A report on Chunnel Tunnel Project

INTRODUCTION

Project management is made up of several components including scoping of work, integration of activities, cost budgeting, stakeholder engagements and the communication as well as risk management strategies (Larson & Gray, 2018). This report is written for the Chunnel Tunnel Project linking the England and France via an underground tunnel. With cooperation of two national governments, international banks and private construction companies, the project got completed in 8 years and cost billions of British Pounds due to several loopholes throughout the project lifecycle (Giammalvo, et al., 2005). Numerous numbers of factors played their role during the whole project while leaving significant impact on the project completion budget and time. This report will be analyzing the project scope, communication plan, roles & performance of project management office, project pricing, stakeholder management, project performance and the project management teamwork of The Chunnel Tunnel Project. 

PROJECT SCOPE

Project scope of the project defines the deliverables for the end user while focusing on overall project plan. It is actually the end result or mission of the project for the final customer (Larson & Gray, 2018). According to Hussaine et al. (2012), poorly defined scope or mission can become a huge barrier in the project success. There is a clear link between the project success and the clear scope definition at the start of the project. Moreover, the clearly defined scope document provides a focus on project purpose throughout the lifecycle of the project for the participants and customers alike (Omar & Fayek, 2016).  A project scope is made up of the project objective, milestones, deliverables, technical requirements, limits and exclusions and reviews of the customer. According to Larson & Gary (2018), many projects face scope creep due to changing requirements, specifications, cost and timing issues and changing priorities. The scope creep can have both positive and negative impact on the projects but in most of the cases, the scope creep can add costs and project delays.  

In the given case, the poorly defined project scope at the initiation phase let out to cost and time overlays (Giammalvo, et al., 2005). As it is considered that the scope definition is directly correlated with the cost estimates, thus lack of defined scope can make resource planning, cost estimation and budgeting difficult for the project management team. Chunnel Tunnel’s initial scope was to create the fixed transportation link between England and France while no focus was made on the client requirements and the other factors like tunnel air-conditioning. Due to ignoring the rough-out-of-order magnitude estimates of air-conditioning of tunnel, the overall cost of USD 200 mn was added in the costs that were not included within the initial scope of Chunnel Project. Moreover, poor client dealing and misleading technical analysis, the design drafts were missed from the original concession agreement (Giammalvo, et al., 2005). These issues led to problems with scope planning and initiation.