Taipa at night – street construction, originally uploaded by Azchael.

a photo set of impressions of a sunday spent in Macau, including

- watching Bungie jumping
- eating delicious Chinese food
- taking evening shots of Taipa buildings

Roughly a year after the visit of Taiwanese students at my high school in Sindelfingen, a delegate from the Gymnasium Unterrieden, amongst them myself, visited the Yung Ping High School in Taipeh, Taiwan, marking this exchange as the first one in the German-Taiwanese relationship.

Amongst cultural and language courses as well as a general impression of Taipeh and Taiwan, the cultural exchange between Taiwanese students and German students was of highest priority during the two week exchange. As a first of its kind the headmaster of my high school as well as a delegation from the teacher’s body accompanied the students.

Further impressions can be found here.

A few photos of the street construction taking place in Taipa, Macau at present. Traffic is definitely influenced, however pedestrian work way is separated by guiding rails from construction site. Not safe for children, as still easy accessible and from what I saw no guards for the machinery.

Check the full set at Flickr.

Siemens-built CRH 3 highspeed train, originally uploaded by Azchael.

Having been part of the project team that built and commissioned the Beijing – Tianjin Dedicated Passenger Line Highspeed Rail Corridor, it was my first time taking the train itself during normal operation conditions.

A complete photo journey of the trip can be found on my Flickr account, along with photos of the Beijing South Railway Station still in construction. It was a splendid experience to see the line in life and to finally see the final state of the Beijing Railway Station, which I still only know as construction site with hundreds and thousands of workers working day and night.

I guess that the underlying construction companies responsible for the IG stadium – as shown above – was not fully aware on the impact their work attitude and work progress has on the general public, or on the media. Both entities, the media and the general public, are stakeholders of major infrastructure projects and have to be taken seriously! Not only to avoid newspaper articles putting a blaming finger on someone, but also to utilize the stakeholders for the good of the project.

Stakeholders in a project come in a range of categories and usually turn up when you least except it. As per Wikipedia a stakeholder is defined as:

Project stakeholders are those entities within or outside an organization which: 1. sponsor a project, or 2. have an interest or a gain upon a successful completion of a project; 3.may have a positive or negative influence in the project completion.

A brief list of examples for project stakeholders (in addition to “the general public” and “the media”):

• Your very own project employees
• The steering board of the project
• Your direct line management
• The customer and its individual project and non-project-related departments
• Your subsuppliers and their shareholders
• Environmental groups
• Your competitors
• Competing projects in the region
• The customers of your customer
• The major of the city
• The administrative board
• The procurement department

In order to avoid newspaper articles or other negative actions on your project it is highly advised that from the beginning of the project an efficient stakeholder management is being set up and lived. Identify the major stakeholders and their attitude towards the project or other stakeholders. Visualize them, best with a mind map or a network diagram, print it and hang it in your project manager office to have a look at daily. Analyze them carefully and see who can influence your project (positively or negatively) and who can’t or only indirectly. Assign measures and if required dedicated staff to deal with these stakeholders. Involve your upper management to take care of the city major or the customer’s CEO. Find out how to make use of your stakeholders in a good way. The same that the newspaper article above is blaming the contractors and the customer, a very different perspective could actually praise the progressiveness of the project and the close-to-completion status of whatever is being constructed.

If you need help to identify your stakeholders or if you want to have a second opinion from an outsider on how to handle them, please feel free to contact me at MLVONSCHAPER AT YAHOO DOT DE.

Construction in Taipa, Macau, originally uploaded by Azchael.

A huge construction site next to the Nova Taipa buildings in Taipa, Macau, for an underground parking lot and a surface park landscape.

This project seems to have taken off one or two years ago and is scheduled for 5 years. From the time-scale alone and the present state at which it presents itself, I cannot understand the reasonability behind these 5 years.

From a project management point of view there are a number of items to be critized:

• Even though night shifts are applied, they are only used for a limited number of activities, as here: welding.
• The construction site is messy and rumble lyingaroundeverywhere
• Heavy machinery is present on site, but not safety-separated with guiding rails or demarkations
• Workers are wearing no reflective safety vest and no helmets, rising the risk of accidents dramatically, especially with heavy machinery in place.
• Not visible on the set photos, but nevertheless there: Separation of construction site towards traffic area on two sides of the construction site is impacting traffic and the sheet metals preventing entry to construction site are not properly put up leaving at least 10 entry points without guards at night. in combination with these rising metal rodes and uneven ground/holes, a perfect death trap for running kids.

Apart from these construction site specific aspects, it is surprising me how few workers are present on the site day by day. Passing by the construction site there are relatively few people visible and from my feeling I would judge the site understaffed, hence the unexpected long construction period. Given the virtually winter-free and short typhoon-influenced climate in Macau, a park construction like this should not take more than 1.5 yrs at a maximum. Especially as the parking lot construction undergrounds seems to have been already completed as this part of the construction site. However if staff is not available and maintenance of the site is not guaranteed, things like these happen.

Construction in Zhuhai, originally uploaded by Azchael.

This “construction” project at a traffic underway close to the Gongbei border gate in Zhuhai, mainland China, is in an absolute messy state! Even though the simple traffic diversion measures (signs and information plates) have been installed, the actual construction site for the small traffic booth is in a total mess.

No order, construction material lying at vaste, tools intermixed and no responsible worker on site preventing either theft or accidents. Furthermore as can be seen from the back view, the site is inadequately protected against intrusion and weather conditions (heavy wind / storm).

This is not a well executed project!

• Construction in front of IFC Hongkong
• Beijing SOHO Sanlitun
• Nightscape Macau
• Macau Casino Photos

Another great perspective for shooting construction sites has been granted to me last week in Beijing, where I could photograph the construction happening next to SOHO Sanlitun, both above and below ground with several huge cranes and a multitude of site workers. Zoom in for the details!