Mega-project

A megaproject is an extremely large-scale investment project.

According to the Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management, "Megaprojects are large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost $1 billion or more, take many years to develop and build, involve multiple public and private stakeholders, are transformational, and impact millions of people". However, $1 billion is not a constraint in defining megaprojects, as sometimes (e.g. in developing countries) a relative approach is needed because in some contexts, a much smaller project (such as one with a $100 million budget), could constitute a megaproject. Therefore, a more general definition is "Megaprojects are temporary endeavours (i.e. projects) characterized by: large investment commitment, vast complexity (especially in organizational terms), and long-lasting impact on the economy, the environment, and society".

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) categorises megaprojects as having "extreme complexity (both in technical and human terms) and by a long record of poor delivery". Megaprojects attract a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets, and the high costs involved. Megaprojects can also be defined as "initiatives that are physical, very expensive, and public".Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford says that globally, megaprojects make up 8 percent of total GDP.

Care in the project development process is required to reduce any possible optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation, as a curious paradox exists in which more and more megaprojects are being proposed despite their consistently poor performance against initial forecasts of budget, schedule, and benefits.

Megaprojects are often affected by corruption leading to higher cost and lower benefit.

Megaprojects include bridges, tunnels, highways, railways, airports, seaports, power plants, dams, wastewater projects, Special Economic Zones, oil and natural gas extraction projects, public buildings, information technology systems, aerospace projects, weapons systems, large-scale sporting events and, more recently, mixed use waterfront redevelopments; however, the most common megaprojects are in the categories of hydroelectric facilities, nuclear power plants, and large public transportation projects. Megaprojects can also include large-scale high-cost initiatives in scientific research and infrastructure, such as the sequencing of the human genome, a significant global advance in genetics and biotechnology.

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