Project Management - Lesson from the practice

Case Study: Denver International Airport (DIA)

PD & Q Project Management (PTY) Ltd (PDQPM)is a South African reputable Project Management consulting company based in Pretoria with branches in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Sweden, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, France and the Netherlands. Through international search for a reputable project management company the Malaysian Government has approached PDQPM for a consulting project. The Malaysian Government intends to construct a modern international airport in Penang modelled on the USA Denver International Airport (DIA). The DIA client, consultants and contractors and would like the assessment/ critique of DIA as a first step towards a client briefing for the proposed Penang project.

As a Senior Partner of PDQPM (Pty) Ltdyou have been assigned this proposed project and you have been requested to respond to the client the Malaysian Government.

The Malaysian Government would like your assessment/ critique to focus on DIA project Management issues. It is expected that you will review DIA project value creation process and clearly comment on what happened, challenges/ problems faced and how these were addressed and how you think they were supposed to be handled through project management good practices. The latter should form the bulky of your presentation.

Task/Assignment

Based on the case study, PDQPM has requested you to prepare a professional paper, which will be presented at the briefing workshop in Kuala Lumpur to be organized by the Malaysian Government. As clearly indicated above the Malaysian Government representatives would like you to focus on DIA project value creation process (through the project life cycle) and clearly comment on what happened, challenges/ problems faced and how these were addressed and based on you PM knowledge how they were supposed to be handled through PM best practices. The latter should form the bulky of your presentation. It is thus expected that your presentation will be able to provide answers for the following:

1. By identifying 5 stages across DIA project phases do you think the DIA project value creation process was within PM good practices? Justify your answer by considering each of the stages addressing 3 issues for each stage by clearly identifying the challenges, their sources and how you could have addressed them. (40%)

2. Using a generic project management 3 Dimensional maze, critically identify 5 forces (at least one (1) from each layer) which

were faced by the DIA project and how you could have dealt with them. (40%)

3. Critically, comment on the DIA project parameters (Based on a 3 Dimensional maze illustration) and how they were balanced. (20%)