Channel Tunnel Construction: Project Management

Channel Tunnel Construction: Project Management The Channel Tunnel is considered to be the largest private sector infrastructure project of the twentieth century. It is a fixed link transportation system comprising twin rail tunnels with an additional service tunnel each 50.5 kilometres in length. These run below the English Channel connecting England and France. The terminals can be found in Folkstone in the UK and Coquelles, near Calais in France. In 1986, a treaty of Canterbury was signed establishing the political framework for the project. This addressed issues such as jurisdiction, national boundaries and governmental involvement, consequently defining the role of the Intergovernmental Commission (IGC) and Safety Authority. In the same year, the Concession Agreement was awarded to Eurotunnel (ET), a bi-national company formed by the Channel Tunnel Group (UK) and France Manche S.A. (France) for 65 years. Eurotunnel subsequently became owner and operator of the project and awarded the construction contract to Transmanche Link (TML) for the tunnels design, construction, testing and commissioning. ET also became linked to the banks via a loan agreement and to national railways via a usage agreement. The scope of the project entailed the development of a system to accommodate the transfer of regular traffic through airport-sized terminals onto an entirely new rail system with minimum transit time and shuttles travelling at high speeds with high capacity in a confined tunnel environment. This therefore defined the technology to be used, since a high integration was required between works and specific transport equipment, an unprecedented rolling stock which included the heaviest traffic on rails, and the largest real-time data system ever employed to manage shuttles travelling at high speeds. Project Roles and Responsibilities Project Sponsor As the project was privately funded, the sponsor had to raise finance on an unprecedented scale through bank loans and equity while making shares available to the public. The loan was secured through a consortium of 203 banks worldwide. An increase in finance during the course of the project was necessary to accommodate for the previously unconsidered needs of the IGC and for safety and environmental concerns as well as the approval of changes made to the project plan by the manager to address the commissions concerns and the degree of fast-tracking between the several phases of the projects. Contractual issues had to be resolved during the course of the project, with a revised agreement to that made with TML in 1987 being drawn up. As installation of equipment progressed, the concern shifted to the training of personnel for the operation of the transport system. Maintaining communication between both sides of the tunnel was also crucial in achieving project success. Project Manager The project managers principal responsibility was to plan and organise the project effectively to meet the sponsors design and construction specifications while adhering to cost and time constraints. During the construction phase, the project manager had to appoint sub-contractors for various stages of the project, with fixed-price contracts issued to reduce costs. Other duties included the modification of the project plan to accommodate for changes in the original design necessitated by pressures from the Intergovernmental Commission and accounting for safety and environmental concerns. The project manager also had to ensure that there was effective communication between the French and the English sides of the tunnel construction. Project Timeline Commissioning Jan 1990 total tunnel bored reached 50km Dec 1986 Geotechnical study of Shakespeare Cliff carried out. Cross channel surveys developed for the 1974-1975 tunnel project were refined using the latest satellite observations Nov. 1987 Funds arranged totalling  £5 billion Oct 1990 Eurotunnel Signs agreement for  £1.8 billion additional bank credit facilities June 1992 The installation of complex signalling, control and communication system begins. Nov 1993 Commissioning Program Begins August 1987 Construction work begins on both UK (Shakespeare Cliff) and French (Sangatte) sides of the channel Figure 1: Fast-track programme for Channel Tunnel [Event dates obtained from Wilson Spark (1994)] Original Project Objectives The fundamental objective of the tunnel was to offer a comfortable, fast, frequent and reliable transportation service that linked the United Kingdom to France via the English Channel. ET suggested that that two rail tunnels and a service tunnel be constructed. The service tunnel was to be fitted with safety and electronic equipment of the highest standard while the rail tunnels were to be designed to accommodate shuttle speeds between 100 to 160 km/h with an average journey time of three hours between London and Paris. The project was initially scheduled for opening on the 15 May, 1993. This meant that the time taken between design consideration and completion of the project was set at seven years. Since Eurotunnel could not start earning revenues until the tunnel became operational, schedule overruns were linked directly to loss of revenue, and were considered a more damaging consequence than direct cost increases. Based on the conceptual design, the budget was estimated at  £5 billion. It can therefore be observed that the quality of the system was of greatest importance in this project. A compromise was necessary between the desired quality and the time taken to achieve this quality, since as the time increased, so did the costs (in the form of lost revenue). Figure 2 indicates the time-cost-quality relationship for the Channel Tunnel project. The red dot represents the relative importance of quality with respect to time. Project Strategy The scale of design was massive and consequently broken into several smaller projects that ran simultaneously to achieve the overall objectives. Realistic time estimates for the project were obtained from detailed schedule planning during the inception phase of the project. This included activity definition, activity sequencing, and activity duration to develop a baseline project schedule. During the course of the project, monitoring and re-evaluation of the time estimates were performed by the implementation of a hierarchical planning/control system. This allowed overall strategic planning, proper reporting to management and detailed logging of day-to-day activities using a computerized reporting system to monitor the progress on all aspects of the project. According to the Channel Tunnel Treaty, Eurotunnel had to obtain funding for the project from private sources, without government aid or loan guarantees. Hence, financing was obtained through equity and loan capital markets. The Intergovernmental Commission (IGC) was put into place to ensure the quality objectives were achieved. This included implementation of a Safety Authority which was responsible for monitoring and specifying design procedures, specifications, construction and issues related to the environment, operation and safety. Since the project was bi-national in nature, the IGC mandated that if there were differences in the standards of the two countries, the higher of the two should prevail. The Quality Management plan included quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. Contracts played an essential role in defining the scope of work, cost, timeline and rules of engagement (or penalties). Contract Strategy During the conceptual design phase, Eurotunnel contracted TML for the construction of the tunnel. The contract agreements were based on estimated costs since at this stage of the project, detailed design was incomplete and hence, fixed prices were not available. Based on the estimated costs, the contract had three facets: Lump sum works for the construction of terminals and installation of mechanical and electrical equipment in both tunnels and terminals. Target works, for all tunnelling and related equipment such as the tunnel boring machines. The arrangement was that if the actual cost was less than the target cost at completion, the contractor will receive 50% of the savings, while if the actual cost exceeded the target cost, the contractor was required to pay 30% of the excess, up to a maximum of 6% of the target cost. Procurement items for the rolling stock and its associated equipment on a cost reimbursement basis with a procurement fee. Project Manager Type and Style ET comprised mainly of banks and contractors. Throughout the project, ET was largely criticised for its approach to design and management. This resulted in failure to deliver the project according to the sponsors time, cost and quality objectives. Additionally, since ETs organisation was bi-national, a sole project manager could not be identified. Organisational Structure Eurotunnels organisational structure can be described as functional, but its two board system made it unique. This is depicted in Figure 3 below. Figure 3: Eurotunnel Management Structure: Joint-Board System (adapted from Stannard (1990)) / In retrospect with the original project objectives, the Tunnel was not opened until 6 May 1994 at a cost of approximately  £12 billion. Additionally, original specifications for the rail system and tunnel quality were revised in order to keep costs down. Many reports have analysed the Channel Tunnel project in an effort to determine what went wrong in such a massive construction venture. From its inception, it was plagued by financial and technical woes, blown schedules and highly public battles between the company managing the project, ET, and its contractors, TML. One of the factors responsible for the cost overruns stem from the short time allocated for bidders to place their proposal for the project in the inception phase. Due to time constraints only a conceptual design was presented and priced. All detail design was to be completed during the construction phase after the bid was won (an example of fast-tracking in the program). Consequently, a number of design problems were not identified from the onset of the project and no provisions were made for them in ETs initial cost estimates. A typical example of this was the need for air-conditioning in the tunnel, and therefore, an additional  £200 million to accommodate this new design aspect. Later on, this lead to disputes between ET and TML about who was responsible for these cost overruns. Another important factor to consider was the poor communication between the British and French teams, in addition to ET and TML. Project communications was an important aspect in project planning, especially for a project of this magnitude. The multi-national team of approximately 15,000 persons included the politicians, governmental workers, bankers, lawyers and analysts who were responsible for obtaining an approved proposal plan and financing, and the construction workers, machinists and engineers who were responsible for the actual implementation of the project. With a task force of this size, an executional communication plan was necessary to address horizontal and vertical communication channels. An analysis of the Risk Management revealed that focus was on engineering risk as compared to process and approval risk, such as IGC safety decisions and approval, while the business risk was addressed via contractual agreements. During the project life, several key members of the ET team resigned and TMLs management also underwent significant change. Strategies were adjusted given the depreciating status of the project. Organisations involved such as the banks, Safety Authority, environmental issues, local authority and public opinion interfered strongly and permanently in this project that was constantly under media scrutiny. The Channel Tunnel was able to withstand all these delays and cost overruns principally because of its highly robust future income stream.

How Works Electoral College

Write an essay that explains how the Electoral College works. How does the Electoral College shape the strategy of candidates? Why is it harder to win presidential elections post 1968? Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U. S. citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded and counted, and winners will be declared.But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote. thinking of the 2000 U. S. presidential election — Gore won the popular vote (more Americans voted for him), but Bush actually won the presidency, because he was awarded the majority of the votes in the Electoral College. The Electoral College consists of the popularly elected representatives (electors) who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States. Since 1964, there have b een 538 electors in each presidential election. 1] Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution specifies how many electors each state is entitled to have and that each state's legislature decides how its electors are to be chosen. U. S. territories are not represented in the Electoral College. The Electoral College is an example of an indirect election. The election for President and Vice President is not a direct election by United States citizens. Citizens vote for electors, representing a state, who are the authorized constitutional participants in a presidential election.The Twelfth Amendment provides for each elector to cast one vote for President and one vote for Vice President. The final electors for each state are voted on by the state's residents on voting day Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes.Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state.The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes. In 2000, as the election approached, some observers thought that Bush, interestingly also the son of a former president, could win the popular vote, but t hat his opponent, Gore, could win the Electoral College vote because Gore was leading in certain big states, such as California, New York and Pennsylvania. In the end, Gore secured the popular vote, but Bush won by securing the majority of votes in the Electoral College.The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial United States presidential election. It was a wrenching national experience, conducted against a backdrop that included the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and subsequent race riots across the nation, the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, widespread demonstrations against the Vietnam War across American university and college campuses, and violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.On November 5, 1968, the Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon won the election over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Hum phrey. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore â€Å"law and order†. Some consider the election of 1968 a realigning election that permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years. It was also the last election in which two opposing candidates were vice-presidents

Prehistoric Life During the Ordovician Period

One of the lesser-known geologic spans in the earths history, the Ordovician period (448 to 443 million years ago) didnt witness the same extreme burst of evolutionary activity that characterized the preceding Cambrian period; rather, this was the time when the earliest arthropods and vertebrates expanded their presence in the worlds oceans. The Ordovician is the second period of the Paleozoic Era (542-250 million years ago), preceded by the Cambrian and succeeded by the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods. Climate and Geography For most of the Ordovician period, global conditions were as stifling as during the preceding Cambrian; air temperatures averaged about 120 degrees Fahrenheit worldwide, and sea temperatures may have reached as high as 110 degrees at the equator. By the end of the Ordovician, however, the climate was much cooler, as an ice cap formed on the south pole and glaciers covered adjacent landmasses. Plate tectonics carried the earths continents to some strange places; for example, much of what would later become Australia and Antarctica protruded into the northern hemisphere! Biologically, these early continents were important only insofar as their coastlines provided sheltered habitats for shallow-water marine organisms; no life of any kind had yet conquered land. Invertebrate Marine Life Few non-experts have heard of it, but the Great Ordovician Biodiversity Event (also known as the Ordovician Radiation) was second only to the Cambrian Explosion in its importance to the early history of life on earth. Over the course of 25 or so million years, the number of marine genera around the world quadrupled, including new varieties of sponges, trilobites, arthropods, brachiopods, and echinoderms (early starfish). One theory is that the formation and migration of new continents encouraged biodiversity along their shallow coastlines, although climatic conditions also likely came into play. Vertebrate Marine Life Practically all you need to know about vertebrate life during the Ordovician period is contained in the aspises, especially Arandaspis and Astraspis. These were two of the first jawless, lightly armored prehistoric fish, measuring anywhere from six to 12 inches long and vaguely reminiscent of giant tadpoles. The bony plates of Arandaspis and its ilk would evolve in later periods into the accoutrements of modern fish, further reinforcing the basic vertebrate body plan. Some paleontologists also believe that the numerous tiny, worm-like conodonts found in Ordovician sediments count as true vertebrates. If so, these may have been the first vertebrates on earth to evolve teeth. Plant Life As with the preceding Cambrian, evidence for terrestrial plant life during the Ordovician period is maddeningly elusive. If land plants did exist, they consisted of microscopic green algae floating on or just underneath the surface of ponds and streams, along with equally microscopic early fungi. However, it wasnt until the Silurian period that the first terrestrial plants appeared for which we have solid fossil evidence. Evolutionary Bottleneck On the other side of the evolutionary coin, the end of the Ordovician period marked the first great mass extinction in the history of life on earth for which we have ample fossil evidence (there were certainly periodic extinctions of bacteria and single-celled life during the preceding Proterozoic Era). Plunging global temperatures, accompanied by drastically lowered sea levels, wiped out a huge number of genera, although marine life as a whole recovered fairly rapidly by the start of the ensuing Silurian period.

The True Cost, Directed By Andrew Morgan - 1421 Words

When a group of children break something, they usually argue over who is to blame. We claim they will grow out of it, or that adults are beyond this behavior, yet the same game is being played between the consumers, corporations, factory owners, and factory workers in the fashion industry. Many different articles, films, and other forms of media have been dedicated to it, including the film The True Cost, directed by Andrew Morgan. Morgan created this film in order to address the effects of the growing fashion industry, both social and ecological, in light of the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh. Within the film, he describes the complexities of the issue and the different factors that impact it. Other articles support or disprove his†¦show more content†¦Most of them only get paid enough to buy food and other necessities on a day by day basis. The workers are not able to save money to use in the future. On top of this, they have to risk their lives to earn the small wage . Many people have reported cracks in buildings as well as dangerous chemicals and malfunctioning pieces of equipment that are never addressed. Even when these rights are offered, they do not uphold the ideas behind the UDHR. Benjamin Powell discovers more information about these violations in rights by talking to workers in his article Sweatshops In Bangladesh Improve The Lives Of Their Workers, And Boost Growth. Powell took a survey of some of the factory workers and discovered that â€Å"More than 95 percent of the workers [he] surveyed were unwilling to give up any pay for increased safety† (Powell para 11). Workers are being asked to choose between different human rights, safety and a fair wage. The purpose of the UDHR is to establish all of the rights that every person should receive, not to provide options of rights to only choose a handful of. By excluding any of the articles in the source, one is effectively ignoring its purpose. Even though it may seem like the problems in the industry are above us, we, the consumers, actually created them. Lucy Siegle, a journalist and author based in the UK, was interviewed in a film, dedicated to the flaws in the fashion industry, called The True