Failure of Millennium Dome, London

KARAMJEET KAURN01194529

Submitted to Instructor:Andrea Wilson

The millennium Dome, London. (Jpg). (2004). Retrieved from

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjin/58712717/

Introduction

Many projects all over the world has built and designed through various strategies and for different objectives. Such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it was built for the world exhibition of 1889. The purpose of this construct was to show the world that how France has improved in science technology and architecture. And the Sydney Opera House, the Australians were willing to build a world-class opera house to increase the country’s reputation after the Second World War. The same thing happened in London, when British Prime Minister agreed to exploit the new millennium plan to construct an impressive building for the country in this circumstance. Therefore, the building is called the Millennium Dome. But unfortunately the project failed to grab the more attention of people. "Failure" in this case can mean not only if the project was never implemented, but also if it was implemented in a substantially different form, and if it took more than 10 times the amount of time or money to complete that originally projected. It was a remarkable project.

“Millennium Dome is a Dome shaped mega structure, built in the Greenwich peninsula in south east London. It was designed for the celebration purpose at the time of third Millennium. Third millennium is a time period from January 1, 2001 to end of December 31, 3000. At the time of construction it was considered as the mega structure in the world with respect to its size the Dome has a theme park and a scientific exhibition both which is entitled as the Millennium experience. The Millennium Dome closed on 31st of December 2000 because it failed to attract the number of visitors which was expected to visit the place and results in many financial problems. As a result the Dome has been sold and converted into a sports arena” (Mitchell, 2006). This paper will look at the analysis of project Dome along with different reason for failure.

Overview of project

The project life cycle of Millennium Dome passes sequentially through four different phases: Defining stage, planning stage, executing stage, closing stage:

Defining stage: The Millennium Dome, subsequently referred to simply as The Dome, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium. The main objective of Dome was to achieve first place, in terms of visitors, among the new London attractions (followed by British Airway London Eye, the national portrait gallery and the Stratford cultural quarters) that, according to the London Tourist board, would increase the UK visitor number by 3.9% to 26.5% million (Clarke, 2000).

Planning stage: The project was planned to fund from three sources: the National Lottery; visitors; commercial sponsors. In 1996, it presented gradually that the private funds were unable to

2

take the considerable risk in building, operating and maintaining the Dome project. As a result, the government took over the project, but their funding and appointing capacities are still insufficient referring to lack of accountability, financial balance and conflict of interest.

The Project Life Cycle. (Jpg). (March 18, 2015). Retrieved from

http://sathishchandramouli.blogspot.ca/2015/03/project-life-cycle-team-building.html

Executing stage: It was formed as a Millennium Exhibition of a scale and being achievement comparable with that of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival of Britain of 1951. The project was to provide the centerpiece for the nation's Millennium celebrations by opening on New Year's Eve and running through the year 2000. The project obtained the distinctive treatment of having been conceived under a Conservative government and raised to its full extent by New Labor. The project and exhibition was the subject of considerable political controversy as it failed to attract the number of visitors anticipated, with recurring financial problems. All of the original exhibition and associated complex has since been demolished. The total estimated cost for its construction was nearly US$1.29 billion. The other costs were shown in given table:

3

Project lifetime cost of Dome structure, infrastructure and content 1997-2001Dome structure and associated infrastructure £275Content: Exhibitions and Attraction £242

Source: CMCS, 2000a; NOA, 2000; NMEC, 2001b

Closing stage: It was an achievement for the opening a Millennium Dome on time. Initially the Dome attract a number of paying visitors but this number decreased so much that it beaten the record of visitors in 1999 in England. During its operational year the company has faced many financial problems. One reason is of decrease in the number of visitors. In order to deal with these financial problems company has done a number of changes at senior levels, like in year 2000 the company’s chief executive, finance director and accounting officers were replaced with new ones.

Socio-Technical Approach

There are two dimensions within the actual execution of projects. The first dimension is the technical side of the management process, which consists planning, scheduling and controlling projects and the second is the sociocultural side of the project management which includes leadership, problem solving techniques, teamwork etc. (Clifford, F & Erik, W. 2013). The Project Millennium Dome failed due to the inadequate planning, controlling, and support of team member, because good project managers balance their attention to both the technical and sociocultural aspects of project management. Briefly indicating the both dimensions if not, attributed to the failure of Dome project:

Supplier people not consistence

Supplier over-resourced

Overall poor management

Cost getting out of hand

Milestones not met

Lack of planning of resources and activities

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

4%

11%

12%

13%

17%

20%

26%

29%

34%

35%

39%

57%

Main Cause of Project Failure

Source: NMEC, 2001

4

TECHNICAL DIMENSIONS SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSIONS

CONTROL: The company did not realize its financial flaws at once, so there had been lack of controlling at the company. During the year 2000, the company appointed auditors and consultants to identified affect about quality of financial control and forecasting its direction at the company. And those auditors and consultants found out that significant potential weaknesses were hidden in internal control over the level of creditors and other liabilities.

TEAMWORK: Project Millennium Dome failed due to the inadequate team support and bad communication between relevant parties.

OPERATIONAL EXPERTISE: Lack of additional operational expertise for the managing project. The company was short of senior staff with experience of managing a large visitor flow. So the company needed additional operational expertise. In the light of the problems experienced on opening the dome, the company realized this issue and re-organized some of its key operations to reflect the demand for the dome to be more operational efficient.

CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS: Project dome fails to attract the more attention of public at very large scale because the target of project to increase the total number of visitors from 3.9% to 26.5% million.

MARKETING STRATEGIES: Even though the company had made much marketing efforts, there are still negative sense about the Dome and a lack of awareness of its content.

POLICIES: National Audit Office publishes report blaming unrealistic attendance targets for the Dome's financial problems

Analysis of the Failure of Project

1) Lack of vision: The project was not properly planed; project managers were unclear with the scope of the project. The original plan was to transform the Millennium Dome into a soccer pitch for use of one the teams of London but in the end none of the teams seems interested. At the end the British Government decided to find the appropriate buyer because the cost of maintenance was too high, it was reported to be £1M per month.

2) Poor execution: Poor execution cause lackluster content resulting in negative experiences for visitors and the resulting negative PR stemming for those experiences.

5

3) Criticisms: Initial reaction from the press was poor. Lack of content, themes and creativity were the common factors of criticism.

4) Lack of sufficient operational expertise: The Company lacked sufficient operational expertise. Running such a major attraction called for specific operational expertise quite distinct from that required to construct the Dome.

5) Poor marketing strategies: Marketing and sales strategies were based on the Dome selling itself. Poor marketing results in shortfall of sales tickets. The company’s marketing budget in the business plan was originally set very low as compared to the large visitor attractions. As there were no competitors so the company’s estimations about building a good reputation only with word of mouth and sales tickets was not enough to attract the new visitors.

6) Financially mismanaged project: It was financially a mismanaged project which was failed to attract new visitors. Throughout the planning and construction phase the cost raises which results in more and more dispersion of money to dome’s builders.

7) Lack of contingency plan: Due to lack of contingency plan they were failed to manage expectations.

Suggestions for improvement

The Dome project team should take up some improvement approaches. Firstly, the structure of management should be straightforward and clear, developing a defined focus on delivering the project. It is essential for the management structure to have strong and effective corporate governance and be able to adapt to meet different phases’ specific requirements of a project immediately. Secondly, project should be organized and proceed with a fully integral understanding of the project costs. These should include sale costs, closure costs. And the project should keep abreast of the cost change. Thirdly, the most necessary factor for a project to proceed successfully is income. The financial success of a project depends on generating income from visitors, and it requires the project team to make practical judgments about possible visitor numbers and determine the proper approach to put it into marketing effectively. On the other hand, sponsorships are likely to involve uncertainty over the level of financial contribution, the risks need to be taken into account in project planning. Fourthly, project managers need to respond flexibly if things do not follow the plan. It is planning to make the best of a bad situation. Finally, all expenditure happened within the project process should be

6

recorded by the company’s auditing office and matched the received invoices against these spending. Simultaneously, the financial position should be reported accurately and opportunely to staff who are responsible to be with oversight role in relation to the project.

Conclusion

According to Malcolm Forbes “Failure is succeed if we learn from it”. Definition phase is most important phase. The project manager should clearly define the project objectives and assign the duties and responsibility to each and every co-workers. The failure projects not only effect the government and public of that country, it also affect the worldwide economy of whole nation. Similarly in case of Dome, it may be an important ultimate property for British. The public investment spent on the Dome cannot be just presented in a form of balance sheet, the ultimate worth of the entire project will be measured by how well the government makes use of the project in the future, and whether they can avoid the recurring of financial crisis and satisfy the need for

enough data supported projections. What is the future for the dome? The minister in charge of the dome, Lord Falconer, said “I can give "no guarantee" that the dome would require no more money to stay open until the end of the year”.

Reference

7

Ravenscroft, N., Chua, S., & Reeves, J. (2001). The socio-politics of the hallmark event: The case

of the millennium dome. Journal of Leisure Property, 1(2), 147-161. Retrieved from

http://ezproxy.humber.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.humber.ca/docview/

195519389?accountid=11530

Satish, C. The Project Life Cycle. (Jpg). (March 18, 2015). Retrieved from

http://sathishchandramouli.blogspot.ca/2015/03/project-life-cycle-team-building.html

Essays, UK. (November 2013). Millennium Dome Project Management Analysis Information

Technology Essay. Retrieved from

http://www.uniassignment.com/essay-samples/information-technology/millennium-dome-

project-management-analysis-information-technology-essay.php?cref=1

Millennium Dome. (2009). In A. Room & E. Brewer (Eds.), Brewer's dictionary of modern phrase

and fable. London, United Kingdom: Chassell. Retrieved from

http://search.credoreference.com.ezproxy.humber.ca/content/topic/millennium_dome

Millennium Dome. (2007). In D. Watts, A glossary of UK government and politics. Edinburg,

United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press. Retrieved from

http://search.credoreference.com.ezproxy.humber.ca/content/entry/edinburghgukgp/millennium_do

me/0

8

9