Miracles Do Happen: Planning Helps Team Finish The Impossible Project

  PM Network  

Picture this: A railway project in Mumbai, India has been planned with three objectives:

1. Break down and rebuild a stone bridge
2. Extend the length of four rail platforms
3. Make space for another track

And this is all to be accomplished with minimal interruption to rail service and in just two days. (Yes, 48 hours.)

India is a fabulous land where things do get done, just not very quickly. The country is like a lumbering elephant that ambles along—but please, no pushing or nudging. Slowly but surely, we reach our destination, with the operative word being slowly.

Needless to say, the aggressive plan for the Masjid station project was audacity personified, even by Western (or any advanced country’s) standards.

The train station lies about 1.5 kilometers (roughly 1 mile) from Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus in central Mumbai. The first stop en route from the terminus, it became extremely congested, even in a city quite accustomed to big crowds. Complicating matters even more, the station had only one entrance: a ramp to an arched stone bridge built in 1868. With the railway deciding to switch to alternating current, the height of the bridge had to be increased per Indian law.

Local trains had also been lengthened by three cars, and Masjid became the only station in the network with platforms so short that trains were forced to halt …

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