Project Management 2500 BC

10/10/2011

I recently came across some project management training literature from an in-house course I attended about 5 years ago, and a page with a picture of the Great Pyramid of Giza with a caption, 'What is a project', got my attention.  I recall discussing this with the course leader at the time, the point of the slide being that even something so mind-bendingly huge could be a project in its own right and required a good deal of organisation to make it a success.  Like the other delegates I was under no illusion that the ancient Egyptians were using a Neolithic form of Prince 2 to assist them, but this did get me thinking as to what sort of logic they applied to planning such projects. 

One can almost imagine, some 4.5 thousand years ago, the Pharaoh Khufu (or Cheops as some will know), having an ironic 'blue sky' moment when considering his death.  After a few scribbles on a papyrus flipchart with some of his closest colleagues in support, the concept of the Great Pyramid of Giza was born.  Passing these loose etchings on to his chief architect, (who, after crying for a short time) realised he had better get his team together pretty darn quickly.  Okay, so we have a very loose mandate here.  "So what I’m looking for is an enormous crypt in the middle of the desert, oh and it’s got to be big enough to take the wife and the concubines, as well as appease the gods for my transition into the afterlife!"  Perhaps the original etchings were nothing like the pyramid as we know it.  Perhaps it was originally intended to be a Great Cube, but when the accountant and chief stone mason got planning, they realised they could only muster enough stone to cover a much lesser area.  "Well if you want it 500 foot tall, it’s gonna take 100 years.  Alternatively, I could taper it, and we can do it in 20, oh and as you are such a good customer, I’ll throw in a Sphinx!" So, armed with his project brief, he now had to organise his resources and ensure he had enough cash to complete the job.  But to what timescale?  Like many projects, this was most definitely a one-off (by contrast, Neolithic Britain had just managed to build Stonehenge and although not wishing to be snobbish when it comes to ancient architecture, I'm afraid the pyramids win hands down every time in my book).  So with lessons learned looking a bit thin on the ground, and faced with the sheer enormity of the task, our ancient friends could be forgiven for being a bit out on their estimates.  Of course we do not know whether the project was on, within or over time, but from calculations, some scholars have estimated that the build would have taken around 20 years (not a bad feat given that it meant dragging around 8,000 tons of granite, 5.5 million tons of limestone, and 500,000 tons of mortar from 'nearby' Aswan.) Managing the expectations of his key stakeholder was probably not a walk in the park but I genuinely believe that Kufu was not fazed by the timescales; after all he was a young man in his 20s when the project was started and had another 20 years of being Pharoah to keep him busy.

So, with scope and timescales in the bag, we have to turn our attention to the project resources.  I had for a long time, thanks in part to the history books I read as a child, understood that such labour required to complete this task would have had to have been forced, i.e.  slaves.  However, the consensus today leads us to conclude that this was unlikely to be the case and indeed the many thousands of labourers who toiled on the first Great Wonder of the World, were in fact paid.  Of course this makes perfect sense; for one thing archaeologists have discovered evidence of large settlements, pointing to a free society.  Moreover, the logistics employed in finding and managing slave labour (around 100 thousand workers in all) over a 20 year period, would have been the biggest headache of all, and unnecessary given the size of Pharaoh Moneybags wallet; which itself brings us on to the budget.  Regardless of whether they actually had one, the Ancient Egyptians in charge of this project were accomplished mathematicians and so would have been able to make the necessary calculations; at least they could have calculated some of the cost based on the labour and materials.

So this ends a brief and hopefully light-hearted look at how project principles of its day were applied to build what is arguably the most impressive structure in history.  Unless one day an archaeologist, or by an extreme stroke of luck, a local goat herder, unearths some lost papyrus, containing PIDS, Gant charts, and risks & issues logs, all lovingly written in hieroglyphics, we will probably never know the true wonder of how this most amazing of buildings, was managed and brought to life.  One thing can be assured however; it must have been considered a success in order for them to build another three on the same site.  Just a shame the original mandate was not for a hotel!

Author: Peter Stoten (Consultant)

Find more posts by Peter Stoten
View Peter Stoten's profile page