18 Feb Why MegaProjects Fail – What Can Be Done To Improve Project Delivery ???
Why Megaprojects Fail and What We Can Do About It
Megaprojects shape nations. They deliver large-scale transport infrastructures, energy systems, defence capabilities, hospitals, and cities. They consume billions of pounds of public money and involve thousands of organisations and people. And yet, despite decades of experience, reform, and oversight, megaprojects continue to underperform at an alarming rate, marked by cost overruns, delays, political fallout, and loss of public trust.
The uncomfortable truth is this: We don’t fail because we lack knowledge. We fail because we govern megaprojects in the wrong way.
This article draws on my doctoral research into how senior managers enact governance in megaprojects, informed by in-depth empirical work across major UK infrastructure programmes.
What Is a Megaproject?
Flyvbjerg (2014) defines megaprojects as large-scale, complex ventures that typically exceed $1 billion in expenditure, take many years to deliver, involve multiple public and private stakeholders, and have transformational impacts on millions of people. They play a critical role in driving economic growth and societal progress.
But cost and size only tell part of the story. What truly distinguishes megaprojects is how they are delivered. They are not executed through simple organisational hierarchies, but through networks of multiple, autonomous organisations. They cut across government departments, arm’s-length bodies, delivery organisations, contractors, regulators, and communities.
Megaprojects are not self-contained. They are temporary systems embedded within permanent institutions—political, regulatory, and organisational. This distinction matters, because it fundamentally changes how governance works.
Why Megaprojects Are So Hard to Deliver?
Evidence consistently shows that nine out of ten megaprojects exceed their budgets and schedules and fail to deliver their intended benefits.
Megaprojects are not difficult simply because they are complicated. They are difficult because they are complex. Technical complexity can usually be planned for. Organisational and political complexity cannot.
Megaprojects bring together organisations with very different objectives, cultures, and risk appetites. Clients seek public value and legitimacy. Delivery bodies focus on assurance and compliance. Contractors manage commercial exposure. Regulators prioritise safety and standards. Local communities care about disruption, fairness, and long-term outcomes.
These interests rarely align neatly.
At the same time, megaprojects unfold over long time horizons. Leadership changes. Political priorities shift. Funding models evolve. Risks emerge that were never visible at the outset. Early decisions, often made without sufficient information under optimism and pressure, can lock projects into trajectories that are extremely difficult to reverse later.
This is why megaprojects behave less like machines and more like complex adaptive systems. Cause and effect are not linear. Outcomes emerge through interaction rather than control.
And this is precisely where traditional governance approaches begin to struggle.
The Governance Challenge
Most megaprojects are not under-governed. If anything, they are over-governed.
They are surrounded by contracts, boards, committees, gateways, assurance reviews, and reporting requirements. On paper, governance looks robust.
In practice, it often isn’t.
Why?
Because governance in megaprojects is too often treated as a structure, rather than a practice.
Governance structures are necessary, but they cannot, on their own, align competing organisational interests, build trust across institutional boundaries, resolve ambiguity and uncertainty, or adapt to a constantly changing environment.
Those tasks fall to people. More specifically, they fall to senior managers.
Why Megaproject Governance Fails?
One of the central findings of my research is this:
Governance does not operate automatically through frameworks. It only works when it is actively enacted by senior leaders.
Yet in many megaprojects, governance is reduced to compliance. Senior managers rely on contracts, processes, assurance, and reporting to perform work that leadership itself should be doing.
When that happens, predictable patterns emerge.
Organisations retreat into contractual positions. Information becomes filtered. Trust erodes. Decisions slow down or escalate unnecessarily. Formal control increases, while real alignment decreases.
Governance becomes something that exists, rather than something that works.
And this is where failure takes root.
What We Can Do About It
Megaproject failure is not inevitable. But it does require a shift in how we think about governance.
My research shows that effective governance emerges when senior managers treat it as an active leadership responsibility, not an administrative function. It works when leaders step into the spaces between organisations, balance control with stewardship, and adapt governance as conditions change.
Governance succeeds not because the framework is perfect, but because leaders are willing to enact it, day after day, in messy, uncertain conditions.
A Final Thought
We don’t need more governance frameworks. We need better governance practices.
And that starts with recognising a simple truth:
Megaprojects do not fail because frameworks are missing. They fail because governance is not being enacted.
If you sponsor, lead, govern or deliver major programmes, I’d be interested in your experience. Where have you seen governance work or fail in practice?
Refercence
Article “Why Megaprojects Fail – and What We Can Do About It” written by Dr Rajesh Pathak FICE. FAPM.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-megaprojects-fail-what-we-can-do-dr-rajesh-pathak-fice-fapm-e1oge/?trackingId=7O1CMr%2F5yisW89LvlbclDg%3D%3D