You Aren't Planning Enough - by Benjamin Parry

Megaprojects1 are large-scale infrastructure projects with budgets of $1b or more. They matter not simply because the ‘products’ that they create have far-reaching impacts on our societies, but because they are a perfect example of how we express - or fail to express - our most sophisticated technical competencies and complex organizational practices. In theory, they are the grandest physical, social, and technical achievements of our civilization. In practice, however, the track record for megaprojects is underwhelming. Bent Flyvbjerg is the world’s foremost academic researching the success and failure of megaprojects2. According to the data that he and his team have collected, 92 percent of all such projects will run over budget, over time, or both - to say nothing of whether they achieve the benefits they were originally intended for. This implies that when we try to operate at this scale our reach, almost inevitably, exceeds our grasp. Even on small projects though, while the resul

Megaprojects1 are large-scale infrastructure projects with budgets of $1b or more. They matter not simply because the ‘products’ that they create have far-reaching impacts on our societies, but because they are a perfect example of how we express - or fail to express - our most sophisticated technical competencies and complex organizational practices. In theory, they are the grandest physical, social, and technical achievements of our civilization. In practice, however, the track record for megaprojects is underwhelming. Bent Flyvbjerg is the world’s foremost academic researching the success a