The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a contemporary art museum designed by Canadian architect Frank O. Gehry, located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.

The most peculiar feature is the innovative museum building in which it’s located, consisting of curved and twisted shapes, covered with limestone, glass curtains and sheets of titanium. The building seen from the river appears to be shaped like a ship and its bright panels looks like fish scales paying tribute to the port city in which it belongs.

It has a total area of 24.000 meters square and since its opening the museum has received an average of over one million visitors annually, and has caused a huge impact on the economy and Basque society promoting tourism.

The construction of the building for the Guggenheim in Bilbao headquarters was set almost exactly at the price of 14.028 million of the old “pesetas” which was established at the beginning of the construction in 1991, also considering the 3.964 million employed in the architect’s salaries and engineering, the provision of furniture and other supplies, quality controls and miscellaneous expenses.

The building, considered in a strict sense, hasn`t been rising on prices that were awarded in the different phases, so its cost amounts to 10.064 million of the old “pesetas”, almost from the beginning planned figure.

However it was inaugurated in October 1997 by Juan Carlos I, king of Spain, with a delay of almost a year (10 months) because the end of its construction was scheduled for January 1997.

So, we can say that the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was a good example of project management in case of costs, but it wasn’t a so good example of project management in case of time.

For instance its costs were well defined at the beginning of the project and in the monitoring phase the Budgeted Cost for Work Scheduled line (BCWS) was almost equal to the Actual Cost of Work Performed line (ACWP) in terms of costs, probably along the entire project but at least at the end of it as we have seen.

But however the delivery time wasn’t enough precise at the beginning or maybe there were some risks which weren´t considered and some of them appeared in the middle of the project what did the critical path increased and also the delivery time. If we focus in the monitoring phase the BCWS line was less in terms of time than the ACWP and the BCWP line (Budgeted Cost for Work Performance), probably along the entire project since some risk appeared but at least at the end of the project, so the delivery time increased.

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