Why Big Projects Fail: Lessons for Construction Professionals

James Hooper

October 2024

A paper presented to the Society of Construction Law at a meeting in London on 6 February 2024

The paper considers why big projects fail, examining the findings of behavioural science and applying them to success or failure in construction projects. The paper looks at the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, the world’s leading expert on megaproject failure, and of academic psychologists, Kahneman and Tversky. In particular, the paper examines how humans often fail to act rationally due to biases such as optimism bias, blindspot bias, confirmation bias and the narrative fallacy. Blindness to things outside our frame of reference – the Black Swan – can cause problems, as can the sheer complexity of a system, whose behaviour is hard to predict. These findings are especially useful for construction professionals, as is the advice on how to mitigate unrealistic forecasts and lack of contingency for unforeseen events. 

Text: 14 pages