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Queen of Denile
Ian Whittingham, PMP is director of Calixo Consulting, providing project and program management expertise from initiation through to implementation, covering business transformation, workflow process re-engineering, and enterprise data integration. He is a regular contributor to ProjectManagement.com. You may contact Ian directly at [email protected].
In its first year of operation it earned over $23 million. In addition to construction costs of $1.5 million, among the line items in the final set of accounts was an entry for $22,000 covering mine dredging expenses, and $100,000 for paper cups. As well as a suit of gold armor costing $1 million, another $3 million was allocated to that nebulous accounting catch-all, miscellaneous items.
Over the five years that it took to deliver the project, the budget grew from an initial estimate of $3 million (soon to be consumed by miscellaneous) to an actual spend of over $44 million. When one of the principals went through the detailed line items they were astounded to discover that throughout the project they ate 12 chickens and 40 pounds of bacon. Every day. For breakfast.
Lax budgeting and idiosyncratic accounting were not the only failings of this project. The scope was changed almost at whim, with consequent impact to the schedule. Risks were either unacknowledged or compounded by secondary risks invoked through inappropriate mitigation. Communication breakdowns further exacerbated production problems. It even fell short of the success criteria normally applied to such projects.
And yet, 42 years after it was completed, its achievements are still viewed as historic from many perspectives. In contrast to that gargantuan gastronomic accounting fiction, the same …
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