Construction and risk management in mega projects, an assesments within Marmaray project

"Mega project" is defined as a project that affects millions of people in the construction industry with large scale and compound structure, whose budget is generally over 1 billion dollars, which is realized through public and state participation, taking years of development and construction. Megaproject concept has different structures from other conventional projects at every stage of planning and construction process and needs to be completely handled with a different management style. Unlike conventional construction projects, with large-scale structures and complex sub-disciplines, it offers projects that can meet the needs of large masses. The ripening of the transportation megaproject usually takes a long time; it may take ten years from the initial idea or draft plan to the beginning of the operation. As a result, changes in economic, political, legal and regulatory and technological contexts may occur during this long term. These changes in project structure and scope also result in changes in cost, life cycle and traffic estimation. Almost every country has big projects that have been done or planned to be done according to its economic power. Recently in Turkey, many projects with the name of mega projects have been carried out. These projects have aims to facilitate human life as well as economic and political aims. In recent years, Turkey has invested in many projects such as third airport, Canakkale bridge or Marmaray Mass Rapid Transit, Istanbul-Izmir highway project, Osmangazi bridge. The Marmaray project has been named as mega project with some qualifications such as the budget exceeding billions of dollars, the number of different project interfaces and the number of users in the city. It will also be an important part of intercity and international freight and passenger transport. In this project, many different disciplines seem to interact with each other, both administratively and financially. What has been aimed in the Marmaray project is to provide passenger and cargo transportation of two-way, cost-effective, safe, robust, reliable, comfortable and continuos railway under the Bosphorus with a 100-year design life in Istanbul. It is one of the pioneers in the Turkish construction industry because of the processes that the project has experienced such as studies, tendering processes, stages of rescission and re-tendering, disputes and arbitration procedures. Thus, it has gained an appropriate data source value for the study I have done. At the beginning of this thesis, megaproject literature has been examined and project and risk management methods have been learnt from important writers. Later, the process that Marmaray project had experienced from its historical stages to its feasibility and construction processes have been revealed. All processes from tendering and contract stages to construction stage have been presented. Due to the reasons such as finance and technology supply, the effects of the selected contract type on the Marmaray project have been revealed. By describing the contract contents and extracting the scope of the work, the management applied with a chronology consisting of the dates of all planning, design and production phases have been presented. In addition, the parts of Marmaray project have been examined in detail. CR2 and BC1 phases have been delivered but CR1 (later CR3 phase) has time out due to some reasons which cannot be controlled. Therefore, the mentioned CR1 - CR3 contract underlies this thesis work. Before seeing the elements that cause the delay of the CR3 phases, the approaching system to the project based on the employer has been seen by revealing the scheme of management organization. This systematic was followed by risk management and management philosophy applied to the project. For examination of CR3 contract, it was continued by presenting the scope and physical condition of the contract. There are 43 stations with Haydarpasa station which has been added to the contract recently. In addition, roads, pedestrian crossings, culverts and other artifacts constitute a large part of the contract with the electromechanical systems. The physical condition of the project has been established in order to examine the controlled and uncontrolled risks during the management and planning phase of the CR3 phase. The risks that prevented the progress of the project and grew into all cases have been removed when the Marmaray project 's internal risk management practice and applied risk management strategy have been examined. Interviews with the project managers in the feasibility, tendering and construction departments of the Marmaray project were carried out in the analysis part of case-related risks in this study. In these interviews, personal interpretations of construction and risk management practices and management recommendations that might be more useful in this long-running project have been questioned. Questioning of the most important parties affecting the delay of the project has also been included in the interviews. Negative effects on the project have been investigated by sorting risks and dangers that the management encountered and the project included and by making a scoring on the realised risk, some of the most important parameters affecting the process on the basis of managers have been explained. In addition, questioning the effects of several management parameters that the project included, assumptions have been made about the solution offer prepared from the samples in the global context and how the critical path in the project can be changed. With the table that revealed based on the cause and effect relationship, both the current situation has been examined and management recommendations for the megaprojects can be done in Turkey from now on have been presented. With the general evaluation we can understand that the Marmaray project is one of the longest MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) projects in the world. It meets the definition of mega project because of its physical magnitude, finance, encountered problems based on the proximity to settlements and many other items. The Bosphorus Transition (BC1), Railway Vehicle Manufacture (CR2) and Railway Construction (CR1-CR3) phases can also form separate mega project samples. In addition, all phases have separate dynamics and management organizations. With this thesis, Marmaray MRT case has been analyzed within the scope of mega project management. This involves critical consideration of the success (or failure) of project phases, the difficulties, and the emergence of unexpected events. Semi-structured questionnaires which had been carried out with project managers from all sides of the Marmaray project are summarized. With this work, discussions and transferable lessons are presented from this topic in order to contribute to the global mega project literature and mega project management organizations.