Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Cost overruns on public projects

Well, given that the Vancouver Convention Centre is going WAYYYY over budget, I thought it would be interesting to post some information here from Bent Flyvbjerg. He studies cost and time overruns on megaprojects.

I think we all know that there is a problem with mega projects and their timing and cost overruns. If we know this, why is nothing done about it at the time? Very interestingly Bent looks at some interesting issues - optimism, lies, untruths and errors. One of his areas of research is The Relationship between Truth and Lying in Policy and Planning

One of his works is called Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?

In his work How common and how large are cost overruns in transport infrastructure projects? actually puts some real numbers to what a cost over run might look like.

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