On the early morning of May 10th, 1996 the two commercial expeditions of Hall and Fischer began their summit bid on Mount Everest. New Zealander Rob Hall, 35 years old, headed the commercial expedition Adventure Consultants. Rob began taking expeditions to Everest in 1990, and had achieved summiting a record 39 climbers to the top of Everest. His company‟s advertisements touted one hundred percent success until May 1995, when he turned all of his clients back from their bid to the summit as deep snows at higher elevations had slowed their progress. Business pressure intensified as Scott Fischer had entered into the competitive commercial expedition market with his company Mountain Madness. Scott had been successful in packaging expeditions to the remotest destinations in Africa, South America, and Asia, attracting customers from around the world. In an effort to generate press, Fischer and his staff looked for opportunities to gain media attention. Outside, the leading outdoor-recreation magazine in the United States, wanted to sponsor Jon Krakauer as a climber on one of Fischer‟s Everest expeditions. Krakauer was a Seattle-based journalist and best-selling author who would write a feature article on the boom in commercial expeditions to Mount Everest. Outside wanted a significant discount for Krakauer‟s slot on Fischer‟s team.. 

At one point, Outside went to Rob Hall, who gave a better deal and got Jon on his expedition. Mountain Madness was successful in signing on Sandy Pittman, a Contributing Editor to Allure and Conde Nast Traveler magazines. She too offered media exposure through an agreement with NBC interactive Media to do a daily feed to a web site (Boukreev, 1997). The media coverage offered an opportunity for both expedition companies, but also raised the stakes, as success or failure would be reported around the world. That year, more than 400 people eventually ended up at Everest Base Camp. One climber described the encampment as having all the appearances of “a circus, except there were more clowns in our tents.” By many accounts there were expeditions planning to summit Everest without the experience or guidance that would usually be found on a team (Boukreev, 1997;Krakauer, 1997). The summit bid offered by the two commercial expeditions followed a standard routine of spending approximately one month acclimatizing to the thin air associated with high altitudes. Sherpas would progressively establish a series of four camps above base camp. Food, cooking fuel, and oxygen would be moved from camp to camp until the requisite material was at 26,000 feet on the South Col and the climbers had been adequately acclimatized. From there at camp IV, the final push would be made to the summit of Mount Everest. While the two commercial expeditions of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer are the focus of this case study, three additional expeditions were either part of, or gave a unique perspective to, the tragedy that would unfold. Although they had promised not to make a summit bid on the same day as Hall and Fischer, Taiwanese and South African noncommercial expeditions also completed the final leg of the summit on May 10th. By all accounts, the Taiwanese and South African expeditions were a high risk because both teams lacked the qualifications and experience. The third party was the IMAX/IWERKS filming expedition led by David Brashears. Brashears, an exceptional climber, led this expedition to summit Mount Everest and complete filming the journey on May 9th. Having concerns about the weather and the unusually large group of climber‟s planning to summit on May 10th his party decided to descend and summit later. He offers an expert‟s perspective from outside the expeditions that were to summit on May 10th.

Problems Suggested by Project Management: - The importance of project management has emerged as a core competence within business domains, particularly information systems, and offers a useful lens to evaluate how such endeavors can meet the competing demands of time, cost, quality and scope while balancing the needs and expectations of various stakeholders. Five issues consistently surface as most significant from a project management perspective – leadership styles, hubris, planning, communication, and constraints. Although the challenges in these domains are discussed herein separately, they are not independent. Rather, they overlap, interact and compound with each other in complicated ways. And while these interactions are not discussed within the case, it is important for the reader to consider the relationships and their impact on the project. This case study utilizes A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) developed by the Project Management Institute (Institute 1996; Institute 2000; Institute 2004) as a framework for contemplating the issues raised by the doomed Everest expeditions of 1996. The PMBOK provides a framework of processes that are generally recognized as good practice for project management (Institute 2004). It is the foundation for the project management professional certification and an ANSI and ISO standard. In addition to the PMBOK, the Theory of Constraints (TOC) (Goldratt, 1987;Goldratt, 1997) will be utilized to offer insights and learning opportunities into the Mount Everest tragedy.

Issue 3: Planning and Considering Risk - “If expeditions are not adequately provisioned when the time for their summit bid arrives, they might as well have never traveled to the mountain” (Boukreev 1997, pg. 3). Indeed, there is a multitude of details associated with the logistics of moving that much equipment, food, materials and people in a remote part of the world. A key part of planning for summit attempts concerns ensuring adequate oxygen supplies for the summit bid. Atmospheric oxygen levels are so low at and above Camp IV that the majority of climbers use bottled oxygen to sustain brain and bodily functions and, ultimately, to survive. Given how they intended to use it, the quantity of oxygen available to the Mountain Madness expedition at Camp IV was minimal. The oxygen consumption/use calculations upon which Fischer based his oxygen plan was in part, based upon advice from his supplier Henry Todd. Todd estimated that each of his canisters, if consumed at his suggested flow rate of 2 to 2.5 liters/minute, would last for 6 hours. “Two should last you for twelve hours, and that 12 hours should take you to the summit [from Camp IV] and then back down to pick up a third bottle at the South Summit. On paper the plan looked bulletproof” (Boukreev 1997, pg. 151). However, this assumed everything would proceed according to plan. It further assumed that no additional oxygen would be needed for those stricken with HACE (HACE is High Altitude Cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain, a condition associated with oxygen depletion), for those older climbers who require more oxygen to keep warm, or for any other unforeseen event or condition that could slow the pace of climbing

Question:

Issue 3: Questions to Consider

1. The clientele had paid significant sums of money to summit Everest. Should they have been made aware of the assumptions made in the plan to summit? Whose risk was it? How could risk have been handled better? For the last question do not just go over the risk management knowledge area. Identify specific risks and come up with specific strategies for both positive and negative risks. (minimum 1 page).