Building A New Sydney Opera House

Building A New Sydney Opera House

Background:

The necessity of making a new Sydney opera House stemmed from the failure of the first structure. More or less the failure is attributed to several factors, the most significant being the failure of the project management. It is said failure as there are pitfalls in meeting the expectation in several domains by this project.  Sydney’s opera house can be called more an expressionist design. The structure contains a number of precast concrete shells, each composing sections of spheres of 75.2m (246’ 8.6”) forming the roofs of the structures set on a monumental podium. The total area of the building land is about 4.4 acres of land and is 183m long 120m wide at its widest section. It is supported by several concrete piers which are sunk in the sea for about 25m below the sea level (Colbert,2003).

Designed facilities:

The opera house contains two larger spaces, one is the western group of shells termed as concert hall and the eastern hall is Joan Sutherland theatre. There are several smaller venues with the complex, Drama theatre, the play house and the studio. They are all within the podium, beneath the concert hall. A smaller group of shells set to the western side of the monumental steps beneath the concert hall. A smaller group of shells set to the western side of the monumental steps houses the Bennelong restaurant. The podium is surrounded by substantial open public spaces as well. There is large stone paved forecourt area with the adjacent monumental steps and is currently in use as a performance space. The venues are in use for the performances as well as for ceremonies, social gatherings, conferences, concerts etc (Murray,2003).

Financial failures:

There are more than several aspects in which the Sydney opera house failed in. A critical and meticulous financial planning will not let the project to cross the planned budget by so many number of times. The planned budget of the Sydney’s opera house is about A$6 million in 1967, however by the time it got completed the total cost escalated to more than A$100million which is about 16 times the actual estimated budget (Tombesi, 2005). The great deviation in the actual cost of the budget can be attributed to the inefficient planning of the project. The delays in the actual plan progressions made the costs of the resources as well as other cost elements involved to deviate from the actual plan and hence the estimation went several times more than the actual cost projection. Apart from the actual delay in the project progression there are several other issues that added to the cost of the project at a later stage all these issues contributed to the overall cost of the project from the initial estimation and hence the total cost of the project exceeded several times the actual estimation made in the starting phases. An effective project management will not let the costs to cross the estimation so many number of times the actual estimation.