Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
When Mega Projects Go Wrong: 10 of The World's Unluckiest Construction Projects
67 Plays3 months ago
This week, Jason & Carlos dust off the history books to discover mega projects around the world that suffered through unfortunate circumstances amidst delivery.
The duo talk through unique situations ranging from a project that's 100+ years old and still going, to one who's faults were hidden from the public, as well as what learnings can drawn these 'unlucky' projects.
Follow Carlos on Linkedin | Follow Jason on Linkedin | Check out Aphex
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Mega Projects and Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't think I've ever seen a project where it has required the relocation of somewhere between 1.3 and 2.3 million people. That's quite a- 1,000 town, cities and villages were like shifted.
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome back to the offsite podcast.
Influence of the Oz Team on UK Operations
00:00:24
Speaker
Carlos, how are you, mate? I'm doing good, thanks. Double bonus today because Millie arrived from Oz team over into the UK office, which is cool. Yeah, we if we were going to do like an Australia vs UK football match, we need to even it up by by stacking your team a little bit better. Yeah, it's what is that have there the yeah. The UK team will have more influence into product now that we have Millie on our side, so ah it's ah it's a nice little tactical change. Yeah, no, that's that's that's one the balance of power. I thought we would cover something a bit different.
Editorial Choices: Avoiding Certain News
00:00:57
Speaker
We're recording this on the 18th of July and on the weekend was the attempted assassination of ah Donald Trump. And I figured, you know, it's probably not something that a lot of podcasts will cover. You know, it's not something that people will be talking about a lot. So I thought we might cover and tackle it. What do you reckon?
00:01:16
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I feel completely equipped with that conversation. No, we can we can skip that. Do you want to go to the football then? I think we can skip that one over. okay We won't touch on the state of origin. We won't touch on the state of origin either because Queensland got got pounded last night. So I guess we we might as well stick to ah to construction.
Common Mega Project Issues
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, sounds good to me. So ah today's episode has been really interesting to prep for.
00:01:48
Speaker
Most people are aware that megaprojects run over time, over budget. There's a whole thing about the iron law of megaprojects. They always take longer to to be delivered than planned, and they always cost more than they were planned. When you look into a lot of these megaprojects, there's always some reasons why that they you know they were over. There was a lot of talk about how there's a whole political reason to start a project before it's properly planned. And there's real reasons. But sometimes you just kind of get unlucky. And today, we're gonna run through. We talk about football again. No, that's real reasons. That's just that's just the iron law of how the euros go. I think is that how
00:02:37
Speaker
yeah um yeah We're going to look at, we've we've picked out 10 or 11 or 9 depending on whether we miss any of of some of the unluckiest projects over time that have either been late or immensely over budget. I thought we'd look at them and talk through them and and see if there's any common themes or things that we could take away and learn from what Carlos would reckon. Yeah, sounds good
Case Study: Brandenburg Airport Delays
00:03:02
Speaker
to me. um So I might kick things off and number one on my list for if enough you've done mass research on this project is the Brandenburg Airport in Germany. I haven't seen a project or a look back on a project that has had such um such direct feedback about um
00:03:27
Speaker
about the people involved and why it was late. So I guess for background on the project, it ran immensely over over budget. There were all sorts of technical complexities. It blew out from about two point something billion Euro to about six and a half billion Euro and delayed by nine years. Okay. Which is pretty bad. we There's worse. We're starting the list off not with the worst one. There's definitely worse. But um there were a bunch of technical issues. And if you look at a lot of the stories about the
00:04:05
Speaker
the investigation into why. There's some really interesting quotes. So a professor from the University of Berlin said, what went so wrong with the airport? ah question mark The Supervisory Board was full of politicians who had no idea how to supervise the project.
00:04:24
Speaker
It's one of those events that seems quite obvious after the event. that was and then and And then if you thought that wasn't direct, then a spokesman from the airport said, no politician, no airport director and no person who is not dependent on medication will give you solid guarantees for this airport. Wow, that's ah strong. so So the airport had a ton of issues. They had issues with fire protection, fire safety systems, all sorts of approvals, a bunch of the usual quality defects and a bunch of, I guess, political interference. And in the end, it went wildly, wildly over budget and nine years late.
Case Study: Wembley Stadium Budget Overruns
00:05:07
Speaker
It's kind of good to hear that.
00:05:08
Speaker
uh it's happened on a major sort of german scheme because my complete naivety around the landscape is that you don't see these mega schemes sort of in the news going wrong in countries like germany or seems to be the uk so it's it's good to hear that everyone's a little bit normal it's good to hear that the germans are late sometimes too yeah yeah exactly nice the next one the next one on the list that someone's put there is the sydney opera house in australia but we're gonna we're not going to talk about that one because uh it's a really beautiful building and It doesn't matter how late or over budget it was. Onto another onto another topic, however, the next one on the list is is Wembley Stadium. You know a little bit about Wembley Stadium, Carlos. Yeah, absolutely. Almost the home of the Euro 2024 trophy. that
00:05:57
Speaker
The Wembley one has an interesting UK and Australian flavour because the, well, the project was quite a shit show. And the main contractor was an Australian contractor, Multiblax. It ended up ballooning to approximately double the initial budget of the project. And I think at one point it was like halted while there was a dispute between I think the parties delivering the project. Do you remember that when you were younger? It's not a vivid memory, but I remember it being quite public, the issues. And yeah, the the budget was very well known across the board. I'd say the starting price seems very low. So looking at the numbers this year, it's a huge undercut, which then spiraled out of control because $326 million for a 90,000 seat stadium seems like great value.
00:06:45
Speaker
um Yeah, you can't even dig a hole in the ground for that in London now. Yeah, exactly. You can dig a hole in Wembley for that. That's a two it's a twob bedroom flat. yeah Yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, moving on from Wembley Stadium, we have we have Denver International Airport.
Case Study: Denver International Airport Baggage System Failure
00:07:04
Speaker
You know how on some projects, there's like the one issue that everyone blames all the issues on? um yeah You know, it's always like there's one subbing. That's every project, bis every issue on design.
00:07:18
Speaker
Um, but, uh, no, there's always like, there's always like the, everyone's always, uh, blaming one subby or a certain part of the project is always holding everyone else up. It's the easy get out of jail free. Well, this airport originally was budgeted for 1.7 billion. The final cost blew out to close to 5 billion. So almost tripling the initial cost. Same tripling as the, uh, the German one. Yeah. And it's an airport. So. Either we're really bad at bidding the cost of airports, or they should just yeah put a triple factor in there. um And this one wasn't as late. This was only a year and a half late. But the big issue on this project that everyone blamed every single thing on, basically it was just like the scapegoat of the entire project was this poor baggage system.
00:08:05
Speaker
This baggage system was blamed for all sorts of issues. The baggage system caused poor planning. It caused quality concerns. Complicated, automated baggage system was like, it got pinned with everything. So I guess. So it was the delay there to like rip out and replace, do you think? Or just they couldn't get it right? I think it was like the, it was the kind of first of its kind, unique thing. Okay. Highly automated. It was in 1995. Yeah, early 90s is probably the use of some technology. Yeah, rollers and motors or something. I think it was, I think it's famous. I don't know if you've seen that there's a Simpsons episode where like the bags go behind and there's like all these conveyors. I think that had, it was like slightly inspired by, cause it's got like a, quite an automated system in the background. Yeah. Okay.
00:08:55
Speaker
You don't get systemss Simpsons references too often. That's the quality you get here. yeah they yeah there's ah There's a huge baggage replacement project going on at Heathrow at the moment in one of the main terminals and they're like they are super complex and even now with a lot more technology than 1993 it so still sounds like a difficult thing to achieve. so I imagine doing it in like a they're doing it in an existing airport. Yeah. Yeah. yeah Keep it. Give me a guess. Is that is that what that know is that though they're doing at Heathrow? They're doing it in. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's ah there's an old structure, which is the old bag of tools. So they've they they're using the I'm pretty sure they're using the bag of system from another terminal. So that's like over capacity whilst they sort out the old terminal to bag of tool. So that's the one that they're actually fully refitting at the moment.
00:09:44
Speaker
I love to read the Google reviews of the baggage system there. Cause I imagine people losing bags. If they're like using another terminal's baggage system, they'd be lost baggage everywhere. Yeah. If you want your baggage, go to terminal five. that true All right, next on the list, which for those keeping track is number five, the Ryong Hotel.
Unfinished Business: Ryong Hotel's Long Wait
00:10:05
Speaker
Is that how we pronounce it? I think so, but I'm not i'm low confidence on pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, this hotel's major flaw, biggest problem that it faced was that it happens to be built in North Korea, essentially went through have you seen a picture of it economic collapse. and effectively ran out of money for the job and sat there for, I want to say almost 20, 15 to 20 years with no work happening. is this some Is this one of the ones that you spent a bit of time looking at?
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, so it's quite interesting because construction started in 1987 and it's still not finished. Like that's a record in itself. Wow. It's $750 million, which in an impoverished country like North Korea is pretty wild that they're spending that sort of money on that. The thing that stood out to me was... Especially to not use it. Yeah, exactly. I don't imagine they're getting a ton of tourism. To need a hotel. Yeah, yeah, it's all those inspection offices going over. Each sells them in this nice building. But no, the the thing that actually made me laugh was um it's now known as ah the Hotel of Doom because of its like, problems, three decade long construction period, but it was hardly ever going to be like Hotel Paradise yeah yeah in the middle of North Korea. So 40 year anniversary in three years time if it's not done by then. So that's pretty wild.
00:11:35
Speaker
When I worked on a project in London, there was a premiere in in ah Houston area and people used to call that the Hotel of Doom. Folks used to fly over from Europe and have to stay at the premiere in. So at least this is the original Hotel of Doom. Yeah, this one lives up to the name. Sticking with the Asian theme number six on the list is the Three Gorges Dam.
Three Gorges Dam: A Massive Resettlement Challenge
00:12:00
Speaker
The thing that stood out to me on this project among like the sheer cost of it and a bunch of other issues which we'll get into was, you know how sometimes projects have this issue where they like he impinge on people's homes. ah You know, you put a rail through or a highway through and you have to reclaim some land and and buy property and have a dispute with them.
00:12:23
Speaker
I don't think I've ever seen a project where it has required the relocation of somewhere between 1.3 and 2.3 million people. 1,000 town, cities and villages were like shifted, which is wild. The dam itself. I want to see option two. If that's the best one they had, I would love to see option two. Yeah, there's this funny, funny balance, I guess, in decision making, which is like the benefits of infrastructure and the social impact of that scheme. And ah I'm not sure they got that balance it's quite right with 2 million people resettled.
00:13:00
Speaker
The power generation itself though, it's the biggest power station in the world of all kind. um And for context, it's massive. So I'm not very good at my ah power station output, but the biggest nuclear power station in the world does 7,000 megawatt and this does 22,000. So it's three times more power generating than the biggest nuclear power station. say for 31 billion, which is not far off the cost of like Kinkley point C, it's, it's actually quite good value. Obviously I'm not including the social impact in this value. Yeah. Yeah. I'd imagine buying, I'd imagine buying the proper, I don't know if buying, I don't imagine they bought the property, but buying the property from 1.3 million people, uh, probably adds slightly to the cost that I don't imagine is covered in that total cost of the project.
00:13:51
Speaker
It also is interesting to know that the dam has become a ah dumping ground for human waste from cities, resulting in algae blooms and pretty low quality water. So it's good for power, probably not that good for drinking. Do you reckon they demolish the towns or do you reckon they just fill up and there's like whole towns underneath? I don't know. there's um There's one of those in the Alps, isn't there? You wouldn't want to have forgotten something when you were moving out. Yeah. Yeah. There's one in France where there's like a valley and there's a town fully submerged in what is now a dam. So it's like a full lake, but there's still a completely built town underneath. Yeah. Which is like the French Atlantis. I can't imagine they've, I don't, I can't imagine they've, that's a lot of the homes for 1.3 million people. That's, that's, that's a big project on its own to demolish. Yeah. It's crazy.
00:14:46
Speaker
Anyway, we don't know, we'll guess. My guess is, we'll do some research after this, but I'd imagine, my guess is that there the towns are under there. Put a fiver on it? Yeah, steady.
00:15:00
Speaker
Double or nothing. The next one on the list, so number seven we're up to, is ah was ah that a big UK theme coming
Costly Creations: Scottish Parliament Building
00:15:10
Speaker
up here. It is the Scottish Parliament Building. So anyone in construction knows that but working with an architect can pose some challenges. Sometimes they can dream some things up that might be slightly challenging or impractical to build. In this case here, the original budget for this project, this parliament building, was about £50 million, pound and then it eventually got up to a cool £420 million. pounds So that's a quintup 10x, nine times the the price. The main blame was placed directly on the radical designs of the architect, who I won't name check. um
00:15:49
Speaker
You've probably got tongue in tongue. Yeah. Actually looking at the years that this was done, probably not. I doubt they're into podcasts. Yeah. The interesting, the contractor on it was Bovis Lend Lace and then the architects. So it was a Lend Lace project. But yeah, blame the architect. Speaking of blaming architects, none bad on the list. Yeah, have you seen it? No. I was going to say, if you've ever walked through Edinburgh, It is, you look at it and you think, what is that? It's like, it is ugly. And then you realize it's that building that they've spent that much money on. It's ah it pretty wild. So I play the yeah the architect. in I like it. It doesn't look like a parliament building. No, it looks quite odd. It has a little bit of vibe with the Australian one.
00:16:38
Speaker
Have you seen the Australian parliament building? It's kind of like there's a lot of grass going on and and the building size is kind of polite because it's kind of covered. It's got a bit of that vibe. But speaking of blaming architects for delays and cost overruns, number eight, Sagrada Familia, the architect Anthony Gowdy kicked this thing off a few years ago, back in 1882.
Sagrada Familia's Enduring Construction
00:17:06
Speaker
It's still trudging along. so you know they got those um They do that like back testing or analysis of historical projects and cost blowouts and and and delays.
00:17:16
Speaker
yeah And, you know, it makes you wonder whether when they get to like a result where, you know, all these projects are on average four years delayed, whether actually most of them are just like a year delayed, and then this one's like 100, 200 years. And I love how they say one of the reasons for delay is wars, plural. like Yeah, all of them. Just all ah all yeah all all of the wars. All of the wars in history. The Spanish Civil War, that was a big problem. Also, it's really hard to account for inflation over a 140-year project, but I'd say they still think it will tough out a billion though, which still actually feels not like crazy if you look at it. Surely at the speed they're going, it's just like one person with some stones and a chisel. Just a hammer and a chisel, yeah. Like, if they ever finish it, it like loses its appeal. I think the part of it is like, keep it going forever. Yeah, keeps you on the radar, doesn't it?
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, i reckon on edge strategy yeah's I reckon there's definitely like a political media strategy and branding happening, on which actually leads us very nicely into number nine on the list, which is Trump International Hotel and Tower in Baku in Azerbaijan.
Ethical Dilemmas: Trump Tower in Baku
00:18:33
Speaker
This was, I would say, not your most above-board project, if I was to put it nicely. So this is a hotel that had very real links to bribery, to monthly ordering, to a whole bunch of government inquiries. Most people lost their money in there and
00:18:53
Speaker
Amazingly, you wouldn't have predicted this that just in December 2016, around of election time, the or Trump organization cut ties with the project, deciding concerns over integrity. right yeah yeah yeah Yeah, i I won't make comments on... um no go no yeah shes um go ahead i yeah it's ah It's unsurprising when everything around the scandal slash ethical issues slash conflicts of interest slash... yeah Cutting ties though, does that immediately mean it's not your fault?
00:19:33
Speaker
nice it's I don't know if stats here on when it it started but it definitely was going for quite some time. It's just so happened by chance unplanned that they cut ties just around the time of of the election. Cool, next one on the list is we're jumping from Trump in Azerbaijan to the Citicorp Center in New York in the US.
Citicorp Center: A Hidden Flaw
00:20:03
Speaker
This one here is, I've not actually looked up, I know zero about, so I'm going to kick right to you, let you tell me what's going on.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, so this is quite interesting just because, so the the the cost isn't crazy. There wasn't anything majorly wrong that was known at the time. I had no idea about this, but it was a was actually a student that questioned the design when it came to, but it's I guess it's wind's tolerance. I don't know what the structural phrase is for that. So it was a student that conducted some research, pointed out this major flaw, which would have meant would but would have been catastrophic, and they quietly like repaired the building without telling anyone or the public so that the public weren't aware of this issue and like it could doom the project forever. so i don't know yeah this We're making all these movies, Marvel movies. That feels like a movie, right?
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, not aware of his wear capes, right? Yeah, exactly. We don't need another like, I don't know, Thor. We need the movie about the the the genius school student played by like Shia LaBeouf, who discuss does these calculations. ah Yeah, yeah. It's like a rain man moment. Yeah, yeah. But so they solved it, which is great. But there seemed to be a bit of stir arounds, like the ethical side of not actually being conflict around these major concerns. Just like a sweep out to the rug moment, like, I'll be fine. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, you can imagine they do like a
00:21:36
Speaker
Like a grand inquiry or, um, a congressional inquiry into it. And then the response is like, but nothing went wrong, but he yes but it was all fine. Don't worry about it. But what are you worried about? It was all good. Um, uh, that's the 10th on the list. Uh, if anyone was keeping track, I think ah there was a one more bonus one.
Venice's MOSE Project: Corruption and Delay
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah. There's one honorable mention. Yeah, so the MOSE project in Venice, MOSE stands for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, here we go. The Medullo Sperimentale Electromencio Anno, that was wrong. um Anyway, it's like... I'd say i'd say it was like 100% for the first word, you' probably like 70 for the second. And then the first few syllables of the third were were like in the 60-50 and then it really, it died hard at the end there.
00:22:32
Speaker
I mean, you yeah with a surname like Lancine, I should have got you to say that with you're a bit of Italian, but yeah, that was ah that was an epic fail. But the scheme itself is, it's like a six billion pound, quite a big scheme. And it's, I guess it's Venice's version of the Thames barrier to try and control sea level. The project had some major delays and it was actually a lot of corruption. No, in Italy? So embezzlement and bribing. Yeah. Yeah. yeah um Who would have thought? There was a guy called Giovanni Mazzucurati,
00:23:06
Speaker
um who was sort of the main embezzler. And I found out that he actually got exiled. They call that primo embezzler. He got exiled from Italy for embezzling 54 million ah euros from various construction projects. And he's currently chilling in California with his 54 million, it seems. So um yeah, lots of issues in that. Crime pays. Crime just pays, yeah. Do you fancy a life in California? So yeah, pretty cool project though. And I think ah Venice is, it's not, it's got real issues, right, with the sea level. So yeah, I assume this is to help curb that. They're building like, they're essentially building a seawall, like that, like, it's like essentially the Netherlands. And instead of it being dry on the inside, it's just like a little puddle of water.
00:23:57
Speaker
yeah yeah which they can stop rising yeah If we then try to like step back in and go, what have we learned from from from these 10 or 11 unlucky and unfortunate projects?
Lessons Learned from Mega Projects
00:24:10
Speaker
Do you have any overarching takeaways? No one is safe. It happens everywhere. Airports, whatever your budget is, treor ah that's a takeaway. yeah We had that a few times. And keep an eye on the accounts. Watch out for Trump and the Italians, I think. Don't trust Donald Trump is my main takeaway. yeah or Or the other takeaway is just that yeah sometimes shit happens. um
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, a lot of the time shit happens. so Yeah. Well, the iron law of megaprojects. That should be the headline. Shit happens. um Awesome. Thank you. That was a good episode. That was an enjoyable discussion. Thank you everyone for listening and for tuning into the show. As always, the ah the episode was produced by Olo Sampson. So Olo, thank you very much. And if you enjoyed the episode, think about yeah liking the video if you're looking out on YouTube. or following us and we'd love to hear from you. So see you next week. Bye bye. Thanks everyone.