Abstract
This paper presents the development of a communal and social facility located within a busy area, which is densely occupied by major retail and commercial buildings and tourist attractions. Such developments are usually located in the outer suburbs of a city, where land cost is lower. The purpose of this development was to inject a different energy and cultural variety to Orchard of Singapore, an area renowned as the shopping paradise in the region. Once completed, it will provide a new place for youths to gather, to express and showcase their artistic talent in music, theatre performance, multi-media, etc. Earmarked as one of the event venues for the very first Youth Olympic Games to be hosted in Singapore in August 2010, successful management and timely completion of this development was of the utmost importance.
The paper provides insight into project management in the Singapore environment. It covers the favorable contribution of authorities' role and efficiency to a project and the importance of engagement among the stakeholders.
Project management is about maneuvering around complex human relationships to orchestrate the convergence of varying and conflicting objectives to yield the optimum end result and outcome for the development.
Introduction of Project
This community development is sited in a bustling high-end retail district in Orchard of Singapore. The North-East boundary is just next to Cathay Cineleisure Orchard and the Meritus Mandarin Hotel and the remaining three sides are flanked by Orchard Link, Orchard Boulevard Road and Grange Road, all busy roads with high-traffic volume.
The design intent of this development is to create a space in busy popular streets for our talented youths to express their artistic talents. This includes theatre performances, dance, live band music, multi-media showcase, broadcasting, and street and art performances in open courtyards and terraces. The artistically talented, young entrepreneurs are also encouraged to explore and put their business ideas to test in this space.
To promote greater creativity for this development, a building design competition was held, “Arts and Ideas in No Fixed Form”. The winning architect brought across this idea clearly through the unusual form of the building, which is an eye-catching piece of art by itself that emerged on the busy streets of Orchard.
Exhibit 1: Fact Sheet Regarding the Development
As this development is earmarked as one of the event venues for the first Youth Olympic Games, there is a positive synergy among the authorities, design consultants, builders, operators, and end users to help the owner ensure the success of this project. This is an important start for any project; the spirit of teams working together toward a common goal. More will be illustrated in the later regarding how the various parties involved collaborated with each other effectively and performed their respective roles to make this project a success.
Critical Elements in Managing a Project: Authorities' Roles and Efficiency
One of the most fundamental roles of the project manager is to ensure that all applicable regulatory and statutory requirements of the project are met. Depending on the type and complexity of the project, various types of approvals need to be obtained from the respective authorities.
Exhibit 2: List of Authorities
Despite the seemingly large number of authorities involved, submissions and approvals were timely and did not affect the smooth progress of the project. Various checklists were used in the monitoring of submissions by the consultants, and close communication was maintained among the project team members to ensure prompt follow-up action where necessary. The owner was also prompt in making decisions and approving consultants' designs, which facilitated the submission process.
Aside from the effort to ensure timely submissions to authorities, special mention should be made about the efficiency of the submission process and procedures, where bureaucracy and ambiguity were cut down to a minimum. There was clear definition of the roles between various authorities, and the time required for approval was also made known to facilitate planning by the project team. Through the extensive use of informative technology, information was readily available and submissions were sent electronically to cut down time. Requests for clarifications and queries also were handled in a prompt manner.
All vital information was listed on the respective authorities' websites. For example, through the Urban Redevelopment Authority website, consultants could easily find the land zoning of the island, gross plot ratio, building height limit, detailed development control guidelines, and requirements, etc. (see Exhibits 3 and 4).
Exhibit 3: URA Land Zoning (source: URA)
Exhibit 4: Building Height Limit (Source URA)
Exhibit 5: Site Layout Plan (source: RSP Architects Planners & Engineer)
Site Layout Plan to Facilitate Planning of the Works
As seen in Exhibit 5, vital information includes:
- Development shall be confined within the boundary defined by the red dotted line.
- Green dots represent the mature existing trees that are to be preserved under the authority's direction.
- Purple broken line indicates an underground MRT line through the site, which is within the third reserve line. For such cases, the site needs to comply with the relevant guidelines set out by the LTA.
This is vital information for the project manager in the planning and execution of the works.
Demarcation of Site
As illustrated in Exhibit 6, the lands are well demarcated between the authorities and this minimizes confusion. For example, consulting with the relevant authorities for project-related issues, such as ingress and egress locations, facilitate the project manager in the site utilization planning and subsequently, the timely commencement of construction.
Exhibit 6: Site Demarcation
By establishing a clear understanding of the statutory requirements, the project manager is able to work with the design consultants to identify the critical design milestones, establish the schedule of delivery for these milestones, and develop a detailed work plan with the timeline for the authorities' approvals in mind.
Critical Elements in Managing Projects: Engagement of Stakeholders
In managing a project, having established system and procedures are not enough to guarantee success. A critical part of a project manager's role is effectiveness in the art of human management, specific to the development of a constructive engagement among the stakeholders. Other related factors to this project include the intensity and timeliness of the engagement. However, in any project there are outcomes, and this project's outcome has a significant impact on the result of a project. Thus, another important role of a project manager is to influence, where possible, the collective behavior of various stakeholders for the best outcome of the project. To achieve this, a project manager must be impartial and objective when engaging with stakeholders. Owner's support is also crucial.
In this project, the stakeholders are broadly divided into two main streams. The project team; namely the consultants and the builders are involved in the design and construction of the project. The operator and end users form the other main stream. The project manager's task is to assist the owner in bridging these two main streams of stakeholders while complying with the owner's requirements and authorities' regulations. In addition, there are also other indirect stakeholders who need to be managed, such as the surrounding retail operators, the commuters, etc. Any negative feedback from the public could lead to bad publicity for the project and possible delays to the work in progress.
Exhibit 7: Stakeholder Engagement
Exhibit 7 illustrates the complex interrelationships among stakeholders. The bridging is performed through constructive engagement by the project manager to yield positive outcomes. There can be many positive outcomes, but this paper will only focus on the following few examples of positive outcomes:
- Engagement between the owner, operator, and end users helps to draw up a strategic and effective cost management of the project.
- Engagement between the owner and other indirect stakeholders helps to soften the impact and the inconvenience of a project site to the public and surrounding business operators.
- Engagement among the project team for a creative resolution to site constraints.
Engagement between Owner, Operator and End Users that Leads to Strategic and Effective Cost Management of the Project
With reference to Exhibit 7, the overlapping areas signify the convergence of the needs of stakeholders. The engagement leading to this convergence helps the project manager to establish a strategic cost plan. For example, area 3 in Exhibit 7 is an area where it is most cost efficient as its provision meets the requirement of all three stakeholders. Vice versa, area 1 is the least cost efficient as it serves only the purpose of one stakeholder.
To yield the optimum result from the previously mentioned process, the respective stakeholders need to define their requirements as detailed and complete as possible. It is encouraged that they classify their requirements into “essential” and “secondary” in order for the project manager to conduct an analysis before a strategic cost plan can be mapped to meet the requirements of the three stakeholders within the budget and constraints.
Due to the unique characteristic of a building project cycle, early engagement of all the stakeholders during the initial stage of a project is not commonly practiced. This is because the project owner usually has a limited budget to work with and hence, engagement of various stakeholders comes at different stages of the project development for purposes of optimization. For example, the early stage of engagement usually involves only the owner and the project team; that is the consultants and the builders. Operator and end user involvement occur only at a later stage when the project is near its completion. The down side is it may result in re-work because the end-users' feedback may come in too late. Thus, early engagement of all stakeholders, if possible, is a bonus to a project manager.
Where there are needs that serve only a single party, then assessment of the cost and time implication would have to be carried out. These needs should be prioritized so that the less important ones can be provided only when there is budget. Most often, an individual stakeholder may even want to consider the full funding of the items that are uniquely important to them.
For this project, the effectiveness of the owner in providing clear guidelines for stakeholders' needs is a crucial contribution to the success of the project. It helps the project manager to implement and execute the project both efficiently and effectively. For example, the prompt endorsement by the owner for various design proposals provides the platform for the other related work activities to proceed smoothly.
The Engagement between Owner and Other Indirect Stakeholders Helps to Soften the Impact and Inconvenience of the Project to the Public and Surrounding Business Operators
This project site is located within a busy shopping belt with high vehicular and pedestrian traffic. As a project manager, it is important to understand and appreciate the impact that this project site has on the businesses of the surrounding business operators. Therefore, it is imperative to establish effective communication and interaction with the surrounding business operators to gather feedback for continual improvement. This helps the project manager to implement prompt preventive measures, which minimize negative publicity for the owner.
For example, a pedestrian walkway was re-routed so that the public was protected from the construction work and yet able to access the nearby amenities conveniently. The project manager exercised foresight and anticipated how the construction would affect the public perception of the site. Therefore, to soften the impact, high hoardings were erected along the perimeter of the site with aesthetic graphics and motifs. This effort also blended the site with its surrounding environment. Like any other construction site, safety was a priority. Traffic controllers were deployed to manage the ingress and egress of the site's access to the busy public road.
The various measures that were put into place ensured that public safety was not compromised and the pedestrian traffic to the retail shopping area, which was vital to the businesses of surrounding operators, was not adversely affected. With the indirect stakeholders' concerns being addressed and its implementation supported by the owner, the construction of project was able to proceed more smoothly with fewer complaints.
The Engagement among the Project Team for a Creative Resolution to Site Constraints
The initial engagement by the project team was in the feasibility study of the project. The study led to the establishment of clear identification of key constraints and controlled requirements. The two key constraints were: (a) the existence of a significant number of matured trees to be preserved; and (b) an underground mass rapid transit (MRT) within the site. The key control was the timely completion since this project is one of the event venues for the very first Youth Olympic Games in 2010.
The iterative engagement process in brainstorming for various mass modeling of the building and test fitting into the plot led to the following creative solutions:
- The building was strategically sited to avoid the MRT tunnels and beyond the railway's second reserve line (see Exhibit 8). To illustrate, refer to the site layout plan in Exhibit 5 of this paper. Observe that the building line in orange is set a great distance away from the purple MRT tunnel. In doing so, the authority restrictions on construction activities above ground are less stringent and therefore, easier for the builder to comply.
- The low story design of the building with no basement helps to improve the speed of construction.
Exhibit 8: Strategic Location of Project Site
Summary
People have different expectations and benchmarking standards. It is inevitable that when a diverse group of individuals comes together to form a team to work on a project, there is bound to be differences in background and conflicting objectives and needs. Therefore, a critical element in project management is to manage this human complexity.
Human complexity needs to be understood before it can be managed, and this understanding is through stakeholders' engagement. However, in addition to engagement, the receptive behavior of stakeholders is an important consideration towards a positive outcome. Another crucial factor is the owner's support of the project manager for the effective implementation and execution of a project.