Journey Towards a Full Pledged International Theme Park - Legoland Malaysia

Let us recap back a year ago when the Iskandar Malaysia announced their wish to construct Legoland in Malaysia. Everyone gave their opinions, view, feelings into this project and I dare say majority of them skewed towards negativity. Malaysia is well known internally for the delaying or abandoning of projects as well as turning a mega projects into another "White Elephant". So Legoland was seemed at that time a far-fetched dream and often scoffed and mocked.

However, when Legoland Malaysia confidently announced that they are opening its door to the public "ahead of schedule", all the concerns were finally answered. Indeed truly a "Malaysia Boleh!"

So was the project well-planned to complete on time which ends up ahead of schedule?

Building a theme-park is definitely not a walk in the park. Challenges were faced along the 17 months journey and here we would like to share some of their challenges.

1) Scope Gap
Sunway Construction main contract mostly involves in the construction of the buildings and infrastructure. For this project, there were other scope of works where Sunway only coordinate with other contractors such as the installation of all the rides, interior design works at the front portion of the buildings (public area), theme-ing works (interior and exterior) and landscape works.

As the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth, this situation definitely suits the idiom. Unless there is a very clear indication "which what is for who", everybody/anybody/somebody/nobody situation will bound to happen.

There may be numerous reasons why the scope was separated, one of them could be due to the works require specialist. No matter what the reasons may be, it was done so.

To overcome this obstacle, the best method is having regular meetings with ALL parties. One of the downside of a meeting is that it tends to be tiresome and having no answers/decisions during and after the meeting made things worse. Hence, in order to achieve any progress, the meeting should be attended by competent people who are willing to make decisions on the spot and taking calculated risks. With these attributes, works can proceed without much delay and consents from all parties.

2) Additional works
No theme park in the world was built without expansion or addition to their parks and Legoland Malaysia is no different. Did you know that Legoland Malaysia was actually a close replica to Legoland Deutschland in Germany? Search for it and you may see quite a number of the attraction here in Malaysia had already existed in Germany.

Nevertheless, Malaysia is not Germany. We definitely cannot have a 95% replicate of Legoland. So the design of Legoland Malaysia has to suit the country it is in and accommodate to the public needs. With incoming suggestions and ideas, Legoland Malaysia was 'growing' even before the park was opened!

With the additional ideas to implement and a fixed dateline to complete, time is the enemy. From a contractor's view, additional works if affecting their main contract works, they are always granted extension of time. However, with a fixed dateline, no extension can be granted. As a result, working extra hours was inevitable. Another alternative is to bring in more people into the project. Cost will definitely increase.

We are humans and we always try to better ourselves. Ideas and suggestions to make the theme park more user-friendly, interesting and safe cannot be avoided. However, to avoid the similar situation above from happening, proper planning during design stage should have been implemented. Further to that, during construction, early notification may have served a better position. Finally, someone has to make a stand to what extend the additional works is required for the theme park. And any further ideas and suggestions can be reserved for further development of the theme park in the future years. Good ideas if implemented at wrong timing will not only jeopardise the whole completion but also causes the cost of the project to rise unless it is a very much required work then it is unavoidable.

There are many other factors but the above I feel that it is more reflecting the project and can serve as a guideline and advice to others. Even with the above obstacles, they all manage to complete 'ahead of schedule'. Just imagine if everything goes smoothly...maybe they could have done it in 15 months??


Yours truly,
SPSkrs

Legoland Malaysia - Who is the unsung hero?

Legoland Malaysia has been the talk of the town last month as the media announced her grand opening on 15th September 2012, the eve of Hari Malaysia. Even before that, Legoland Malaysia has been doing a tremendous effort to promote the international theme park not only locally but also to our neighbour Singapore.

What makes Legoland Malaysia interesting is that you will definitely see LEGOs inside the park especially Miniland, a part of the park where all of the miniature replica of famous monuments and places are 100% built using LEGOs apart from lighting features within the building.

People tend to compare theme parks and we believe that is NEVER the right way. It is like comparing an apple with an orange and those who dislike apple will never appreciate an apple no matter how sweet the taste is. Hence, comparing Legoland Malaysia to its neighbour Universal Studio Singapore is the same. However, Legoland Malaysia wins slightly because majority will go to Legoland Malaysia for its LEGO but Universal Studio...for the rides? or perhaps Transformers...imagine USS is filled with so many theme and only Transformers is being attractive is downright degrading. So before you compare, just don't :)

If we must, then USS has the advantage over technology used in their 4D rides and their roller coaster is definitely going to take your breath away.

What makes a theme park is their theme...hence it is called theme park. Legoland's basic theme is...well LEGOs but they do not stop there. They have 6 clusters with different theme such as Xtreme to look spacey and robotics, Castle to look like....err Castle, Imagination fills with bright colours specially for children, Adventure subdivided into two portion, Egyptian and Jungle to give a little adventure feel, Town City to look like a town and last but not least Miniland as mentioned above, LEGOs and LEGOs.

Before and after the completion of the project, many questions were asked and thrown on the table and to which most or perhaps all have been answered. Below are some of the famous questions;

1) Can the project finish on time?
Answer - Yes. Ahead of schedule i may add on 15th September 2012.

2) Are the building made from Legos?
Answer - No, the building are like normal buildings but with cool and attractive facade such as theme plaster, aluminium cladding and so forth.

3) Is it fun?
Answer - Very much depend on individuals.

4) Is it worth it?
Answer - Also very much depend on individuals.

5) Very expensive
Answer - No comment

However, we at southernprojectseekers are more keen to have this question answered: Who actually build Legoland Malaysia? We search online but we could not find anything except this:


7th March 2011, by Business Times

SUNWAY Holdings Bhd’s construction unit has bagged a RM258 million contract to build part of the Legoland Theme Park in Johor.

The project, which will take 15 months, is targeted to be completed on June 2 next year, Sunway said in a statement to Bursa Malaysia yesterday.

Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd accepted the letter of award from IDR Assets Sdn Bhd.

The project is expected to contribute positively to the Sunway group’s earnings from this year onwards, the group said.

source: http://www.iskandarmalaysia.com.my/news/110307/sunway-bags-deal-to-build-part-of-legoland

After further investigation, the cat is finally out of the bag. So Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd got awarded. So what actually happen after that? Did they followed through and completed the works? Who is Sunway Construction? To build a theme park, a full-pledged theme park from an empty lane seems like an impossible task. We believe the public may have shared the similar view and such comments are easily seen in the forums, Facebook, YouTube and others.

As far as we are concern, Sunway is famous for their Sunway Pyramid & Sunway Lagoon Theme Park. So perhaps having a theme park of their own, they may have been the most capable to get the job done. However, browsing through their website, the closest thing they ever constructed is their own Sunway surf pool. Is that enough criteria to build an entire park of 76 acres? Why does a KL-based company coming to Johor?

When Legoland Malaysia opened its door to the public, there was not even once the name Sunway was mentioned. So did they really completed the job? Or somebody else manage to take over and complete the job 'ahead of schedule' as presented by the news? Below are our findings for your viewing pleasure.

Sunway Construction - Legoland Malaysia
Lets review the statement above. Sunway bagged a huge sum of money to build Legoland. It will take 15 months and completed by 2nd June 2012 (hence work should start at 2nd March 2011) and Sunway Construction is the contractor. Lets assume Legoland needs at least 1 month of preparation, we are looking at the completion of Legoland on 15th August 2012. That alone already give us 17 months, 2 months more than estimated. However, the media reported that Legoland Malaysia is ahead of schedule by several months hence we are looking at the actual opening date at November or December 2012. So even with a 'delay' of 2 months, Legoland Malaysia actually did open ahead of their initial schedule of end of year 2012. Heartiest congratulation to Legoland and IDR Assets Sdn Bhd.

So now we know that roughly the theme park is completed within 17 months but the answer to who completed the work is still unknown. After viewing through several video uploaded on YouTube on Legoland Malaysia, we saw this;

After examining the interview with Legoland GM, notice Sunway logo...yes, that is a Sunway logo...either they forgot to take it down or Sunway Construction was still with them constructing the park when the video was taken around April 2012.

So we went to site and actually approach them. Although we did not manage to get any interview, they are kind enough to actually share some of the information about the project and also a token of appreciation a corporate video on Legoland Malaysia and their other projects in Johor. Who would have known this is not their only project here. An upcoming project also by Sunway is Pinewood, another international project a studio facility in Johor.

With the completion of Legoland Malaysia, Sunway Construction definitely has an advantage here down south and with Pinewood under their strict monitoring, we believe we will probably here more from them. Hence, Sunway Construction here in Johor Bahru will be strictly monitored by us and perhaps having a good relationship with them, we may have more internal information of the project for the benefit of others.

We have taken the initiative and consent from them to upload their video and below are the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-g_XYMmObk

We do not why Sunway Construction was kept in the dark when Legoland Malaysia is announced and nobody knows. However, for those like us who are concern and curious about what goes behind the scene, we hope this post may assist you.

Hearties congratulation to Legoland, IDR Assets as well as Sunway Construction and others whom may have involved for the tremendous effort poured into this project and 'turning vision into reality' for Johor & Malaysia.


Yours Truly,
SPSkrs

Introduction

Welcome!

This blog serves solely on seeking on-going projects, newly completed projects here in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Furthermore, we at southernprojectseekers would love to know not only the finish product but are dedicated to investigate more on the internal process of how the project came to be.

Who we are? We are just a few engineers who have grow interest with new projects in Johor especially in Iskandar Region where we will definitely see more interesting projects yet to come.

Bear in mind, our intention is not to pick out faults and mistakes of the project and giving bad impression to either to the contractors or the clients but to let viewers have a better understanding of the difficulties and problems encountered in the project.

We believe everyone make mistakes and any mistakes made is a better understanding and serves as a guidance and lesson to next upcoming project similar in nature to the previous for the betterment of project management and construction in Johor Bahru and hopefully, Malaysia.

Malaysia Boleh!!

Yours Truly,
SPSkrs.