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 –...

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...

The aim of the present book is to bring together, for the first time, the key readings in megaproject planning and management. This literature has until now been scattered over a large number of disciplines and publications making it difficult to obtain an overview, in one place, of the history,...

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and...

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of traffic forecasts in transportation infrastructure projects. The sample used is the largest of its kind, covering 210 projects in 14 nations worth US$59 billion. The study shows with very high statistical...

Results from the first statistically significant study of the causes of cost escalation in transport infrastructure projects are presented. The study is based on a sample of 258 rail, bridge, tunnel and road projects worth US$90 billion. The focus is on the dependence of cost escalation on: (1)...

Lock-in, the escalating commitment of decision makers to an ineffective course of action, has the potential to explain the large cost overruns in large-scale transportation infrastructure projects. Lock-in can occur both at the decision-making level (before the decision to build) and at the...