As Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, money has become a key issue. Infrastructure work is expected to cost a budget busting $14.5 billion for each. In a show of outrage, Brazilians rioted, angered at the rising cost and scandals of these megaprojects among other...

Social science today often contents itself with trying to explain particular events in terms of general models without understanding those events as experienced by the people being studied and without providing findings that might help people address the problems they are experiencing. It can...

Do different types of megaprojects have different cost overruns? This apparently simple question is at the heart of research at the University of Oxford aimed at understanding the characteristics of megaprojects, particularly in terms of how they are established, run and concluded. In this...

DETAIL: What animated you to investigate the failure of megaprojects? FLYVBJERG: This was triggered off by the Great Belt project in Denmark. The Great Belt is a strait between the two largest islands of the country, which were to be linked in the late 1980s. An underwater tunnel was built –...

Implementing large-scale information and communication technology (IT) projects carries large risks and easily might disrupt operations, waste taxpayers’ money, and create negative publicity. Because of the high risks it is important that government leaders manage the attendant risks. We...

A brisk building boom of hydropower mega-dams is underway from China to Brazil. Whether benefits of new dams will outweigh costs remains unresolved despite contentious debates. We investigate this question with the “outside view” or “reference class forecasting” based on literature on...

This paper takes stock of megaproject management, an emerging and hugely costly field of study. First, it answers the question of how large megaprojects are by measuring them in the units mega, giga, and tera, concluding we are presently entering a new "tera era" of trillion-dollar projects....

Too often politicians try to fumble decisions through, playing havoc with money and trust. Democracy is not about pleasing the electors, but about politicians pushing for the changes needed tomorrow, taking responsibility and the necessary measures to see them through. As contemporary planning...

A major problem in the planning of mega-projects is the high level of misinformation about costs (and benefits) that decision-makers face in deciding whether to build and the high risks such misinformation generates. The inaccuracy of construction cost estimates is typically measured as the size...

Clegg, Flyvbjerg and Haugaard debate the strengths and weaknesses of a Foucauldian-Nietzschean critique of power compared to a tradition exemplified by Lukes and Habermas. Flyvbjerg and Clegg argue that the pursuit of universal normative principles and of rationality without power may lead to...