A Case Study of Bahria Town

Bahria Town is a Pakistan based privately owned real-estate company. It owns, develop and manages properties across Pakistan. Bahria town is a largest real-estate developer in Asia. Bahria town has been shaping landscapes and lives in Pakistan since the company’s inception in 1996. Bahria has projects in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad. The founder of Bahria Town is Malik Riaz Hussain, a major real-estate mogul and a famous socialist of Pakistan, having worth of US $ 1.1 billion (Bahria Town). Bahria town is a master piece of his 40-years career. Bahria town offers houses, towns, commercial area, plots, villas, restaurants, stadiums, hotels and hospitals. Bahria town projects usually house upper middle and high income Pakistanis, these communities have high alert security and are energy independent from the national grid.
Bahria have been featured by international new agencies. Newsweek calls it as Pakistan’s gateway to paradise. (AFP, 2013)
Los Angeles Times referred it as “functioning state within a nonfunctioning one.” (Magnier, 2011)
CASE STUDY
The case study I have chosen is related to rapid development of Bahria town and its projects in Pakistan. The construction and engineering services industry is regarded as most fragmented industry accounting for 10% to 12% in many countries. Bahria town contributes to the establishment of the real-estate sector as a formal industry in Pakistan. Bahria town’s 21,000 direct employees are delivering iconic developments, driving leadership, pioneering innovation and creating a legacy for generations to come. Landmarks, buildings, thriving communities, market leading retail offerings and investment opportunities. People residing in Bahria tell the success story of its mission to provide a better life style. The effects of their value system are far reaching. They have forever raised the standard of real-estate development by giving awareness to the customer. (Bahadur)
Projects are generally evaluated against four criteria:
SCOPE
A project scope is the part of project planning that involves a list of specific project goals, deliverables, features, functions, tasks, deadlines and costs. What a firm is trying to achieve and what are the ultimate goals of the firm.
TIMING
How much time does a firm required to complete its project or how long will it takes to complete the desired project. Timing plays an important part in any project development both for the producer and for the consumer.
COST
Project cost is any expenditure made or estimated to made for completing the project. How much money is required to complete the project.
QUALITY
The level to which the project reached its specification and expectations of the consumers is what the project needs to accomplish its goals.
PRIORITIZE CRITERIA
How important these criteria to a particular project depend on the project itself. What a project requires more and how to achieve the ultimate results.
If a person wants to build a charity club, he will not focus much on the time because firstly he needs funds, charity from people to start and then finish the project. But a person is building a hospital, he may have a deadline of few months to accomplish it.
Similarly, cost may be not so important for a charity club since it is totally depending on the funds given by the people but for the hospital, you need a proper budgeting schedule and you have to work according to it.
Quality is something which isn’t easy to examine since sometimes we mix it with timing and cost. Quality is the most important factor no one wants to compromise on the quality. Even if one cannot achieve the deadline time or if the project goes above the allocated cost, of it has the best quality, every other factor will be compromised. Like in the case of Sydney Opera house it was 14th time over budgeted but the ultimate quality result was just too good to complain about.
These four criteria for success (scope, time, cost, quality) interact and trade off with each other, for example you can speed up the project if you willing to spend on overtimes, or you can skimp on quality or scope to control the cost or timing.
The following pyramid shows the interrelation among these four criteria:

PROJECT SUCCESS CRITERIA
A definition in measurable terms of what must be done for the project to be acceptable to the client, stakeholders and to the end-users who will be affected by the project.
SUCCESS FACTORS OF A PROJECT
Success factors are the elements or activities required for ensuring the success of a project. Success factors can be defined as “situations that leads to the positive result of something “.
The success of any project depends on both the factors and the criteria. One is the cause (success factors) other is effect (success criteria). Success factors relates to project quality and the success criteria relates to the project excellences.
In my opinion, the success is built on three main factors quality, time and cost. These three factors makes the appropriate success criteria.

There are a lot of factors which decides the success or failure of any project. But according to me quality is the most important criteria for any project. If you delivering best possible quality then other factors can be overseen. Working on a quality and then maintaining it throughout the process is the trick of success. A project can only be loved by the people if they get the best quality of their required needs. Quality control should be performed throughout the project’s life.  The firm must have quality as their main moto and should try to work on it. Quality improvement is a systematic, formal approach to the analysis of practices performances and efforts to improve performances. Weather project deals with constructions, services, software or anything, quality comes first.

Second most important factor for success criteria is time management. Project development highly depends on time, company has to use their time effectively and productively to bring the best result in given time.
In the end, what is important is to meet the deadlines, work under the schedule and use the time most efficiently. Though the type of project also decides that time is important or not. Like as I discussed it above, for building a charity hall, time doesn’t matter much. It will progress slowly and gradually as the funds comes. But still why not working properly under a schedule.
In my opinion, time management is important for everything. Time plays a vital role in the demand of the consumer and market.  What if one takes too long to complete the project and in the meanwhile, consumer’s attentions shifts towards other projects.
A successful project is the one, using time with efficiently and gives effective result in the limited schedules. Projects are required to be done in time frame.

Budgets are the most important factors for many projects. Cost is the high concerned factor for both the producers and the users. Even if it is a high cost project, the producers didn’t want it to exceed the budget allocated.projects get over budget only if the time, human labor and technology is not being used proper. Costing high will result in high prices, which may affect the consumption of the project. Project manager must know where the project stands in terms of money spent. In the end, all matters “did project stick to its budget” if we didn’t then we are not a profitable business.
The Bahria town has been proved to be a successful project. There have been several projects started after realizing the success of this project but not many turned out to the favorable outcomes because behind its well planning were the following criteria:

COST

Bahria is the largest project of Pakistan and heavy expenses have been spent over the last few years. The plan is constructed over the span of 44,000 square acres with the capacity to accommodate over a million people. It is divided into several phases, blocks and smaller projects. The competitive advantage of Bahria is that it produces its own electricity to provide its residents under the Bahria Town Electric Supply Company which I think is the best feature among all because this project will not create a shortage of power for the people not residing in the Bahria. Rawalpindi project is running 12 megawatts of generations’ units of their own (Release, 2013). The total cost spent on this project is 20 billion USD (2015).

Bahria is also investing on small projects within the city for infrastructural development because the Chairman of Bahria also believes in providing ease to the residents of the cities. The investment in the infrastructure development is worth 1.89 million PKR (bahriatown). Moreover, 400 million PKR has been spent over on welfare activities in different cities and heavy earth moving workshops worth of 6.5 million PKR. The Grand Jamia Mosque build in Lahore has also been a heavy investment with the exterior architecture consisting of 4million PKR. The Islamabad Bahria has initiated another project of construction of Jinnah Avenue in Zone 4 Islamabad to benefit the residents in future. The project is to construct a four-lane road Kurri road to Kurri modern village. This project is worth of over 220million PKR. The revenue generated is $10 billion (2015) and increasing.

TIME

The criterion of Time ensures the success and failure of the project. If the project has been completed within the given time that indicates that people have taken interest and heavily invested their money in the project, so did the people invested in Bahria. The project was founded in late-1990s. The employee power of up to 60,000 people and up to 20,000 workers made it possible to complete the project within the given time frame.

QUALITY

The first thing about Bahria that comes in many minds is the quality that it offers. It is a dream to many people because of its outstanding architecture, more than 100 feet wide roads that attracts and makes it more desirable. Not only this, but also the clean and secure residential and commercial environment and the fact that town never has to face the load shedding. People like living there because it makes them feel relaxed that they are in a protected zone, a solution to the problem is just a phone call away to the security.
In a nutshell, Bahria has earned more than it aimed for and with all the services that it has to offer the chances of its failure are very less. It has become a reliable name to people; they invest their money blindfolded as they hear the name Bahria. It is expected to bring over more people in future when its projects like JV D&B Valley, Golf City, Garden city, Bahria icon (Bahadur) will be completed which are currently under development.

Although Bahria has a lot to offer to the upper class, and less to the middle class, the Bahria should now extend its activities and target the middle class and lower middle class by setting up new blocks and phases in their project schemes as this class is in majority in Pakistan. People set long term goals, interested to invest their money to earn profits in future.
Since the town is too big for anyone to travel, Bahria should come up with the transportation system within the projected area. Transportation system may include Bahria buses and cabs, so the residents may not have problem leaving their house.
Bahria projects in all cities are usually located too far from the city, people who wish to survey the area are impelled to bear a high travelling cost, so to make easy access for them they should come up with transportation system within the city that can take them to the tour of the Bahria Town.
To upgrade the level, Bahria should facilitate the upper class and offer a new range of luxurious cars for them to transport the elites.
Bahria can also advance in the transportation system by introducing Bahria Tram that runs within the town premises.
Since Bahria has gained the trust of people in very short period, today people have also begun to make fraudulent scheme and misuse the name of Bahria to sell their properties. Bahria should come up with the strategy to avoid being target of such scams.

(n.d.). Retrieved from bahriatown: www.bahriatown.com
AFP. (2013, December 10). BAHRIA TOWN, GATEWAY TO PARADISE. Retrieved from newsweekpakistan: http://newsweekpakistan.com/gateway-to-paradise/
Bahadur, A. (n.d.). Case study on Bahria Town.
Magnier, M. (2011, October 06). Pakistan gated community sparks controversy. Retrieved from LAtimes: http://www.latimes.com/
Release, P. (2013, July 22). Welcoming the move: Bahria Town invites PM’s taskforce to its power units. Retrieved from The Express Tribune: https://tribune.com.pk/story/580215/welcoming-the-move-bahria-town-invites-pms-taskforce-to-its-power-units/
Bahria is not just limited to building up residential societies, it also aims to take over the business sector as well. When we talk about a society, we cannot just consider the house, behind the house there is a power station to run the electricity, a supermarket to fulfill the housing schemes, a security system and many others. Currently Bahria is occupied in building skyscrapers, Bahria Icon Tower, a 62-storey building, which will be tallest building in Pakistan. Inaugurated on January 23, 2016, Icon tower is multi-purpose commercial building offering enough scope to create a landmark of unique proportions. Bahria is aiming to change the way to build, live and perform business activities. They are keen to achieve a new milestone through this. They have shifted the paradigms of the working structure of Pakistan. In very short period, they earned the trust and value from people for which others have been working for years. This is what keeps them motivated to continue to do what they are doing. And slowly they are taking their projects to all cities of Pakistan whether from Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore to Nawabshah, Murree.
After the Icon tower they are planning to build next skyscraper in Islamabad.