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Terminal Five: It happened before
March 27, 2008
Did the warning bells sound?
Posted by: James Archer
The delays at Heathrow Terminal 5 caused by baggage problems bring to mind the history of Denver International Airport. Due to open in October 1993 Denver International Airport finally opened in February 1995 between $500 million and $2 billion over budget.
The Automated Bagging Handling software wasn’t ready on time. Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister explain how some simple Risk Management could have averted the whole catastrophe in their gem of a book Waltzing with Bears.
The baggage system was on the overall project’s critical path for the airport’s opening. By the time the problems with the baggage system were admitted the tunnels for it had been built. The tunnels were too low for people and couldn’t accommodate truck pulled carts.
A few million dollars spent early in the project to make an alternative baggage handling scheme feasible would have saved at least half a billion dollars.
Were there warning bells? Plenty! Members of the project visited Munich Airport who used a similar system. Munich spent two years testing the software and 6 months operation before turning off the old system. Denver decided to carry out the four year project in two years.
In September 2005 the automatic baggage system was finally abandoned. Today all baggage at Denver is moved by hand!
A few fingers will be crossed at BAA that the 18km of conveyor belts for baggage handling don’t suffer a similar fate.
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About the author
James Archer Understanding the business requirements is always the key to successful IT projects. After 20 years in local government IT, James Archer aims to highlight the lessons that are still being learned and re-learned.
Comments received
Chuka said on Thursday, 15 October 2009
Hello,
I am doing a research into the risk management issues associated with the Terminal 5 chaos. Would love to get a bit more on the whole project issues associated with this project.
James Archer, read this and would be glad to have more information as to the risk management issues.
Thank you.
Chuka Odiachi