Heathrow Terminal 5 – a lesson in delivery

Built to budget and completed on time, Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport has been described as one of the most breathtaking man-made spaces in modern Britain.

Its opening should, therefore, have been a triumph. But, instead, it will be remembered for the chaos over lost baggage and for computer software failures.

The reputation of British Airways (BA) has been tarnished which, in the competitive industry of air travel, will take time to recover from, and has already resulted in a real loss of business. Unions also added to the tension by urging city investors to take action on the airline’s management.

For those involved in service delivery, and particularly with the world of outsourcing, there is an important lesson to be learned from the experiences of Terminal 5.

Very often, in any contractual relationship, the weakest link is where responsibility for a process passes from one organisation to another in order to complete that process. At this point, one is dealing with differing cultures and differing approaches to management.

It also where discussions focus when things go wrong, and there is a need to agree the attribution of blame and financial loss. As a result, during contractual negotiations and implementation, a great deal of time is allocated to this phase, ensuring that as much as possible is planned and agreed on.

In the case of Terminal 5, it appears that the relationship between BA and airport operator, BAA, broke down. Both are involved in the process of completing a customer’s journey and reconnecting them with their luggage; BA staff start the process at check-in and BAA is then responsible for getting the bags to the plane. The reverse happens on landing.

It was reported that the process was tested in advance of opening by volunteers, whose luggage was put through the system. But that same system completely failed under real time operation, and it appears that there was an under-estimation of the amount of luggage the system could handle.

At a basic level, many operatives were unable to get to their starting positions because car parking was not available, while others claim they did not understand how the system operated. These are basic things to get right, and I am sure that it will put pressure on a number of senior executives to be held accountable for this performance.

Most definitely, the meetings held between the two to resolve the issues would have been direct and heated. Both have had their reputations affected, but BA holds the real front line loss of reputation and business.

My thoughts go out to the Olympic Development Agency with the delivery of the Olympics in 2012 in mind.