Experiences of Building an Airport

Pradeep Panicker compared the expansion of the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad to conducting a heart surgery on a fully conscious patient. GMR, which had constructed the airport, is now expanding the terminal to accommodate increased air traffic. The expansion work is taking place around a functioning airport, which means that the GMR team has to take care not to disrupt any service.

GMR has been in the forefront of airport construction and management in the country. The other major airport that the company has constructed is the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi.

Mr. Panicker spoke about the challenges that GMR faced while constructing the Hyderabad airport. One of the biggest challenges was the revision of air traffic projections from the time GMR won the bid to the time the project was nearing completion. The airport today takes in 21 million passengers annually, which is a far cry from the initial projection of nine million. And now, after completion of the expansion, the airport will be able to accommodate 40 million passengers a year. It boasts new features such as e-boarding and express check-in counters, features that may soon be seen in other airports in India as well.

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Mantras to Change Work Culture

With the nature of work changing due to digital technologies, the art of project management and work cultures must change.

Rajendran Dandapani mentioned four key reasons to back his claim: work is becoming increasingly intangible, projects are inherently unplannable, knowledge is increasingly getting dispersed, and work is becoming social.

He took the example of the author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, to explain how work is becoming intangible. One cannot measure her output by the number of words she writes in a day, as it may take her years to come up with an idea. Similarly, an employee could be working on a new business idea which may not have a tangible, immediate output.

Projects are becoming more collaborative and social in nature, and hence becoming unplannable. “If you plan less in the early phases, you will postpone some important decisions but you will gather a lot of information along the way which you can feed into the system. That will help you make better decisions,” he said.

On knowledge, he said that thanks to the collaborative nature of today’s projects, knowledge resides in different team members. Lastly, work is becoming social as ideas are generated through networks of people.

He advised project managers to not plan excessively, plan for slack so there is room for failure and experimentation, and provide ways by which team members can appreciate each other for good work.
 

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Understanding Smart City Projects

At a time when unchecked urbanization is exerting pressure on urban infrastructure and services, smart cities present technologycentric solutions to planners. Delving in on India’s Smart Cities mission, Karuna Gopal, a thought leader and advisor on smart cities, calls it a marriage of the science of urban development and the art of leadership.

Having contributed to the design of the 100 smart cities that India plans to build, Ms. Gopal has a ringside view of one of the most ambitious and complex programs that India has undertaken.

She highlighted some of the key project management challenges that smart city initiatives face. Since there is no globally accepted definition of a smart city, there is often a level of confusion regarding what makes a city ‘smart’. India has defined smart cities as liveable and inclusive cities that are layered with smart technologies.

Smart city projects struggle to align the goals and aspirations of different stakeholders, such as policy-makers, investors, and citizens. “While planners may be thinking about traffic, power, or healthcare, individuals may be more worried about housing and relocation. Or planners want low cost housing solutions, whereas there are no takers among investors and developers,” she said.

On the complexity behind decision-making, she said, “There is a need to understand and explore the correlations between various factors before making a decision. For example, climate change is a critical factor and is linked to sustainable development goals across the world.” Some correlations are not so obvious, such as how the rise in temperature is impacting male fertility, and increased violence is changing the fertility map.

“One of the biggest challenges is in striking a balance between various interest groups, such as tech evangelists versus green evangelists, proponents of driverless cars versus those who want to promote ‘drive less,’ or augmented reality versus ground network,” she said, adding that stakeholder management is one of the most critical factors that could make or break a smart city project.

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Design Thinking to Solve Problems

Prof. Mamta Gautam, a consultant to the Government of India on design thinking who also leads incubation and innovation cells, started the session with two questions. How can design thinking help solve key issues in society? And what is design thinking ?

She explained design thinking as an approach that is based on the inquiry on human behaviors, relationships, emotions and interactions and an understanding of the human needs. It seeks to find solutions to the unmet needs, pain points, and aspirations of people.

As Henry Ford famously remarked, if people were given a choice, they would have wanted faster horses. But instead he fulfilled people’s unstated need of travelling faster, safer and more comfortably by giving them cars. Similarly, design thinking leads to solutions that have an overlap of three aspects: what is desirable, what is feasible, and what creates values.

Ms. Gautam gave participants a simple exercise to draw a home and their idea of a vacation. A quick survey of the results indicated different approaches and views. The emphasis here was on first ensuring all stakeholders have a common understanding of the problem before solving it. Design thinking is aimed first at ensuring the problem is understood correctly by all, and then solving the root cause and fixing the process, instead of just treating the symptoms.

“Design thinking is a combination of divergent thinking focused on creating choices and convergent thinking creating value,” she said.

It is a framework designed to iterate faster, and reduce risks, focusing on failing fast, failing earlier, and reducing the cost of failure. “It requires an enterprise wide mindset change and can be successfully implemented when leadership teams lead the change, create awareness, train people, and integrate it into existing processes to create an environment of value creation,” she explained.