Full name: Kavya Simhalapathi Student ID number: S5034737 Title of PfL: Concorde Case Total number of words: 2056 CONCORDE CASE After the post war years, many countries concentrated on improving their infrastructure. Because of those technical advancements, British and French people came together with an idea of developing a supersonic air transport that can provide better and faster service to their people. Concorde was born from that idea and it became one of the supersonic jets that are developed to be operated for the commercial purposes. The project was named Concorde as the word means harmony or union. The project tried to resemble the harmony between both the governments. To give this idea a shape, the British and French governments made a treaty called Anglo-French treaty in the year 1962 with mutual investments in the development of the project. Having its initial flight in the year of 1969, Concorde commercially flew in the year of 1976 carrying passengers from 92 to 128 over Atlantic and few other destinations serving the people for next 27 years. Steps to make Concorde were laid when British government decided to develop supersonic transportation that can provide faster option of transportation with increased safety. After the failure of comet they tried to avoid greater damage and made a committee with government and non-governmental institutions called Supersonic Transport Aircraft Committee (STAC) to give this theoretical idea a practical shape. The French government though initially backed off with this idea, but later showed a great interest in the project to fulfil their motive of becoming a leader in the world’s aviation industry. With a motive to lead the aviation industry and to develop a supersonic transportation system that is safer and faster, both countries signed a treaty called Anglo-French treaty in the year 1962. The treaty included 7 clauses that included the highlighted the working structure of the project and also included points such as no break clauses, technical proposals, management structures and programmes. It also included clauses that highlights construction of two prototypes and one preproduction aircraft of each type and testing would be carried out parallel in both the countries. The treaty also stated that being the primary stakeholders of the project the British and France governments must equally share the responsibilities and costs covering development and production of the project. The governments started the project with an initial budget of 134.2 million pounds and planned to finish the project within 7 years. The project was planned carefully as France was having limited knowledge on the supersonic transportation technology and Britain gathering knowledge from all its resources. It should also be noted that the project initial financial plans did not include the cost of series production and allowance for inflation or change in the exchange rates. Later due to political and other circumstances the project was delayed, almost stopped, lacked the required financials, added stakeholders and finally finished successfully with flying colours. When considered a model to explain such project, Diamond model framework can be considered as the best one. This model is considered by many of the project managers because of its structure and ease of understanding. This model is easy to understand by everyone who is involved in the project. While dealing with any project the project managers try to fulfil the customers’ demands with in the given time and the budget but it is highly impossible as they might be issues arising in the project that may create delays or extra input. There will be always a gap between the expected outcomes and the actual out comes. One cannot eliminate the difference but can minimise it. To minimise such type of errors this type of models are useful. The Diamond model allows the project managers to build a bridge that can reduce the gap between the actual and the expected outputs. It enables them to have a closer look of the project in each and every aspect which further allows them to find a solution that can reduce the gap. It gives them a chance to select the right team members or resources based on the knowledge they have gathered. To have a clear understanding about the four bases in the diamond model they are explained briefly below: Novelty: this is the base that is used initially to describe the nature of the project. Organisations work on many projects. They may be either be a complete new project or an extension of an existing project but the varying degree of newness or novelty describes the risk of the project. When organisation decides to create a complete new project then it is called a break through project which requires deep analysis of the technology required and the market demands. It can also be considered as risky because there won’t be any previous knowledge available for such cases. Hence these kinds of projects are risky, requires lot of time to get done and demands new technology. These reasons make it a risky one. There are other kind sectors in the novelty namely platform and derivative. Technology: This base try to describe the technical advancements that are available for the project. When a new or a break through project is considered then the project requires the merge of new and old technology to get the project done, sometimes it also requires the new inventions to support the project hence the technical difficulty may arise. The technology base depends upon the project chosen. If the project is merely an extension of precious project then then the technology related to the project is readily available. With few changed in it the project can be finished successfully but when the project is a break through one then it requires the high-tech technology or super high tech technology depending upon its requirements. Complexity: Complexity base is divided into three sections to describe the project more precisely namely assembly, system and array which are defined below. Assembly: This is the lowest degree of complexity and usually concerned with the building a specific and self-contained product. System: This measure provides information on how complicated manufacturing product will be. Projects falling in this base have medium to high risk. Array: These projects consists of coordinating multiple systems and are usually highly complex. Many stake holders often influence these high-risk projects. Pace: As per the name pace defines the speed at which the project got done or is about to get done. There are four types in the pace namely regular, fast, time critical and blitz. In regular kind of project time is not a constraint but achieving the goal is where as in the time critical the project must be done in the given time interval or it may result in the failure of the project. Blitz projects are those where projects are done with extremely urgent timing fast projects are those which are carried out by the industries and profit driven organisations. The above figure tries to describe the expected outcome of the Concorde project. Details from the case study gives us knowledge to fit the facts in the diamond model for the better understanding of the project and what the parties expected from the project. In the expected outcome model the project can be described as the break through project. The reason behind this implication is that at the time of project initiation, development of supersonic aircraft was a novelty. Comet was built before but it led to a failure and many raised concerns about it. There was less or limited knowledge about the subject and both countries tried to gathered knowledge from the available resources. France has limited or less knowledge about the supersonic transportation and Britain involved seven aircraft companies, four engine companies and government departmental representatives to work on the project. Hence all the institutions mentioned above can be considered as the primary stakeholders of the project. The project can also be considered as breakthrough because of its degree of novelty. The concept of the project was entirely new to the aviation market. The market was also unpredictable considering the previous failure. Hence there was higher risk and unpredictability related to this project. The second base describes the technology of the project. This base gives us an idea about the technical difficulty faced by the project managers and the team members at the time of implementation of the project. With the high-tech project, requirements must stay open longer to take advantage of knowledge gained during the project. As it was a novelty project the project demanded better understanding about the technology available and demanded inventions to support the project. The third base describes the complexity of the project. As both the parties knew that it is a novelty or breakthrough project and have limited technology this base describes information on how complicated the manufacturing the product will be. The project falls in this base have medium to high risks to say the Concorde project have medium to high risks when seen from technology wise, market wise and from business organisation wise hence it falls under system category. The fourth base of the diamond model describes the pace, the sense of urgency the project must be done or finished to achieve the organisational goals. Concorde project is expected to be completed under seven years but none of them signed the break clause for the project. The parties expected to see the first flight of first production of aircraft by the end of 1968 and certificate of airworthiness by the end of 1969. There was time schedule discussed in the treaty and plan was given and parties described that work must be started immediately after signing the treaty and must be finished by the given time. They also had a knowledge that the available technology needs much analysis and did not stress to get the work done by the dead line. This can be observed when going through the plan and the clauses made. All these conditions let the project fall under regular category. The above figure describes the actual output of the project. When both figures are compared one can observe the difference between the actual output and the expected output. This can be observed because many project don’t end up as the expected one because of many situation that may have occurred during the time of project execution. If we refer to the case study one can notice that the project was about to be stopped because of lack of funds and change in the political circumstances. At one stance, the project also suffered from the union issues which consumed a lot of time and financial input. The interference of the US government and the changed in the management had also affected the progress of the project. The change can be observed when the technology in the expected output is considered as the hi-tech and in the actual output it has changed to the super hi-tech. this may have occurred because of the demanding technical developments that are required for the project. The project complexity is changed to array from the system as initially the project is considered as complex but the change in the political technical and other circumstances pushed it to the array base because of its increased complexity both the project implementation wise and the management wise. Another change that can be observed is change of pace from regular to the fast. Initially the project was on regular pace even after having a deadline because both the parties had no prior knowledge about the supersonic transportation but the increased time delay feared loss of market demand and pushed the project into the fast pace to secure its place in the market as well to reach the goals. Conclusion The Concorde is one of the successful project for the European union. It can be considered as one of those projects that became successful after many hurdles. Though the poor management and the change of governments effected the project completion, the project managers and the team members worked hard to finish it with flying colours. This assignment report tries to give a brief description about the case and I have tried to leave the deep analysis of the case for the continuous assignment. In the continuous assignment, I have aimed to discuss the reasons for the delay of the project and why there was the difference between the actual and the expected outputs with the help of the diamond model. References THE ANATOMY OF MAJOR PROJECTS: A STUDY OF THE REALITY OF PROJECT MANGEMENT Peter W. G. Morris , George H. Hough, (2017). 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: https://bblearn.griffith.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid 2951044-dt-content-rid-13531267_1/courses/7115IBA_3171_SB/The%20Concorde%20Case.pdf  THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF PROJECT UNCERTAINTY WE ALL HAVE TO MANAGE (Preben Ormen's Blog, 2017) Preben Ormen's Blog. (2017). The four dimensions of project uncertainty we all have to manage. [online] Available at: http://prebenormen.com/progress-success-failure/complexity-2/the-four-dimensions-of-project-uncertainty-we-all-have-to-manage  REINVENTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT (J. Shenhar and Dvir, 2007) J. Shenhar, A. and Dvir, D. (2007). Reinventing Project Management. 1st ed. [ebook] A Harvard Business School Press Book Summary, pp.1-5. Available at: http://www.reinventingprojectmanagement.com/material/other/030_HBS.pdf CONCORDE (En.wikipedia.org, 2017) En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Concorde. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Development  APPLICATION OF DIAMOND APPROACH OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT (Mayank Mehta, 2016) Mayank Mehta, C. (2016). Application of Diamond Approach of Project Management. 4th ed. [ebook] Mumbai, India: International Journal of Recent Advances in Engineering & Technology (IJRAET), pp.36-40. Available at: http://www.irdindia.in/journal_ijraet/pdf/vol4_iss4/8.pdf CONCORDE ( En.wikipedia.org, 2017) En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Concorde. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Flight_characteristics CONCORDE (En.wikipedia.org, 2017) En.wikipedia.org. (2017). Concorde. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Special_missions