Emergent Cross-Case and Cross-Sectoral
Themes from the MEGAPROJECT Portfolio:
An Interim Review
A document produced for The MEGAPROJECT COST Action: TU10003
Naomi Brookes
January 2013
Emergent Cross-Case and Cross-Sectoral Themes from
the MEGAPROJECT Portfolio
Introduction and Aim
The aim of this monograph is to bring together the diverse work streams that have been
undertaken within the MEGAPROJECT COST Action. Its aim is to identify cross-case
themes that emerge from the behaviour of the megaprojects in the MEGAPROJECT case
portfolio. These themes are then triangulated to establish meta-themes that relate to the
whole of the MEGAPROJECT portfolio across sectoral boundaries. This paper follows the
initial work published in “MEGAPROJECT Cross- Case Themes: An Initial Examination”
produced in April 2012.
Existing Work Streams
The following represent the work streams carried out under the auspices of the
MEGAPROJECT COST Action to establish cross-case themes:







The Cross-Sectoral Working Group’s Activities
The Transport Working Group’s Activities
The Energy Working Group Activities
o Initial Review
o Inductive and Deductive Approaches
o Semantic Analysis
o Non-Parametric Statistical Analysis Approach to verification
The Transport Working Group Activities
The non-parametric statistical analysis of the whole MEGAPROJECT portfolio
The MEGAPROJECT Training School and Think Tank held on 30/11/12 – 2/11/12
A Short-Term Scientific Mission undertaken between Robert Hickey and Professor
Mauro Mancini at the Politecnico di Milano
All of these work streams have produced individual reports that are available from the
MEGAPROJECT Project Executive, Sarah King, at info@mega-project.eu. This monograph
has used these reports in its construction.
The Cross-Sectoral Working Group Activities
These activities have been coordinated through two working group meetings: one held at the
last Whole Action Workshop in Bratislava and one held in Edinburgh in September.
Emergent cross-case themes and potential hypotheses were identified through a
brainstorming process and the results of this are presented in the table below.
Origin of
Thematic
Finding
Cross-Sectoral
Working Group
Thematic Finding
EMERGING THEMES
 Designing megaprojects – the differences depending on the starting points, with
some of them renewals of former projects, some running for years and changing
and some with purely new start
 Designing megaprojects – the difference related with the type of investments and
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management, some fully private, some fully public and those most difficult with a
combination of public and private money and/or management of the process
 Defining the project value and the different incentives to it
 The relation between the complexity, predictability, goals and objectives in a
megaproject
 The accessibility of data on the a megaproject
 Regulations and limitations when a megaproject is financed under a EU funds
(programmes like Jessica and the ERDF projects)
 Contractual agreements in the megaprojects and their specifics in the time and
decision making
 Clear definition of a business model, influencing the final outcomes (products) of it
 Risk management challenges with megaprojects
 Identifying the performance “gap” between the majour projects and the mega
projects – possible implications on the EU terminology
 Evaluation tools application to mega projects – the specifics of the Cost Benefit
Analysis
 The models of technology parks design and development – comparative analysis
between Scandinavian and South-East European practices
POTENTIAL HYPOTHESES(not proven)
‘Heavy’ Front End:
 Sound planning leads to successful megaproject performance
 A clear definition of the business model of the megaproject leads to successful
megaproject performance
 Early involvement of the supplier network leads to successful project performance
 A correct balance between strong leadership and participative leadership leads to
successful megaproject performance.
Dealing with Uncertainty:
 Project management can not avoid uncertainty
Complex Multi-Programs:
 Business models of products have impact on project performance
Institutional Impact:
Hypothesis
 Good balancing of strong leadership and stakeholder participation has a high
impact on project success
Table 1: The Cross-Sectoral Working Group’s Thematic Findings
The Transport Working Group’s Activities
These activities have been coordinated through two working group meetings: one held at the
last Whole Action Workshop in Bratislava and one held in Brussels in November. The
Transport Working Group has used the work of the Energy Working Group as a ‘seed’ to
brainstorm further hypotheses that relate megaproject performance to its characteristics. The
working group aims to adopt a ‘fuzzy logic’ approach to ratifying these hypotheses and is, to
this end, devising a range of granulations and scaled linguistic variables to describe each of
these granulations. These are provided in Annex A of this monograph. As of yet, these
hypotheses have not been empirically tested.
The Energy Working Group’s Activities
The Energy Working Group began the initial construction of a set of cross-case themes in its
Working Group meetings in the first Year of MEGAPROJECT’s operation. This work has
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been further developed and coordinated through two working group meetings: one held at
the last Whole Action Workshop in Bratislava and one held in Milano in July 2012. Three
processes were investigated to generate cross-case themes:



An inductive process inspired by Eisenhardt’s work(Eisenhardt 1989)
A deductive approach based on operationalising hypotheses (generated by a
brainstorming process) and verifying these through the case portfolio
A semantic based rule elicitation and validation process
The processes used for the first two of these approaches are illustrated in the figures below :
Figure 1: ‘Operationalising Brainstormed Hypotheses’ Approach
Figure 2 Inductive Approach to Hypothesis Generation
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The relative advantages of deductive and inductive approaches are discussed in the
MEGAPROJECT Monograph entitled “Inductive and Deductive Theory Generation from
Case Studies: The Experience of the MEGAPROJECT COST Action” produced in August
2012. The inductive approach did produce additional propositions to those generated
through the deductive approach. These propositions were then operationalised into a series
of formal hypotheses which were tested using the Fisher Exact test to examine if they were
(or were not) supported by the MEGAPROJECT Energy Portofolio. This process was then
replicated for the whole of the MEGAPROJECT portfolio and is described in this context in
more detail elsewhere in this monograph.
A semantic based rule elicitation and validation process was carried out using the following
phases :



Semantic clustering of individual brainstormed propositions to derive from these a
set of clusters, with attached concise statements (typically of a maximum of twenty
words) reflecting most of the ideas in each cluster. This was done manually for the
purposes of MEGAPROJECT but would normally be performed by automated
linguistic analysis tools. These semantic aggregated clusters become hypothesis,
Hypothesis validation where each case was assessed by each author checking
whether each case satisfied either in binary terms (i.e. Yes/No) or insome form of
percentage evaluation/in. (In this phase It wasmandatory that all completed cases
were included.) Then an average (with spread) hypothesis validity (from the case
sample base ) was computed for each hypothesis across the case sample. (In this
phase hypotheses with over 50 % validation are frozen and become rules; those with
less than typically 50 % validation are normally discarded, or the hypothesis is
refined, and the process starts over again untill convergence on a stable small set of
revised hypotheses with all >50 % validity.)
Group rule validation was performed at the end, to avoid that the accepted rules
are not just "motherhood statements" . (This is normally achieved by sending back
the set of rules to all case authors asking them if that *set of rules* has jointly
covered eg. at least 75 % of the general and specific issues in each case.)
This approach produced two semantic based ‘rules’ for MEGAPROJECTS which are
contained in Table 2 below. (Successive refinements and increments could have been
continued.) Table 2 also contains summaries of the propositions generated by the other
Energy Working Group activities.
Activity
Initial Milano
Meeting







Thematic Finding
The more unemployment in the megaproject’s local environments, the less
resistance to it from local residents. (H, M)
The more local residents perceive property values to increase/decrease, the
less/more resistance to the megaproject. ( D, H)
The more spending by the megaproject on the local community, the less the
resistance to the megaproject ( A, H, M)
The more trust the general population has in regulators, the less opposition to
megaprojects ( F, H)
The successful completion of a megaproject requires a specific articulation of
national government support ( M, H, G)
The more ‘mega’ the megaproject, the more difficult to identify the
stakeholders and the more likely for the stakeholders and their needs to change
during the lifecycle of the megaproject (M,H,A,M,G,F)
The more innovative the megaproject, the more likely to fail to meet iron
triangle success criteria (supporting proposition G, F not supporting proposition
A)
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SIMILARITIES IN MEGAPROJECTS
Formation of project based organisations (H,G, A, M?)
There is frequently a joint venture organisation ( often an equity joint venture)
formed between organisations to be the client/owner for the megaproject. The
degree to which this is a ‘real’ organisation ( staffed with people and with project
management responsibility) or a ‘ghost’ organisation ( not staffed with the project
activities still being undertaken by the owners varies.
Financing of Megaprojects ( H,G,A, M)
Most megaprojects are financed by consortia of organisations and not by a single
organisation.
Similar Patterns of Actors (H,G,A,F,M,D)
Energy Megaprojects in Europe have a similar pattern of stakeholder actors and
those actors are often act in the same capacity across a number of cases:
 Owners (either directly or of temporary project organisation): TransEuropean Energy Companies with a substantive state ownership, e.g. E-ON,
RWE, EDF, ENEL
 Prime contractors: Turbo-machinery ( Siemens, Rolls-Royce, Alstom);
Nuclear Steam Systems (Arreva); EPC ( Aker, Fluor, AMEC, Saipem
Optimism Bias (G, H, F, A?)
Energy Megaprojects do demonstrate optimism bias in the forecasts of leadtime
and costs for completion but the reason for this is not clear. (It does not seem to be
for reasons of misrepresentation to create a business case c.f. Flyvbjerg)
Lack of Scope Changes (G,H, A,F,D?)
Energy megaprojects don’t seem subject to scope creep (e.g. target for MWe seems
to remain the same throughout the project)
Semantic Based Rule
Elicitation
Similarities in Scale (G,H,A,F)
Energy megaprojects in Europe seem to be of a similar scale. They take about 10
years from the first project idea to full operation. They involve a peak of 3000-5000
in construction. The y cosy €2bn-€7bn
 Good management and good outcomes on projects are correlated.

Links and incentives must be created for success for the different
categories of Users and Builders
Table 2: The Energy Working Group’s Thematic Findings
The MEGAPROJECT Training School and Think-Tank
The first MEGAPROJECT Training School and ‘Think-Tank’ was held in Leeds on November
30th – December 2nd 2012. This event had dual aims:


To develop the skills in cross-case analysis of Early-Stage Researchers(ESRs)
involved in the project
To use these skills to review the whole of the MEGAPROJECT portfolio to identify
emergent themes.
To this end, the ESR’s were divided into four groups and each tasked with giving their view
on emergent themes in the MEGAPROJECT portfolio. Each team produced an individual
report summarizing their perspective on emergent themes and the process that they used to
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establish these. Individual reports are available from the Project Executive, Sarah King, at
info@mega-project.eu. The emergent findings of each group are summarized in the table
below along with additional comments. It is to be noted that all groups found the construct of
‘project success’ as difficult to operationalise in a unitary fashion.
Group
Group
A



Thematic Finding
the presence of only one major stakeholder is related to
a delay in construction and project and costs
the megaproject having national public acceptability (no
protest at the national) is associated with the project
being on budget
the mega-project fitting into the long-term plan of the
country’s government is associated with no delay in
construction and the project no going over budget.
Comments
Difficulty of success/failure as a
construct
Need for a ‘mediating factor’ to
explain the results (see diagram
below
But evidence is not conclusive
Group
B






Group
C




Group
D
Increasing prices of equipment/technology impact upon
cost
Environmentalist groups delay projects and have impact
on cost
Additional requirements of authorities increase costs
Good stakeholder management has a positive impact on
performance
Congruency between needs (e.g. needs of community)
and project goals improves performance
Congruency between political goals (e.g. change in
environmental law) and project goals improves
performance
The typology of contract doesn’t affect the project
acceptance.
Stakeholder network complexity always occurs
(megaprojects are complex by definition), but seems to
have no so much impact on project acceptance.
Project output performance (understood as Time, Cost ,
Quality) seems to be always weak but have no so
significant impact on project acceptance
Environment conditions (understood as legal, political as
economic) have not much impact on project acceptance.
Project ‘success’ is a problematic
construct therefore derived a new
performance characteristic ,
‘project acceptance’
Tentative links surrounding local stakeholder involvement
Table 3 The Training School’s Thematic Findings
Short Term Scientific Mission(STSM) hosted by Professor Mauro Mancini at
the Politecnico di Milano.
The Short-Term Scientific Mission (STSM) was undertaken by Robert Hickey of the
International Business School in Bulgaria in June 2012 Its aim was to develop the work of
the Energy Working Group in a cross-case analysis for the MEGAPROJECT portfolio and to
understand the implications for using it more widely in the MEGAPROJECT Action. This
included:
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


Laying the groundwork for testing the hypotheses and questions posed during the
Energy Working Group brainstorming session, by identifying related project
characteristic information that is needed to test the validity of the hypotheses for the
megaprojects in the energy and cross-sectoral case studies. It also included adding
hypothesis, questions and potential lines of analysis for determining success factors
for megaprojects.
Reflecting on the implications of the energy theme methodology to the cross-sectoral
case studies.
Identifying methodologies that would help identify cross-case themes in the
Megaprojects case studies through the development of a bibliography.
The findings of the STSM are contained in a separate report produced by Robert Hickey and
are summarised in Table 4. A table was designed to capture if a relationship between a
postulated construct and megaproject performance could be viewed as positive or negative,
weak or strong, or unconfirmed. The process was based on approaches to capturing
MEGAPROJECT performance derived by Merrow (2011). Constructing the table highlighted
the need to return to the original cases and to supplement them.
Thematic Finding

Off-site construction is associated with cost overruns

Highly innovative projects are associated with cost over-runs

Less spending on the local community is associated with slips in schedule

The passage of unforeseen regulations is associated with schedule slippage

Changes in ownership structure are associated with schedule slippage

Decreases in local property values as a result of a megaproject are associated with schedule slippage.
Table 4: Thematic Findings of the STSM
The non-parametric statistical analysis of the whole MEGAPROJECT portfolio
As a development of the work of the Energy Working Group, Giorgio Locatelli assisted by
Naomi Brookes and Sarah King, undertook an analysis to ascertain statistically significant
relationships between megaproject characteristics and megaproject performance. An
overview of this activity is contained in a power-point presentation and is obtainable from the
Project Executive, Sarah King, at info@mega-project.eu. The operationalised
MEGAPROJECT characteristics derived by the Energy Working Group were used to code
the remainder of cases from the MEGAPROJECT portfolio. These characteristics were
operationalised in a binary fashion (i.e. either present or not present). These characteristics
are shown in Table 5.
Brainstormed Megaproject Characteristics
Project has a foreign EPC company
Siemens is involved as a contractor in the project
There is a presence of one major stakeholder
The EPC has a clear goal
The project is mono Cultural
Page 8 of 15
More than 50% share of the client is under government control
An experienced project director is present
Green Peace or other international environmental activists have been involved in the project
The project has national public acceptability (no protest at national level)
The project has local public acceptability (no protest at local levels)
Environmental activists and regulators have been engaged ex-ante, not ex post
Local communities had a conservative attitude to development
Investment on external communication was above 0,01% of the total budget
The project has a strong regulation system as evidenced by:
a) The authority stopped the project or similar projects in the same country
b) The authority give fine to the EPC (main contractor) or one of the internal
stakeholders in the project
c) The project start has been delayed by the authority
The project fit in the long term plan of the country's government
There is planned a long term stability in usage and value
The project enjoys political support as evidence by:
a) Support of the central government
b) Support of the local government
The megaproject is decomposed in many sub-projects which can use the learnings from other
project
Heavy usage of planning by milestones
Heavy usage of Formal project management tool and technique
Usage of performance metrics
Client and Owner are different
Turn key contract between Client and EPC (main contractor)
There is a formal litigation procedure (e.g. international chamber of commerce) between
Client and EPC
Project has a high quality feasibility study
Project has a well developed FEED
Modular project - consider only the related sentences below a) The project is modular - dependent modules
b) The project is modular - independent modules
High level of technical innovation
FOAK (First Of A Kind) or unique Project (like Venezia mose)
Tough environmental condition (dangerous local situation)
Tough physical or environmental conditions
Financial Support from the European Union
Financial Support from the national government
National Public Acceptability
Local Public Acceptability
Local residents were involved in the project
Previous national similar project was successful
Unemployment in the area above national average
The population trusts the regulatory authority.
The Compensation of local community above 0,1% of the total budget
The density of population of the province is below the national average
The project is nuclear
Table 5: Brainstormed Characteristics that Affect Megaproject Performance
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An attempt was then made to relate the presence (or absence) of these characteristics
(independent variables) with the performance of the megaproject (dependant variables).
Initially megaproject performance was viewed as either being a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’ but
this was found to be an opaque and too simplistic characterization. Instead performance was
characterized in terms of cost compared to the original budget, delays in the planning stage
and delays in the construction phase. Again these were considered as ‘binary’
characteristics that were either present or not present in the case. Through this mechanism,
2x2 contingency tables for each characteristic and each performance element were created.
The resulting dataset was therefore amenable for analysis using the Fisher Exact Test.
(More information on this can be obtained from the texts in the bibliography at the end of this
monograph) This test was used to ascertain if any relationship existed between any of the
characteristics of a megaproject case and the performance of that megaproject. This test
was implemented using the HYPGEOMDIST function in Excel which is used to compute
probabilities under a hypergeometric distribution. The completed Excel spreadsheet used to
undertake this analysis is available from the Project Executive at info@mega-project.eu.
Given the nature of the relationship being sought, a very much higher p-value (0.25) was
used to judge if a relationship between independent and dependant variables was
statistically significant. This was justified on the basis that practitioners and researchers alike
would be interested in strong indications of the presence of relationships rather than
requiring ‘certainty.’ On this basis, megaproject characteristics that have been demonstrated
to have a statistically significant relationship with mega-project performance are given in the
table below:
Impact on Project Performance
Megaproject Characteristics
WILL CAUSE DELAYS IN THE PLANNING PHASE
-
WILL CAUSE DELAYS IN THE CONSTRUCTION PHASE
-
WILL ENABLE THE CONSTRUCTION PHASE TO BE ON
TIME
WILL CAUSE PROJECT TO BE OVERBUDGET
WILL ENABLE THE PROJECT TO BE ON BUDGET
-
Large-scale use of formal PM techniques
Project has a well-developed FEED
Density of the population in below
national average
Project has a foreign EPC company
Involvement of Environmental Activists
The project is a Nuclear New Build
Project has a well-developed FEED
Large-scale use of formal PM techniques
Support of central government
Presence of one major stakeholder
The project is mono-cultural
Financial support from the EU
Financial support from central
government
Table 6: Statistically Significant Relationships between Megaproject Characteristics
and Megaproject Performance
It is to be noted that a substantial majority of brainstormed characteristics displayed no
statistically significant relationship at all. Furthermore, these findings should be treated with
caution. Performance was not measured absolutely but in terms of achievement to forecast.
In other words, a project that marginally fails to meet a tight timescale would be considered
to have performed more badly than a project that meets a very lax timescale.
Page 10 of 15
Identifying Emergent Cross-Sectoral Themes
This monograph has shown twelve approaches to developing cross-case themes. Five of
these have been concerned with looking at cross-case themes within a particular sector of
the portfolio and seven approaches have been concerned with identifying cross-sectoral
themes. (This calculation has identified four distinct approaches adopted by the groups at
the Training School). In order to use these findings to make a tentative and initial
identification of cross-sectoral themes, a process of triangulation has been used.
Triangulation, in social science research methodological terms, allows for verification of
postulated relationships through several different approaches performed by different
researchers at different points in time arriving at the same conclusions (Gill and Johnson
2010) The findings of each of the distinct workstreams have therefore been compared and
used to identify common thematic grouping of issues that have been considered to have an
effect on megaproject performance. (The hypothesised fuzzy relationships of the transport
Group were not used as these had not yet been tested empirically). These are summarised
in Table 7 below:
Fisher Exact Test
Analysis
Group D
Group C
Group B
X
X
X X
X
X
Financial and contractual structure
Business models
Joint venture structures
Social networks
Internal stakeholder structures

Regulatory
include:
and
Political
Environment


Support of Central Government
Support of EU
Unexpected Regulatory Changes


Use of FEED and other planning initiatives
Early supply network involvement
Use of formal PM Techniques
to X

Project Management Approaches to include:

Technological
include:

X X X X X X
Local community characteristics (wealth, degree of
unemployment, property values etc.)
Expenditure on external stakeholder management
Difficulty of stakeholder identification
Incentives for stakeholder users

Governance and Structure to include:




X
Group A


X
Training
School/Thi
nk Tank
SSTM

Semantic
Analysis
External stakeholder management to include:
Energy
WG
Initial
Investigation
Cross-Sectoral WG
Megaproject Characteristic Grouping
novelty
and
complexity
X X X
X
to X
X
X
X
X
Technological complexity and its interactions with
project objectives
Table 7: Emergent Thematic Groupings that Influence Megaproject Performance
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It is interesting to note that the same issue is perceived as having different results by
different workstreams. For example, the Fischer Exact test indicates that the use of formal
project management tools is inimical to megaproject performance whereas the CrossSectoral group’s work indicates that they postulate that formal project management tools
improve the success of megaprojects.
References
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). "Building theories from case study research." Academy of
Management review: 532-550.
Merrow E. (2011) "Industrial Megaprojects: Concepts, Strategies, and Practices for Success"
Wiley, NY
Gill J. and Johnson P. (2010) "Research Methods for Managers" Sage
Bibilography
Chris Leach: "Introduction to Statistics: A Nonparametric Approach for the Social Sciences"
ISBN-13: 978-0471997436
Jenny V Freeman and Michael J Campbell "The analysis of Categorical data:Fisher’s exact
test" http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.43998!/file/tutorial-9-fishers.pdf
Annex A: Transport Working Group's Fuzzy Propositions
Themes
External
Stakeholders
Themes statements
Qualitative scale
Involvement of environmental groups/activists
None - no involvement at all (1)
- total - involved in project
stage(5)
Was the involvement generally supporting the
project or against it?
no(0)-yes(1)
The project has national public acceptability (no
protest at national level)
none (1) - total support (5)
The project has regional public acceptability (in the
region or regions where the project is located)
none (1) - total support (5)
Exposure in the media
Easiness of access to relevant information for
stakeholders
Perceived impact at the local communities
Is there a professional public relation initiatives in
the project
Was there any public mood change during the
project implementation phase (from planning,
design to construction)
Page 12 of 15
mainly negative (1) - mainly
positive (5)
none (1) - complete availability
of documents and studies (5)
Totally negative (1) - totally
positive (5)
none (1) - extremely
comprehensive public relations
initiaves (5)
from positive to negative (1) from negative to positive(5)
Internal
stakeholders
After the project started operation the public mood
about it changed?
from positive to negative (1) from negative to positive(5)
The Project has a foreign EPC consortium
totally local (1) - totally foreign
image and perception (5)
There is a presence of one major stakeholder
(contractor)
no(0)-yes(1)
Is there a clear scope throughout the project to all
concerned
No clear scope and changeable
(1) - completely clear and stable
scope(5)
The project is mono Cultural (business culture)
no(0)-yes(1)
Is there an identifiable project culture
More than 50% share of the client is under
goverment control
An experienced project director is present
no(0)-yes(1)
Is there a cooperative relation between the client
and contractor(s)
Is there any political support/agreement about the
project level of priority
Where there changes in scope due to political
action?
Political pressure related with milestones deadlines
Political Project
Environment
Legal Project
environment
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
No(1)- All main parties are
completely supportive (5)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
Positive political support depending on degree of
external funding
no(0)-yes(1)
The project is on the TEN-T
no(0)-yes(1)
Evidences of polititians being too sensitive to
pressure groups
no(1)- clear evidences of
changed decisions due to
pressure (5)
Are there evidences that "democratic" process is
resulting in project delays (appeals)?
no(0)-yes(1)
Stable legal environment (withouth any major
changes in the legislation during the process time)
no(0)-yes(1)
Changes in legislation relative to tendering processes
Changes in legislation relative to environmental law
There was a stable economic environment during
the project implementation phase
Changes in the economic impact during the
operational phase
Changes in energy prices
Economic Project
Environment
no(0)-yes(1)
New operators/modes (competetitors) entering in
the market during the implementation phase
New operators/modes (competetitors) entering in
the market during the operation phase
Operators/modes (competitors) leaving the market
(or extremely reduce their operation) during the
operation phase
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n0(1) - extreme changes which
completely overturned the
previous process(5)
n0(1) - extreme changes which
completely overturned the
previous process(5)
absolute stability(1)-extreme
changes(5)
absolute stability(1)-extreme
changes(5)
absolute stability(1)-extreme
changes(5)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
Financial Support from the European Union
Financial Support from the national governament
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
Valid CBA considered or not
no(0)-yes(1)
LCC was considered or not
Is there any evidence of a general "optimistic bias" in
the project
The procurement processes are transparent?
Risk analysis related with schedules and costs
Risk analysis related with project results (demand
forecasts)
Existence of sensitivity analysis
Apointment of a dedicated project manager in the
team
Project
Management
Level of competenced of the project management
team
Are cost deviations analyzed and documented
The megaproject is decomposed in many subprojects
There was an effective learning process from other
projects and(or) tasks in the same project
Project Impacts
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
low, only technical
background(1) -high,
internationally proven
compentence in PM(5)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
no/feeble(1)- important lessons
learned and applied(5)
Heavy usage of planning by milestones
no(0)-yes(1)
Heavy usage of Formal project management tool and
technique
no(0)-yes(1)
Usage of performance metrics
no(0)-yes(1)
Client and Owner are different
Turn key contract between Client and EPC (main
contractor)
There is a formal litigation procedure (e.g.
international chamber of commerce) between Client
and EPC
no(0)-yes(1)
High level of technical innovation
Technology
no(1) - consider all LCCosts in all
the project aspects/domains(5)
no(1) - there is strong evidence
of optimistic bias in all the
forecasts made for the
project(5)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
Using untried technology or materials (not
previously used)
Appearence of relevant new technologyes during the
project implementation (planning, design, and
construction)
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
no (0), incremental
Innovation(1), disruptive
innovation (5)- see OECD
definitions
no(0)-yes(1)
no(0)-yes(1)
Appearence of relevant (for competitors) new
technologyes during the project implementation
(planning, design, and construction)
no(0)-yes(1)
Tendering process favouring innovation
no(0)-yes(1)
Where there relevant unforeseen impacts?
no(0)-yes(1)
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Regional/national
strategy
(coherence)
Not Classified
Whas initially a coherence with a regional/national
strategy as shown by official documents?
no(1) - absolute coherence
between objectives(5)
Did changes in scope during the project
implementation put in jeopardy this scoherence?
no(1)- resulted totally
incoherent(5)
Did changes in the national/regional strategy put in
jeopardy this coherence?
no(1)- resulted totally
incoherent(5)
Tough physical or environmental conditions
no(0)-yes(1)
Page 15 of 15