Thanks for your comment, Ryan, and apologies for only spotting it just now. I agree there’s lots of efficiency gains to be made on big projects! I wonder whether it’s difficult to gain evidence on “what works” to improve them because there are so few and there’s lots of different complexities (vs small projects—we have a lot more to observe and there’s fewer dimensions).
It definitely is, mostly because there are so few successful projects to point to. Most of the work has been identifying what failed projects have in common, and then there are a few shining counterexamples against which they can test. It currently looks like the core insight is that planning needs to shift from controlling things to accounting for things you cannot control: lots of stakeholders (because many are attracted due to the sheer size of the project); black swans (in multi-year construction there is likely to be a bad storm but no telling when); the economy; etc.
Thanks for your comment, Ryan, and apologies for only spotting it just now. I agree there’s lots of efficiency gains to be made on big projects! I wonder whether it’s difficult to gain evidence on “what works” to improve them because there are so few and there’s lots of different complexities (vs small projects—we have a lot more to observe and there’s fewer dimensions).
It definitely is, mostly because there are so few successful projects to point to. Most of the work has been identifying what failed projects have in common, and then there are a few shining counterexamples against which they can test. It currently looks like the core insight is that planning needs to shift from controlling things to accounting for things you cannot control: lots of stakeholders (because many are attracted due to the sheer size of the project); black swans (in multi-year construction there is likely to be a bad storm but no telling when); the economy; etc.