Michael Cameron reviews the book How Big Things Get Done

Michael Cameron is a Professor of Economics at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. 

See Book review: How Big Things Get Done. Excerpts:

"There are certain books that shouldn't need to be written. Inevitably, those are the books that, in reality, most need to be written. That is certainly the case for How Big Things Get Done, by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. This is a book about big projects, and importantly, how those projects succeed or, as is often the case, how they fail."

"The book draws on decades of Flyvbjerg's academic research on big projects, as well as his experience both consulting on, and being directly involved in, big projects. Through this work, Flyvbjerg has developed a massive database of projects, their cost and benefit estimates at the time the project began, and the cost over-runs and benefit shortfalls that so often resulted. The numbers do not make for easy reading, and the examples that Flyvbjerg uses range from transport infrastructure to It projects to nuclear power stations to the Olympic Games."

"I really enjoyed this book, even though it does seem quite depressing at times, just how badly big projects are at delivering on their promises (both in terms of costs, and in terms of benefits)."

I think this is a very important lesson. Economic rationality says that the benefits of projects should be greater than the cost. But it looks like very often it is the reverse.

Related posts: 

Does It Pay to Host the Olympics? (2009)

Economic benefits from mega-events like the Olympics are often overstated (2021)