Why most mega public projects are failing

Recently, over the Christmas period, my mother, who by all definition is an amateur in construction matters, was lamenting on how one of our village roads was curiously quickly done without considering certain critical aspects to the sustainability of the murram road like culverts.

 And by all means she is right, the ingredients for such public projects failures are in the sunlight for anyone who cares to see.

First, let us admit, that public projects’ failure is not bespoke to only third world countries like ours. Yes, it is incredibly expanse in the global south, but not strictly bespoke to it.

Lately, I have been reading about construction of the California rail system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco.  The project was approved by voters in 2008 and was to be completed in 2020 at cost of $33 billion. Shockingly, even after the approval of building the first segment in 2010, they didn’t break ground for another five years. The project has shamefully delayed and is now projected to in 2033 from 2020 at a cost of $105 billion from $33 billion.

Let me give you the reason for the delay and cost variation. Apparently, there are two titanic engineering obstacles to connecting the central, interior part of the planned route with key metropolitan areas at either end of the state. They have to comprehend how to build track over or blast through the Tehachapi Mountains. And this becomes less important to the second bottleneck, a portion of the Diablo Range known as the Pacheco pass that stands between the Central valley and the Bay area to its north.

But the state knew all about this. I posit the state at the time of planning the rail route must have put in place a plan of how to blast the mountain or put a tunnel underneath. So what happened?  This example mimics the situation of most of our public projects. Maybe not to the scale of the cost involved but certainly, or even more, to the level of the bold carelessness exhibited. There are three main reasons why majority of our public projects fail; irregularities, corruption and poor project planning.  How about corruption on public projects? We budget for it, pray for it and have even formed a constitutional commission to deal with it. It is chronic, endemic and systemic. However, the effect of poor project planning on our public projects has been painfully overlooked.

Poor project planning is the major reason, in my view, why most public projects, nearly all, experience wanton cost and time overruns. Many of our projects are not being properly conceived through planning – they are hurried and harried.

As a result of poor, improper, and inadequate project planning, design errors are found several times after a project is started.  Inevitably modifications have to be incorporated at later stages, which invariably delays the project and raises the cost. In almost all public projects, these issues arise with no one held accountable or punished. Projects are hurriedly conceived for launch in competition with the President’s or Governor’s visit.

Cutting ribbons is prioritised over the sensible proper project planning that secures the tax payers money. Noble projects are turned into circuses through wanton cost and time overruns primarily due to poor project planning. Why are we in a hurry? Even if someone want to eat early, shouldn’t they then start cooking early?

Poor project planning is costing us an arm and a leg but that is beside the point. At all levels of both national and devolved government, there is yet to be established a plan, even a mock plan, on how to deal, with the single most contributor to public projects failure. The challenges and complexities that the 21st century alone has thrown at the built environment necessitates the need for a change in our approach to projects, more so in how we plan projects.

— The writer is a project manager and author of ‘Don’t Buy That House’