A Brief About Islamabad International Airport

This article provides a brief information about the following three aspects:

• The need of Islamabad International Airport
• The contracts involved in this project
• Evaluation of its success

Since the independence of the country, a section of Chaklala Airbase has been the only facility present for commercial air travelers living in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and surrounding regions. Surely, with the passage of time, this facility has not been enough to cater the increasing demand. So, several structural modifications were made to this airport to facilitate the increasing number of domestic and international flights. Finally, the airport reached to its full capacity which caused operational problems and frequent flight delays due to airside, terminal and airspace congestion in and around the airport. So the authorities decided to build a new airport to cater present and future air travel demand. 

Islamabad International Airport was a project conceived by Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan (PCAA) in 1984. Site selection for this airport was done in March 2005 and the contract was signed with Louis Berger Group and Engineering Consultants International (Private) Limited (ECIL) on January 06, 2006 for project management services. Feasibility for this mega project was done in June 2006 by Aéroports de Paris Ingenierie (ADPi) and National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK) while the master plan for the airport was prepared and submitted by the Berger Group in September 2006. 

The project was divided into 10 packages starting from package 0 to package 10 and few sub packages in between. Package - 0 i.e., site preparation package was awarded on December 19, 2006. ADPi and NESPAK were given the contract for infrastructure design on March 24, 2007 and the contract of terminal building design was given to CPG Consultants on the same day. After few years, a new contract was signed, according to which Mott MacDonald Group and MM Pakistan were hired to provide project management services in June 2015 as the contract of Berger Group had expired in May 2014. 

The foundation stone for this mega project was laid on April 07, 2007 and was planned to be completed in year 2010. Estimated cost for this project was Rs.37 billion but was completed in Rs105 billion. With eight years of delay and huge budget overrun, it was finally inaugurated on May 1, 2018 and commenced commercial operations on May 3, 2018.

So, it does not seem to be a successful project at least not on the basis of two conventional project goals i.e., time and cost. Traditionally, project success is measured based on the dimension of “meeting conventional project goals” i.e., time, cost and specifications.