions during the construction (Su et al., 2021). Considering the roots of conflicts between the stakeholders of the SOH project, it is possible to emphasize the financial difficulties that occurred for the project manager Utzon, due to which he could not pay his employees. Utzon felt abandoned and betrayed by the governmental authorities, longtime friends, and his project colleague Arup (Su et al., 2021). The government bodies of the city of Sydney can be called Project Champions since the city received a beautiful and majestic building that raised its interest among tourists and the cultural community.
Referring to the reasons for the SOH project cost and time increase, it can be noted that internal misunderstandings resulted in major losses. The company of Arup, the project manager, was tasked with handling a legal struggle with the firm Civic & Civic, which wanted to be paid twice as much as the original contract value (Su et al., 2021). In addition, engineers battled to make Utzon’s vision a reality since some of his concepts were impossible to implement (Su et al., 2021). The main upper blocks of the work breakdown structure include the podium construction, roof and tiling work, and interior and walls design procedures. What concerns the outcome of the Sydney Opera House project, it can be concluded that the construction had both positive and negative consequences. Emphasizing drawbacks, the final cost of the project was approximately fifteen times bigger than the initial one after the estimations (Su et al., 2021). At the same time, the Sydney Opera House became the real symbol of the city of Sydney. Furthermore, architecture could generate a building that had the potential to become an important part of the Australian culture.
To summarize, high-level competitiveness can be considered as the factor that made the project different from conventional elaborations and added problems to its implementation. One of the main challenges in the field of project management of this construction was an irrational and often irresponsible attitude to project resources and operational activities on the part of the governing body. Referring to the reasons for the SOH project cost and time increase, it can be noted that internal misunderstandings resulted in major losses. What concerns the outcome of the Sydney Opera House project, it can be concluded that the construction had both positive and negative consequences.
Reference
Su, N., Chen, L., Wu, K., & Migueis-Teixeira, M. (2021). Sydney Opera House: Creating a Masterpiece. Ivey Publishing.