Risk assessment of Sydney Opera House

Aliaskarov Azat
School of Mechanical Engineering

LECTURER: Min An

MSc Engineering Management
Module name: Construction Production and Risk Management

22 April 2013
ABSTRACT
This paper assesses risks of Sydney Opera House. The reason is that Sydney Opera House has unprecedented budget and time overrun. It is gathered all possible information about history and construction. According to this information risk assessment was built and main risks such as dictatorial interference of government, unusual construction, lack of communication, poor cost estimate and others was found. It is also provided recommendations for risk reduction such as testing design, using fixed price contract
When construction was started, architect Utzon protested since he had not completed the design of Opera House. However, government started without completed design and plan. Problems develop further, the government changed requirements of building several times during construction. Their intervention laid in the fact that they changed mind about number of theaters in the construction. They wanted four theatres however project involved only two.
It is touched about bad cost estimates, to continue this topic, A View On Cities website states that funding was ill-conceived and investors were not involved because of different reasons. Initially, the government planned to achieve money from public funding campaigns. However, they did not achieve their target and alternative source was created in the form of lottery. “Opera House Lottery” was created in 1958, before the project was started. Again, this was not enough amounts of money and government decided to prolong it as long as project lasted. It is obvious that changing requirements during construction and unstable money supply also lead to time overrun. In this situation problem automatically picks up other problems as a chain. So, change of requirements led to cost overrun, as well as time overrun.

3. RISK IDENTIFICATION
Previously, it is gathered information about Sydney Opera House. It is talked