
A Tale of Two Terminals: Beijing Terminal 3 and Heathrow Terminal 5 - admp
http://www.leanessays.com/2011/01/tale-of-two-terminals.html
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bane
Last time I flew through Heathrow, I spent an hour and a half going from one
gate to another, moving about on literally every kind of transport known to
man except watercraft and spaceships. After flying in on an aircraft, I took
some combination of train, bus, electric cart, another bus, I think another
train, moving sidewalk, and at least one or two other things.

Nearly half of the transit time was spent inside some kind of vehicle in a
dark tunnel, an industrial looking processing center, crawling around dimly
lit stairwells, and or other such place that clearly said to me "you should
not be seeing this stuff! Pay no attention to all this stuff behind the
curtains!"

It was ridiculous and absurd and would have been humorous if I hadn't been in
a mad dash the entire time trying to make my connection.

After escaping on yet another aircraft I mulled for quite a while over what
kind of madness could have come up with such an absolutely insane way of
moving from one part of a facility to another...a distance I could have
crossed by foot in less than 15 minutes.

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kiujhygthyujik
The story is a good example of why these projects fail in the UK and the USA.

Leaving aside the staff problems - British Airports Authority (who run
Heathrow) and the RMT (Rail maritime and Transport workers union) have a
history of confrontation which makes the whole Isreali-Palestinian thing look
like a family game of scrabble.

Just to pick one example, the software was left in debug mode. Everybody knew
this but it took 3 days to find the person with the contractual permission to
tell them to turn debugging off. Not for any technical reason but just because
everything was done by such a mesh of semi-privatized companies, contractors,
sub-contractors, outsourcers etc that nobody knew who was in charge.

The UK has just abandoned an ID card scheme setup by the previous government.
It's costing 20m quid to just work out how has done what, and who is owed what
in order to shut the project down.

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kiujhygthyujik
Well one was built by a state elite gerontocracy who have centuries of being
in charge and an utter contempt for the workers building the terminal and the
ultimate users.

and the other was buill by the chinese

~~~
apower
Wow, nice twist. Didn't expect that at the end. Nice garden path sentences.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Not really, as garden path sentences are more about incorrect parsing of
structure, rather than interpreting the meaning of the sentence to be
something else. For example, reading the first sentence above, you can get all
the way to the end without having re-evaluate the sentence from the beginning.
It's only when you read the 2nd sentence that you realize that the writer was
implying something different than you first thought.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence>

/pedantry

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smutticus
Heathrow is a mess. Everyone who travels regularly to southern England does
everything they can to avoid it when flying.

I don't know anything about this airport in Beijing. But comparing airports to
Heathrow is just too easy. Any airport would look well managed compared to
Heathrow.

~~~
ig1
I disagree, City's better if you're coming from Europe, but Heathrow still the
best airport to get into London from anywhere else, especially Terminal 5. T5
had a lot of problems when it started, but now it's by far the best major
airport terminal I've flown from.

It takes me less than 15 minutes to get from the T5 tube station to sitting in
the departure lounge waiting for boarding. It's almost as good as Eurostar.

(Although if you're from outside London it can be easier to get to Gatwick
transport-wise)

~~~
stoney
I agree that T5 is pretty decent. The queues are short and there's lots of
seating. Access by car is pretty decent if you're on that side of London
(which most of the country is). Pretty much all I care about.

I generally try to avoid Heathrow T3 though (and T2 and T4 never seem to have
flights to where I want to go).

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forensic
The only real thing he studied in this comparison is rehearsal and timing.

The British death marched to an unrealistically optimistic date while the
Chinese were finished and testing long before the ship date.

Socio-technical systems theory is interesting but he doesn't explain how the
Chinese did this better. The Chinese aren't exactly known for empowering their
workers.

~~~
sp332
If the workers aren't empowered, the success of the project is up to the
leaders. Apparently the Chinese manager was more competent than the British
one.

~~~
forensic
>If the workers aren't empowered, the success of the project is up to the
leaders.

This statement contradicts the findings of socio-techical systems theory.

STS shows that competent leaders are leaders who empower their subordinates -
this usually achieves better results than command and control.

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willyt
Also compare Heathrow Terminal 5 with Madrid Barajas latest terminal. Both
designed by the same British architectural firm, Barajas took about half the
time to build, cost less and is an uncompromised design.

~~~
stoney
I'm not sure how fair the cost comparison is. At the time, pretty much
anything would have cost less in Spain - Britain was very expensive due to the
high pound. A bit different now though.

~~~
kiujhygthyujik
Heathrow was built at the peak of the UK housing boom - the stories of rates
paid to electricians and plumbers at Heathrow made bankers blush.

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anto1ne
I don't know about Heathrow-5 but I can tell about Beijing-3, and I think
everyone telling it's a great airport has no clue. The flows are terrible, you
often board at the farthest gate away, sometimes by buses, even though most of
gates are empty, and most of the airport is empty (the middle part is still
closed but the international part is further away). The customs bottleneck is
the worst ever, it's not uncommon to wait 45mins, there's like 12 counters for
all international arrivals. The building does actually look like the
bottleneck, and it is. The waiting areas have nothing special, and they
certainly feel old for a 2 years old airport. Some of the duty-free shops
looks untouched since the 80s.. The roof already starts to fall apart, there
was some parts ripped off by the wind lately, and there's concern about the
build quality.

And well, it's unfair to compare cost and construction time, one was built by
thousands of workers, working 24/7 for a minimum wage, the other... And btw,
Beijing T3 was designed by a dutch consortium and a British architect.

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maxklein
China is successful with these things because they have a large number of
excess staff, and the staff are very obedient. Britain typically has too few
staff, and the staff are very independent.

A person who has been to a chinese restaurant in china will understand the
difference.

~~~
sabj
Service industries in China can't be expected to be superior based on their
personnel numbers alone. Cultural paradigms can produce good and bad results -
as when poorly paid workers with no expectations of tips and customers
accustomed to certain things lead to a custom where to summon waistaff all you
can do is loudly yell '服务员'...

~~~
waterside81
服务员 means "Waiter" - thank you Google Translate!

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sabj
This isn't really a fair comparison, as has been noted elsewhere here.
Heathrow is an exceptionally poor example of airport construction and
operation. There were fewer constraints at hand in the construction of the new
Beijing terminal as well - so if thing X went wrong, I think there was
probably less ability to delay matters.

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jlees
A lot of the second half of this article could be summarised as "Think about
people if your software/system/airport involves them." However, I'm not
entirely convinced by her argument that this was the main flaw. Release
without thorough testing and stupid bugs (not removing a safety patch) seem
more to blame.

------
drinian
While it's a good, didactic article, it is very much worth noting that she
doesn't have much to say about Beijing's design processes. Presumably they are
much more opaque than the UK's. How are the two terminals doing now,
comparatively?

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ojbyrne
I found it weird that Deming wasn't mentioned anywhere in the second half of
the article.

~~~
cubicle67
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming> for anyone who doesn't get
the reference

His work was mainly concerned with manufacturing/production, but is still (I
think) well worth reading

Edited to add Deming's Seven Deadly Diseases as I think they're worth quoting
here for those who don't wish to read the entire wikipedia article

The "Seven Deadly Diseases" include:

    
    
      Lack of constancy of purpose
      Emphasis on short-term profits
      Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
      Mobility of management
      Running a company on visible figures alone
      Excessive medical costs
      Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees
    

"A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes

    
    
      Neglecting long-range planning
      Relying on technology to solve problems
      Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
      Excuses, such as "our problems are different"
      Obsolescence in school that management skill can be taught in classes
      Reliance on quality control departments rather than management, supervisors, 
        managers of purchasing, and production workers
      Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where 
        the system desired by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended 
        consequences
      Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality

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Charuru
Gaius Marius figured this out. As did Napoleon.

