Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Why Megaprojects Fail So Often— Seven Key Mistakes 1

Part 1 Success Is Elusive 9

1 Megaprojects— Creators and Destroyers of Capital 11

2 Data and Methods 25

3 Project Outcomes and Trends 45

4 The Roads to Ruin— The Mechanics of Failure (and Success) 71

Part 2 The Three Work Streams 95

5 An Introduction to the Shaping Stream 101

6 Shaping Step 1— Understand the Context 109

7 The Next Steps— From Context Knowledge to Project Shape 135

8 Devising the Shaping Strategy 169

9 Basic Data Are Basic 207

10 Project Definition— Getting the Front- End Right 235

Part 3 People Do Projects 297

11 Megaprojects Teams 299

12 Organizing Megaproject Teams 339

Part 4 Getting It Done 353

13 Contracting 355

14 The Control of Execution Risk 407

Part 5 Finishing Up 435

15 Project Governance 437

16 Focus on Success 449

Glossary and Acronyms 459

Index 463

AN UPDATED EDITION OF THE BESTSELLING BOOK ON MEGAPROJECTS

In Industrial Megaprojects, author, founder, and CEO of the world’s leading evaluator of billion-dollar “megaprojects” Edward Merrow provides expert insight on how project management practices lead to success in megaproject development and help prevent all-too-common overruns and delays. This book offers clear, nontechnical explanations of why major projects tend to get into trouble, with a comprehensive collection of tools, tips, principles, and frameworks to take a megaproject from start to finish.

New material in this Second Edition helps readers navigate the modern megaproject landscape, discussing sustainability in the forms of renewable energy and decarbonization, along with desirable attributes of modern project organization techniques to support megaprojects.

This book also delves into the critical role of governance in making successful projects, commonly seen hazardous and costly errors in recent megaprojects, technical expertise requirements to ensure efficient function of plants once work is completed, and more, with case studies showcasing how megaprojects can fail and succeed included throughout the text.

Written by world-renowned megaproject consultant and evaluator Edward Merrow, Industrial Megaprojects is an essential resource for engineers, industry professionals, and executives seeking to produce safe, cost-effective, on-time, and successful megaprojects.

Over half of large-scale construction projects, such as renewable energy installations, drilling platforms, chemical plants, and dams, have miserably poor results: billions of dollars in overruns, long delays in design and construction, and poor operability of plants once finally completed. In Industrial Megaprojects, author, founder, and CEO of the world’s leading evaluator of billion-dollar “megaprojects” Edward Merrow delivers an accessible and authoritative discussion of why these problems occur and how to prevent and solve them, giving readers all the tools they need to ensure their project management practices lead to success.

This Second Edition of the bestselling book on megaprojects includes extensive new material on renewable energy and decarbonization projects and explains the underlying causes of incompetently executed megaprojects, including poor project management, destructive team behaviors, weak accountability systems, an almost pathological focus on the short-term, and unwillingness to invest in deep technical expertise.

Readers will learn about Merrow’s Sorry Seven: seven critical mistakes, often masked with the bravado of “taking daring risks,” that he has seen most often in his 30 years of studying and consulting on these massive-in-scale projects. Most importantly, readers will learn how to avoid or address these pitfalls in the real world, with detailed insight on contracting for the engineering and construction services that will be essential to executing the megaproject, the control of risk in execution, the three streams of work that must be completed and synchronized successfully by the sponsoring companies to produce a successful project, and many other need-to-know topics.

An essential resource for engineers, industry professionals, and executives, the Second Edition of Industrial Megaprojects remains the gold standard on the subject. It also belongs in the libraries of finance and banking professionals who regularly fund these projects and seek to better understand them.