My book’s official release date is now less than 10 days away! In anticipation of the release, I will be blogging about one chapter a day until the day of the book’s release. Up first is Chapter 1. Titled “Show Me the Data: The Enduring Problems of Cost Growth and Schedule Delays,” the book’s first chapter comprises the first 20 pages of the book, and helps motivates it purpose. For a wide variety of projects, cost growth and schedule delays have been a consistent issue that have plagued projects for a long time. See the table below for a summary.
From the Olympics to roads and bridges, average cost growth and schedule delays have occurred in the vast majority of projects. At least 8 of every 10 project, regardless of type, experiences cost growth, and with the exception of the Olympics, at least 7 in 10 projects experiences schedule delays.
The average cost growth ranges from 20% for roads to more than 150% for the Olympics. For those of my colleagues who work in aerospace and defense and think that the industries we work in are the worst, we are actually middle of the road – a little higher than typical infrastructure, but not as high or as extreme as some hydroelectric projects, IT/software, or the Olympics. The Olympics have historically had schedule constraints, which helps drive their extremely high cost growth. However, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the 2020 Summer Olympics planned for Tokyo. The pandemic this year is an extreme risk with significant impacts that no one could foresee.
This problem is even worse than it appears, as it does not hold scope constant. A prime example of a project that is still ongoing that has experienced significant cost growth, schedule delays, and will not come close to meeting initial requirements is the California High Speed Rail. This mega project was originally intended to link San Francisco and Los Angeles, but now will only provide rail service between two smaller cities, Merced and Bakersfield. As it will parallel an already existing highway between them. The drive time between these two cities is 2.5 hours, and a high-speed train will only save an hour than a trip by car. The cost of this smaller scope has more than doubled from initial plans. The current planned completion date for initial capability is 2028, which is the initial planned schedule to provide high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unless the project is eventually continued to link the two biggest cities in the state, this mega project will be a mega waste.
The publication date is the same day as the Presidential election, November 3rd. You can avoid the rush and pre-order now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. In my next blog post on my book, I will discuss Chapter 2 which is titled “Here We Grow Again: Why Cost and Schedule Delays Occur.”