Integrating Sustainability In Managing Construction Projects: The Case Of Sydney Metro

Sydney Metro

Sustainable development can be defined as the arrangement of theories and principles to achieve several project development goals and simultaneously maintaining the natural systems ability to give several resources and services to the society (SILvIuS and SChIPPER 2012). There is an extreme necessity of sustainability in every project. Sustainability brings success to the project by providing proper guidelines to the project. The purpose of this essay is to discuss about the importance of sustainability in any project. The essay also highlights the way of integrating sustainability in a construction project.

The following essay outlines the method of integrating sustainability in a construction project. Sydney Metro is an automatic system of rapid transit, which is under construction in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The essay focuses on the integration of sustainability for the construction of the Sydney Metro (Abdou 2014). It covers the logical arguments of the construction project. It also covers the analysis of the necessary research studies. The essay further discusses about the managerial implications on the project.

Sydney Metro

The biggest public transport project, the famous Sydney Metro is under construction. It is one of the biggest construction projects in Australia. The Stage 1 operation is supposed to start in the year 2019 and the stage 2 operation is supposed to start in the year 2024. The Stage 1 will have 13 numbers of stations, while the Stage 2 will have 17 numbers of stations. It is an automatic rapid transit system (Sydneymetro.info, 2017). The construction has started for the Sydney Metro city & Southwest. It is an adjunction across Sydney Harbour and via CBD or Central Business District that would lead the trains to Bankstown. Once this construction is completed, Sydney would be the very first city in Australia to construct a complete automatic rapid transit system.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development can be defined as the arrangement of theories and principles to achieve several project development goals and simultaneously maintaining the natural systems ability to give several resources and services to the society (Sánchez 2015). There is an extreme necessity of sustainability in every project. The word sustainability comes from two different words of sustain and ability. For a construction project, sustainability is an important term that discusses how to execute the actions of the project without having dangerous impacts or without exhausting the resources (Müller and Jugdev 2012). It means the project should reach the requirements without any kind of compromise with the ability of the future to reach the necessities.

Success Criteria

The success criteria for any project are nothing but the standards or policies through which the particular project is judged after the execution to take the decision that whether it has met the requirements of the project plan and the shareholders or not. The success criteria for the project of Sydney Metro depend on three major criteria. They are as follows:

1. a) Scheduled Time: This is the main criteria for any project. The project Sydney Metro in Australia is one of the biggest construction projects until date. The main requirement or the major criteria for this particular project are the completion on time (Kerzner 2013). The Stage 1 of the project is supposed to be completed within the year 2019 and the Stage 2 operation of the project is supposed to be completed within the year 2024. This criterion of the project should be fulfilled as extra time may incur more costs.
2. b) Resource: The second criterion of the Sydney Metro project is the use of resources. The most important resource of the project is the budget of the project (Todorovi? et al. 2015). The project should be completed within the budget that is mentioned in the project plan. It is the responsibility of the project manager and all the workers to complete the project within its budget. As Sydney Metro is a huge project, it is evident that the cost of the project would be much bigger than any other construction projects. The budget sometimes depends on the scheduled completion of the project. When the time of the project will be increased, the overall costs will be increased. The stage 1 of the project is supposed to be completed in the year 2019 and the stage 2 of the project is supposed to be completed in the year 2014 (Silvius and Schipper 2014). The stages should be completed within the time.
3. c) Quality: The third criterion of the Sydney Metro project is the quality of the project. The second criterion mentions about the budget of the project. While focusing on the budget, the quality of the project should not be neglected at all (Walker 2015). The metro will carry about thousands of people every day. Therefore, the quality of the project should be the best and up to mark.

Critical Success Factors

The critical success factors of the Sydney Metro project are those factors that will help to fulfill the success criteria of the project. The three criteria of the success of the project are the scheduled time, resource and quality. The factors to achieve the criteria of scheduled time, resources and quality are as follows:

1. i) Planning: This is the first and foremost step for any project. Sydney Metro project started in the year 2017 (Kerzner 2013). A huge project requires good planning. The planning of the project started in the year 2015. This is the most important factor for the success and implementation of the project.
2. ii) Design: This is the second important factor for the success of any project. The designing is done based on the plan made for the project (Todorovi? et al. 2015). The architect in presence of the project manager does the designing of the project.

Sustainable Development

iii) Defining Roles and Responsibilities: The third important factor for the critical success of the project is to define the roles and responsibilities of the employees and the workers of the project.

1. iv) Risk Assessment: This is the fourth important factor for the critical success of the project (Müller and Jugdev 2012). The risk is calculated and evaluated through this factor.
2. v) List the Deliverables: The deliverables should be listed in a proper way and all the project members of the Sydney Metro project should be familiar with the list.

The above factors will help the project to be successful in future.

Project Management Approach

There are several project management approaches for any type of construction project. The project management approach used for the Sydney Metro project, NWS, Australia is the Waterfall model (Tuteja and Dubey 2012). The Waterfall model is the non-iterative design process that is utilized in the processes for development of software. There are eight steps for this development cycle. They are as follows:

1. i) Conception: In this step, the concept of the project is brought. The project manager hires the project members for the project.
2. ii) Initiation: The project plan is made in this step (Model 2015). The project manager of Sydney Metro project has made the plan in the late 2015.

iii) Analysis: The analysis is done in this step. The Sydney Metro project has to analyze all the necessary documents and risks in the analysis step.

1. iv) Design: The design of the project is done in this step. The metro project needs good planning and design. The design involves everything of the project.
2. v) Construction: The Sydney Metro project is currently in this step of the waterfall model. This is the longest step of any project (Bassil 2012). For this particular project, the construction will take around two years.
3. vi) Testing: The next step is the testing of the software. The testing is another important step for any project. If the testing fails, the entire project will be a failure and the manager will suffer major losses.

vii) Implementation: In this step, the implementation of the project is done. This step is only possible when the testing is done successfully. If the testing is not successful, the project will stop at that very moment.

viii) Maintenance: Maintenance is the most important step for any project. Maintenance helps to maintain the longevity for any product (Tuteja and Dubey 2012). The Sydney Metro will be carrying thousands of people every day. Therefore, it is necessary to do the maintenance from time to time.

The above steps clearly defines the project management approach for the Sydney Metro project, Australia. The sustainability of the project is integrated by the above mentioned success criteria, critical success factors and the project management approach.

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, Sydney Metro project is one of the largest projects in Australia that is under construction. The essay outlines a brief discussion on the integration of sustainability of the Sydney Metro project. The success criteria of any project helps to attain the objectives and goals of the projects. The success criteria for this particular project are the scheduled time, resources and quality. The essay also covers the critical success factors that will to attain the success criteria. There are several success factors for this reason. The project management approach for Sydney Metro is the Waterfall model. The essay provides a clear description about the steps of the waterfall model.

References

Abdou, S., 2014. Sustainability of Project Management. Lulu Press, Inc.

Bassil, Y., 2012. A simulation model for the waterfall software development life cycle. arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.6904.

Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Model, W., 2015. Waterfall model. Luettavissa: https://www. waterfall-model. com/. Luettu, 3.

Müller, R. and Jugdev, K., 2012. Critical success factors in projects: Pinto, Slevin, and Prescott–the elucidation of project success. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 5(4), pp.757-775.

Sánchez, M.A., 2015. Integrating sustainability issues into project management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 96, pp.319-330.

Silvius, A.G. and Schipper, R.P., 2014. Sustainability in project management competencies: analyzing the competence gap of project managers. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 2(02), p.40.

SILvIuS, G.I.L.B.E.R.T. and SChIPPER, R.O.N., 2012. Sustainability in project management. Gower Publishing, Ltd..

Sydneymetro.info. (2017). Sydney Metro | Sydney Metro. [online] Available at: https://www.sydneymetro.info/ [Accessed 9 Sep. 2017].

Todorovi?, M.L., Petrovi?, D.?., Mihi?, M.M., Obradovi?, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015. Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.

Tuteja, M. and Dubey, G., 2012. A research study on importance of testing and quality assurance in software development life cycle (SDLC) models. International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering (IJSCE), 2(3), pp.251-257.

Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.