It is useful to distinguish between “causes” and “root causes” in explaining cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and delays in major projects. Conventionally, the following are listed as causes of project underperformance in the literature: project complexity, scope changes, technological...

This chapter focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure developments pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of...

In this paper we characterise the propensity of big capital investments to systematically deliver poor outcomes as "fragility," a notion suggested by Nassim Taleb. A thing or system that is easily harmed by randomness is fragile. We argue that, contrary to their appearance, big capital...

We identify and document a new principle of economic behavior: the principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand. In a famous discussion, Albert Hirschman celebrated the Hiding Hand, which he saw as a benevolent mechanism by which unrealistically optimistic planners embark on unexpectedly challenging...

Reference Class Forecasting (RCF) is a method to remove optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation in cost and time to completion forecasting of projects and programmes. In September 2012, the Development Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region commissioned a...

More than a hundred hydropower dams have already been built in the Amazon basin and numerous proposals for further dam constructions are under consideration. The accumulated negative environmental effects of existing dams and proposed dams, if constructed, will trigger massive hydrophysical and...

More than a hundred hydropower dams have already been built in the Amazon basin and numerous proposals for further dam constructions are under consideration. The accumulated negative environmental effects of existing dams and proposed dams, if constructed, will trigger massive hydrophysical and...

With Albert O. Hirschman, project management scholarship has what it lacks the most: an eminent intellectual and social scientist who has thought long and hard about project management, and especially the management of large transformative projects. Cass Sunstein, co-author of Nudge and a key...

With a point of departure in the concept "uncomfortable knowledge," this article presents a case study of how the American Planning Association (APA) deals with such knowledge. APA was found to actively suppress publicity of malpractice concerns and bad planning in order to sustain a boosterish...

This paper examines three independent explanatory variables and their relation with cost overrun in order to decide whether this is different for Dutch infrastructure projects compared to worldwide findings. The three independent variables are project type (road, rail, and fixed link projects),...