project management case report

The Flint Switch: A Water Supply Cutover Project Disaster That Never Should Have Been

Introduction

Located nearly at the geographic center of the world’s largest supply of fresh water – the Great Lakes (see red diamond in the map within the attached document), Flint, Michigan suffered (and continues to suffer) from a series of project decisions that led effectively to the poisoning of their public water supply, and in turn, death, poor health, and lasting effects for the citizens of the city. It happened when the city of Flint initiated a project to switch their water supply from the Detroit River (fed by Lake Huron) to the Flint River. You will learn more about the rationale for doing this switch this in your research, but at its heart, this was a project rationalized by cost reduction.

Although much has been written, broadcast, published, and debated about the project failure, its causes, its outcomes, and most of that has been about blame, politics, equity, and ethics. This case is about the issues driving project decisions that in turn, led to the problems. Although you should be aware of the surrounding context, and they are of paramount importance, we request that you do keep them in mind but for the purposes of this assignment, instead focus solely and intensely on the project management issues that led to these terrible outcomes.

Detailed reading material content and grading rubric will be provided upon acceptance of budget. There is only one reading material and it is 8 pages in length.

• This Assignment had a very, very specific structure. Identify 3-4 issues. Come up with solutions for those issues and summarize them briefly. Provide a table with Pros and Cons for each, use a weighted table to rank the solutions and select the best to implment, and wrap it all up with an overall (but brief) recommendation – what could have been done to help prevent this disaster from a PM perspective. DID YOU FOLLOW THIS STRUCTURE?