Understanding the Landscape of Overruns in Transport Infrastructure Projects

Peter E D Love, Jim Smith, Ian Simpson, Michael Regan and Oluwole Olatunji
Additional contact information
Peter E D Love: Department of Civil Engineering Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
Jim Smith: School of Sustainable Development, Bond University, Robina, QLD 4229, Australia
Ian Simpson: CSi Global Services Level 6, 83 Mount Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia
Michael Regan: School of Sustainable Development, Bond University, Robina, QLD 4229, Australia
Oluwole Olatunji: School of Built Environment, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia

Environment and Planning B, 2015, vol. 42, issue 3, 490-509

Abstract: Cost and schedule overruns are endemic features of transport infrastructure projects. Despite the considerable amount of research within the field of transport and planning in the past thirty years, limited progress has been made to improving the performance of projects. We contend that this will continue to be an issue as long as research efforts focus on the ‘outside view’ with emphasis being placed upon strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias. Understanding ‘why’ and ‘how’ projects overrun, particularly from both ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ perspectives, is pivotal to reducing their impact and occurrence. Thus, in conjunction with the transport and planning literature, references to cost-overrun studies undertaken within the field of construction and engineering are examined. Our objective is to provide policy makers, industry, voluntary organizations, and the public at large with an ameliorated understanding about time-overrun and cost-overrun phenomena. Suggestions to mitigate overruns based upon recent process and technological innovations are identified and discussed.

Keywords: cost; schedule; transport infrastructure projects; overruns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b130102p (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:42:y:2015:i:3:p:490-509

DOI: 10.1068/b130102p

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning B
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().