From Dream to Reality: Scaling the Construction Planning Hurdles of a Megaproject


Book Description

Discusses how the dream of a megaproject is realized, elucidates the various demands, and explains why it takes years to materialize. It asserts that a megaproject is any project that requires a great deal of management courage, capital, patience, and well-conceived plans. And that managing a megaproject is more than managing a major construction effort; it is also managing a public responsibility with the concomitant management accountability and transparency. It advances the Big Dig as the case study megaproject of record, because none of the other notable megaprojects in the 20th century can boast the paradoxes and the lessons that the Big Dig provides. It affirms that leadership engagement, imagination, and political alignment, facilitate the realization of such dream. It espouses good planning and invokes foresight considerations as a sine qua non for getting the right strategic gaps closed, the misdeeds avoided and the right mechanics applied for a successful project outcome.




Megaproject Organization and Performance


Book Description

Megaproject Organization and Performance: Myth and Political Realities delves into the complex world of organizing megaprojects and investigates the extent to which the performance of these projects could be traced back to their organizational structure. Through multiple case study research, including the London Olympic Park and Heathrow Airport Terminal 2, the authors show how megaprojects are unique in how they are organized. They explore core-periphery relationships between promotors who, control strategic choices, and suppliers, who are the contracted experts that provide the actual resources to get the project done. The implications of these structural-performance relationships within a robust economy are then compared with railroad and highway development projects in the developing economies of Nigeria, Uganda, and India. This in-depth study brings a complementary perspective to megaproject literature and enables us to reconcile conflicting explanations for the regularity with which megaprojects miss performance targets. With pluralism at the core of the megaproject's organizational structure, the authors argue that megaprojects work best when accountability is shared and everyone has a stake in the final outcome.




Megaprojects and Risk


Book Description

Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.




Contested Knowledges


Book Description

Locally and globally, mega-hydraulic projects have become deeply controversial. Recently, despite widespread critique, they have regained a new impetus worldwide. The developmentand operation of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects are manifestations of contested knowledge regimes. In this special issue we present, analyze and critically engage with situations where multiple knowledge regimes interact and conflict with each other, and where different grounds for claiming the truth are used to construct hydrosocial realities. In this introductory paper, we outline the conceptual groundwork. We discuss ‘the dark legend of UnGovernance’ as an epistemological mainstay underlying the mega-hydraulic knowledge regimes, involving a deep, often subconscious, neglect of the multiplicity of hydrosocial territories and water cultures. Accordingly, modernist epistemic regimes tend to subjugate other knowledge systems and dichotomize ‘civilized Self’ versus ‘backward Other’; they depend upon depersonalized planning models that manufacture ignorance. Romanticizing and reifying the ‘othered’ hydrosocial territories and vernacular / indigenous knowledge, however, may pose a serious danger to dam-affected communities. Instead, we show how multiple forms of power challenge mega-hydraulic rationality thereby repoliticizing large dam regimes. This happens often through complex, multi-actor, multi-scalar coalitions that make that knowledge is co-created in informal arenas and battlefields.




Project Management


Book Description

A new edition of the most popular book of project management case studies, expanded to include more than 100 cases plus a "super case" on the Iridium Project Case studies are an important part of project management education and training. This Fourth Edition of Harold Kerzner's Project Management Case Studies features a number of new cases covering value measurement in project management. Also included is the well-received "super case," which covers all aspects of project management and may be used as a capstone for a course. This new edition: Contains 100-plus case studies drawn from real companies to illustrate both successful and poor implementation of project management Represents a wide range of industries, including medical and pharmaceutical, aerospace, manufacturing, automotive, finance and banking, and telecommunications Covers cutting-edge areas of construction and international project management plus a "super case" on the Iridium Project, covering all aspects of project management Follows and supports preparation for the Project Management Professional (PMP®) Certification Exam Project Management Case Studies, Fourth Edition is a valuable resource for students, as well as practicing engineers and managers, and can be used on its own or with the new Eleventh Edition of Harold Kerzner's landmark reference, Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. (PMP and Project Management Professional are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.)




Organizational Project Management


Book Description

This concise text introduces an integrated view of all project management-related activities in an organization, called Organizational Project Management (OPM). Practical cases from several organizations, as well as popular theories such as the Resource-Based Theory and Institutional Theory provide for an insightful yet realistic understanding of OPM as an integrative tool for organizations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.




Large Infrastructure Projects in Germany


Book Description

This book presents an analysis of why some large infrastructure projects are delayed or compromised and offers important insights into the better delivery of future projects. It provides an important reaction to the ambitious €315 billion investment plan devised by the European Commission, wherein Europe's infrastructure is a key investment target. Germany is adopted as a focus, as Europe's largest economy, and a nation that has seen significant delays and tensions in the delivery of key infrastructure projects. The contributions to this volume demonstrate various patterns for infrastructure assets and illustrate how factors such as poor project governance, early planning mistakes, inappropriate risk management and unforeseen technological challenges influence delivery. The in-depth case studies on the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, and offshore wind parks show how project delivery can face massive problems, and illuminating solutions are offered to these problems. Overall, the case of Germany also offers the opportunity to assess various new forms of project delivery, such as public-private partnerships (PPP), and the risks and opportunities of ambitious first-mover 'pioneer' projects. The book will be of great interest for scholars and upper-level students of human geography, business and management, as well as policy makers.




In Defense of Housing


Book Description

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.




Policy and Planning for Large Infrastructure Projects


Book Description

Abstract: "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 development pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is massive cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, the paper 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 the competition's, that gain approval and funding. This results in the "survival of the unfittest," where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, the paper 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."--World Bank web site.




Urban Megaprojects


Book Description

This book discusses the economic and political conditions that facilitate megaproject implementation and what are the impacts on urbanity and livability of such costly mode of urban development. It includes contributions from sociologists, planners, geographers and architects making it a truly multidisciplinary project.