Project world wonder

I was late for 1 hour from Proj Man class last Saturday. I overslept thinking there'd be a typhoon and that classes would be suspended. I particularly remembered reading some announcement about it the night before. But when I woke up at 9 am, I was in for a sad surprise. It was bright and sunny! 

Worse, when I arrived at school, everyone was there. And they had a quiz in my absence!

I had not choice but to propose a makeup project. My professor seemed open to the idea when I approached him last weekend. I just emailed him earlier with a plan to do a case study on the pyramids of Egypt.  Quite a colossal quest (also not really necessary considering it was only a 10-pt. quiz), but I think it's gonna be interesting.  Besides I'm really curious.

Pyramids at Giza | Credit: iStockphoto/Karim Hesham

How does one plan and manage a project that takes 20 years and 10,000 people to complete? The sheer scale is simply unimaginable. Add to that the complexities brought about by disasters, famine, war, politics, etc. Consider the technology limitations too, since these were built thousands of year ago: no fork lifts, no cranes, no laptops, nothing. 

I wonder how the project plan looked like. Did they use Gantt charts? Did they write their plans on papyrus? 

I'd like to draw the staffing structure and see which cross-functional groups were involved.  There may have been engineers, architects, geologists, procurement specialists, etc. I also know  that there were priests and astronomers involved in the design process. Just how involved, I'd like to find out. 

I'm not sure if I can make a budget, but it'd be great to know how much it cost to build those pyramids--say for example, the Pyramid of Giza. Did they make risk plans, communication plans, all other subplans? Which issues did they encounter? I'd also like to understand which project management principles would have been applicable that time. 

I'd like to stay on high-level though to limit the scope. Else I'd be in danger of not being able to finish on time. 

My head is spinning, but first, help me pray.  I hope the professor will grant my request.

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