Policy and Planning for Large-Infrastructure Projects: Problems, Causes, Cures

By Bent Flyvbjerg. 2005

528 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper 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 misinformation is cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, it explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not those of their competition, that gain approval and funding. This results in the ‘survival of the unfittest’, in which often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, it presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.

Subfields: Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d975933a39fc930143a945e3ae352cd6682911a

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In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

Cost Overruns in Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure Projects: Explanations and Their Theoretical Embeddedness (2010, unknown): “…E: e.j.e.molin@tudelft.nl 5 P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA, Delft, NL, T: +31(0)152787186, F: +31(0)152782719, E: bertw@tudelft.nl Cost Overruns in Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure Projects: Explanations and Their Theoretical Embeddedness recognised (Flyvbjerg, 2005b, De Bruijn and Leijten, 2007).”
Errors, lies and misunderstandings: Systematic review on behavioural decision making in projects (2017, background): “Again, the object of research is the roots of ‘inaccurate forecasts’ (Flyvbjerg, 2007) and sub-optimal decisions.”
Large Infrastructure Projects: A Review of the Quality of Demand Forecasts and Cost Estimations (2007, unknown): “One of the most important pieces of research into the quality of forecasts in demand and costs, and actual demand, as well as costs after finishing projects, is the study of Flyvbjerg et al (2003a). They base their analyses on a large database containing data on many projects.”
Toward the Betterment of Risk Allocation: Investigating Risk Perceptions of Australian Stakeholder Groups to Public-Private-Partnership Tollroad Projects (2009, background): “cost and timeoverruns (Flyvbjerg, 2005) are unique to PPPs, as a fixed price construction contract yields the same benefit.”
Cost Overruns and Demand Shortfalls in Urban Rail and Other Infrastructure (2007, background): “As part of this exercise tests are carried out of how data fit the possibility that urban rail forecasts are strategically and deliberately misleading, that is, that forecast costs and revenues are produced, not as best estimates of what the future will bring if projects are built, but instead as mi”
Lock-in and its Influence on the Project Performance of Large-Scale Transportation Infrastructure Projects: Investigating the Way in Which Lock-in Can Emerge and Affect Cost Overruns (2010, background): “Flyvbjerg et al (2003) indicate that cost overruns appear in 86% of the projects they considered with an average cost overrun of 28% [see Flyvbjerg (2005) for the definition of cost overrun].”
Forecasting: theory and practice (2020, background): “However, there are a few themes that have emerged in the extant literature as characteristics of megaprojects that should be skilfully managed to provide a guideline for the successful planning and construction of megaprojects (Fiori and Kovaka, 2005; Flyvbjerg, 2007; Sanderson, 2012).”