Discussion of Standard Criteria of Burj Khalifa

Introduction

Samsung C&T Corporation was established as Samsung Group's parent company in 1938. In 1975, it was named to lead overseas sales operations by the Korean government as the 'first general trading firm' for the country. In December 1995, it merged with Samsung Construction, and has since engaged in various global businesses across offices in over 50 countries. In 1963, Samsung was established with the aim of assisting national land development in Korea. Since then, it has evolved into a leader in Korea’s service industry by expanding its business scope to include resorts, food and beverage, and landscaping. In September 2015, merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries merged their respective reputations as the market leaders. Today, through the Engineering & Development, Trade & Investment, Fashion and Resort Groups, Samsung C&T aims to become a global business partner and innovator in lifestyle. The project case I have selected is the Burj Khalifa.

Background

Burj Khalifa, initially known as Burj Dubai, is situated at Downtown, Dubai (Arabian Business 2017). The Dubai Government wanted to create something peculiar. The government planned Burj Khalifa, not with the aim to create one of the world’s tallest building, but to become Middle East’s hub for trade, tourism and finance industry. The basic structure of Burj Khalifa was purposely shaped to resemble the letter “Y”, by the designers in order to keep its structure simple and to reduce the force of the wind blowing across the tower (Baker et al. 2007).Today, it is the tallest building in the world. The excavation was started in January 2004. In July 2007, it reached the storey level 141, in September 2007, it reached the level 150 and finally in 2008 it was completed which attained a height of 160 and was known as the “world’s tallest man-made structure”, which made it to the world record of the tallest building. It was then officially inaugurated on 4th January, 2010.

To build Burj Khalifa over 45,000 meter cube of concrete was used weighing more than 110,000 tones, to create concrete and steel foundation. This project involved more than 380 engineers and technicians. Perhaps, in spite of having many world records in its name and gaining such a broad reputation in the world, there are some of the challenges involved for its success as well as few failure.

Discussion Of Standard Criteria

The key metric for performance is what was called the 'Iron Triangle,' a metric that evaluates the project from three perspectives: cost, time and Scope (Atkinsin 1999). One of the most crucial thing is that the project evaluation should focus right from the outset to the completion phase. By using iron triangle the Burj Khalifa can also be measured. Burj Khalifa has attained its name for its height, but during the course of the project a lot of issues were created that caused delay for its construction. The estimated cost for Burj Khalifa was 875 Million USD. However, its final cost exceeded and was approximately $1.5 billion. Many factors were included for the risen cost. Firstly, in the midst of the global economy's recession in 2008, the rise in prices of raw materials had risen dramatically (Abraham 2019). The iron prices were risen by 75% in 2008 along with aluminium and cement that was planned to be used in the construction of the building. Secondly, during the total span of the construction of the project, around 2000 labours went on strike due to less compensation that was provided to them by the contractor and the workers were compelled to work for 12 hours (Pile 2017). As a result, the construction was withheld. But gradually as the issues were resolved, the construction activity continued. Because of this, the time, quality and cost of Burj Khalifa increased, due to which the building had an indirect raise of cost that was faced by the management. Lastly, the cost rise was also responsible for a change in design along with the interior design planning. The project company Emaar agreed to adjust the final building height: the new design was 100 metres higher than the initial plan.

References

1. Abraham, O.A., 2019. Effective Project Management in Contemporary Developments: Case Study Burj Khalifa Tower.
2. ArabianBusiness, 2017. Six years of success: 'The biggest challenge for the team behind Burj Khalifa was the fact it was working in unchartered territory'. [Online] Available at: https://www.arabianbusiness.com/six-years-of-success-the-biggest-challenge-for-team-behind-burj-khalifa-was-fact-it-was-working-in-unchartered-territory--617162.html.
3. Atkinson, R., 1999. Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria. International journal of project management, 17(6), pp.337-342.
4. Baker, W.F., Korista, D.S. and Novak, L.C. 2007, Burj Dubai: Engineering the world's tallest building. The structural design of tall and special buildings, vol. 16, no. 4, pp.361-375.
5. Bartleby, 2013. Burj Khalifa - Success or Failure?: Project Management Perspective. [Online] Available at: https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Burj-Khalifa-Success-or-Failure-Project-Management-F3C86MEKVC.
6. DubaiCityGuide, 2010. Burj Khalifa Milestones. [Online] Dubai City Guide Available at: https://www.dubaicityguide.com/site/burj/milestones.asp.
7. Frigenti, E. and Comninos, D., 2005. Practice of Project Management. Kogan Page Publishers.