World Trade Center
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, the Ground Zero project was initiated to build the new World Trade Center Towers in Manhattan, New York. The project soon experienced a very time consuming loop of scope changes, stakeholder dissatisfaction and schedule non-compliance. The original estimate of $350m was exceeded significantly with a projected total cost of $3.8 Billion for the building which is now expected to open by 2014. Lesson learned: define scope requirements clearly and specifically to avoid scope creep; always obtain and document approval of stakeholders; Making unachievable schedule and budget commitments should be avoided.
This is part of a series of blogs about recently completed projects, thanks to my University of Toronto Master of Engineering students for their much more detailed reports.