Project Stakeholder Management

Although the Airbus A380 aircraft is a wonderful achievement, it’s also the product of a very troubled project. The project to design, build and deliver the world’s largest passenger aircraft was delayed by two years, and lost a total of 2 billion euro in profits for the Airbus consortium.

This is a very interesting project from a Stakeholder Management perspective because of two things:

1. The main reason for the delay seems to be associated with a communications breakdown between the two main factories manufacturing the A380, leading to incompatible wiring being produced. Both sides thought they were correct: “my wires are OK, they just don’t plug into your wires!”. Apparently, much of the wiring had to be removed and new wiring fitted, causing a long delay.

Applying Project Stakeholder Management, and paying more attention to relationships, might have avoided this kind of difficulty.

Here’s a link to an interesting account of the troubles during the A380 project.

Here’s a short extract from an article in the German magazine Spiegel Online in February 2007 that shows just how bad the project political situation between Germany and France had become: “EADS’ newly drafted turn-around plan called “Power 8″ is little more than thinly laced French economic patriotism. The proposal would keep French jobs safe before the country’s April elections by axing about 10,000 mostly German positions and selling off factories near Hamburg”. Scary reading for the German stakeholders, and not helpful in resolving the project difficulties.

2. Now that the A380 has already been delivered, it’s being hailed in the press here in Singapore as a “milestone in aviation history”. Doesn’t that sound like an attempt to make the A380 look like a big success all along? This is a great example of managing stakeholders after a project has been delivered, to turn around the image of the product and make everyone happy.

At the end of 2007, the first SIA A380 had made 130 flights, with around 950 hours of flight-time. Interestingly, the second A380 landed at Singapore Changi Airport a few days ago on Saturday 12 January 2008 without much fanfare.

There was also a rather embarrassing incident last Friday with the first A380, which slipped off the tarmac onto a grass verge at Changi Airport, Terminal 3, whilst being towed into position for takeoff to Sydney, Australia. All 446 passengers had to get off the plane and make alternative arrangements to travel to Australia, while SIA ground crew rescued the aircraft, which was undamaged. Project Managers are aware that there will always be some initial technical difficulties with the introduction any new product or service, so this is only to be expected.

Notice that the incident has been reported to ‘The Relevant Authorities‘ in Singapore. These ‘relevant authorities’ will, no doubt, be part of the project stakeholder management strategy.

We can’t possibly know if the arrival of the A380 on the aviation scene is really ‘historical’, as history will be written much later and by other people. My personal view is that the A380 will dominate the long high-density routes for many years to come.