Project ambidexterity: case of recovering schedule delay in a brownfield airport project in India
and | Mar 14, 2017
About this article
Article Category: Research Article
Published Online: Mar 14, 2017
Page range: 1464 - 1481
Received: Oct 02, 2016
Accepted: Nov 23, 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/otmcj-2016-0012
Keywords
© 2016 K. Chandrashekhar Iyer et al., published by De Gruyter Open
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Status of construction projects in airports operated by the AAI* (as on March 31, 2011).
| 1 | Ahmedabad | Construction of new International Terminal Building | 2,909 | 100% (just commissioned) | 1 month |
| 2 | Chennai | Development of Terminal Building and pavement works | 5,350 | 27% | No delay reported |
| 3 | Chennai | Development of Kamaraj Domestic Terminal Phase-2, and expansion of Anna International Terminal Building | 12,730 | 64% | Delay reported, but not quantified |
| 4 | Chennai | Extension of secondary runway, construction of taxi tracks | 2,328 | 99.5% | No delay reported |
| 5 | Chennai | Construction of RCC | 2,280 | 99% | No delay reported |
| 6 | Kolkata | Construction of Integrated Passenger Terminal Building at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) Airport | 23,250 | 63% | 3 months’ delay |
| 7 | Gangtok | New airport at Pakyong near Gangtok | 2,643 | 38% | 17 months’ delay |
| 8 | Goa | Construction of new International Terminal Building | 3,300 | 16% | Delay reported, but not quantified |
| 9 | Multiple locations | GAGAN | 3,936 | 62.15% | No delay reported |
Examples of recent airport construction delays across the world*.
| 1 | Dhaka | Bangladesh | New greenfield airport land acquisition issues resulting in non-commencement of project |
| 2 | Muscat | Oman | Delays due to design modifications |
| 3 | Brandenburg | Germany | 6-year delay (original opening plan 2010, expected 2016); cost overrun of €1.2 billion; €80 million litigation for poor planning |
| 4 | Quito | Ecuador | 18-month delay; renegotiation, dispute resolution |
| 5 | Santiago | Chile | Re-tendering, quantum of delay to be ascertained |
| 6 | Malaga | Spain | Environment clearance delays; change in plans |
| 7 | Durban | South Africa | Renovation required within 2 years due to poor design and restricted access |
| 8 | Zagreb | Croatia | 10-year planning; year-long tendering in 2011; construction started May 2014; expected completion December 2016; optimistic schedule |
| 9 | Doha | Qatar | 6-month delay in opening to decide the main contractor becoming the airport operator |
| 10 | Islamabad | Pakistan | 70% behind schedule, audit detected irregularity |
| 11 | New Khartoum | Sudan | Multiyear delay to finalize finances (Sudan suffered loss in State revenues due to partition) |
| 12 | Campinas City | Brazil | Unsafe working conditions; construction delay |
Stages of the GT* study adopted for this research.
| Open coding | Collection of granular text data, such as those from stakeholder interviews, project records. Identified data are tagged and sorted by key points, which have been termed “open codes”. |
| Selective coding | Collection of open codes similar in concept, which allowed the data to be grouped into “anchors” |
| Categories | Broad groups of similar concepts that are used to generate theory |
| Theory | A collection of similar explanations that explain the subject of the research |
Description of key constraints, anchors, and categories, as well as their effects on project schedule.
| Shifting of electrical substation; permission for demolition of link building. These were critical pieces of operational infrastructure located in Zone 1 of the proposed Integrated Terminal Building. | Link building area was handed over on April 1, 2011, about 29 months after commencement of construction. | 1 | |
| Shifting of line maintenance building and motor transport workshop and permission for demolition. These were operational facilities located in Zones 3 and 4 of the proposed Integrated Terminal Building | Line maintenance building area was handed over on October 20, 2009, about 1 year after commencement of construction. | 2 | |
| Service area, its building, and the underground sewerage treatment plant were not defined in the initial plan drawings. | The locations were finalized 1 year after commencement of construction. | 3 | |
| Inclusion of separate architect/design consultant for Domestic and International terminals, with no interface between the consultants, resulted in major disorder when the structure was designed as an integrated terminal. | Dissimilar architectural concept and design outputs with convergence disagreements between consultants resulted in time loss. This time loss affected the schedule performance but could not be segregated and quantified in the study. | 4 | |
The AAI had no prior experience of such a large commissioning exercise since its inception in 1994. Transition of all operations staff, airlines, passenger, security, health organization, customs and passport control services. Operations from existing terminal buildings were planned to be shut down. | Any glitch in transition would delay project commissioning. Other high-profile international airports experienced commissioning fiascos. Meticulous planning and rigorous trails ensured smooth transition, and hence this was picked up for detailed study. | 5 | |
| Without restricting appropriate access for existing airport operations, there was limited space available to be given to the contractor for setting up the fabrication yard, Concrete batching plant and its operations, and equipment storage. Maneuverability of equipment and vehicle were also constrained within the project area. | Lack of proper road network within the project area led to equipment underutilization and hindered movement of project resources. This, however, finally did not cause project delay. | 6 | |
| Rerouting of existing operational utilities, services, and communication cables from the project area in the absence of their detailed drawings. Most of these were serving the existing airport, and any inadvertent damage during excavation or other works would be potentially disruptive for airport operations. | While this was a “known unknown”, it led to uncertainty with potential to affect schedule. This was managed by the AAI with additional efforts and emerged as a learning point from this study. | 7 | |
There was a storm water pond in the project area, which needed to be filled up as a part of site preparation activity. Rerouting of inlet to pond and its discharge into the existing drainage system of the civic authority | Though pond filling activity was planned, the rerouting of the inlet to pond was not initially budgeted. This was included as a revision, but finally, it did not delay the project. | 8 | |
| Location of operational aviation turbine fuel storage tank area near the project construction site (on the fringes of Zone 6). This required the following:
implementation of additional safety measures during construction maintenance of access roads for tankers approaching from the city side to the fuel storage tank area throughout the construction period. | Efforts to get the fuel oil marketing firm to relocate their fuel storage tanks did not materialize and needed repeated changing of temporary access roads to allow tankers to reach the fuel storage tank area. No delay in project schedule. | 9 | |
| Lengthy organizational procedure for effecting any change in contract, such as Bill of Material, specifications, quantities, services, and other change orders that may become necessary during project execution. | Layouts or numbers were required to be shared and agreed with the contractor to know the flexibility on the availability of material or substitutes and their construction viability before implementing the drawings for construction purposes. No delay in schedule. | 10 |
Assessing the underlying phenomenon in the schedule recovery measures.
| 1 | Site constraint | Time management Resource management Claim management Integration management | Managers moved away from conventional practices of activity scheduling to orchestrate all project resources and dynamically operated in a turbulent environment within less time, without sacrificing cost and quality, in addition to handling emergent claims effectively. The AAI intervened when needed to exploit prior in-house (or externally accessed) learning and explore new solutions by integrating stakeholders within the available time to deliver the project. All these steps demonstrated ambidexterity. |
| 2 | Process constraint | Time management Integration management | |
| 3 | Governance constraint | Time management Resource management Stakeholder management Integration management |
Mapping of anchors into categories.
| Land encumbrance | Site constraint | |
| Access restriction | ||
| Knowledge of existing utilities network/layout | ||
| Reclamation of land/brownfield contamination | ||
| Cascading planning deficiency | Process constraint | |
| Complex, multidisciplinary decision-making environment | Governance constraint | |
| Organization procedural environment |