Megaprojects and Risk

Bent Flyvbjerg is Founding Chair of Major Programme Management at Oxford University's Saïd Business School and Director of the Oxford Centre for Major Programme Management. Previously, he was Professor in the Department of Planning and Development at Aalborg University. He is the author of the highly successful Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge, 2001) and Rationality and Power (1998). Nils Bruzelius is Associate Professor at Stockholm University and an independent consultant on transport and planning. Werner Rothengatter is Head of the Institute of Economic Policy Research and of the Unit on Transport and Communication at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is also the president of the World Congress on Transport Research Society (WCTRS).

• 1. The Megaprojects paradox; 2. A calamitous history of cost overrun; 3. The demand for Megaprojects; 4. Substance and spin in Megaproject economics; 5. Environmental impacts and risk; 6. Regional and economic growth effects; 7. Dealing with risk; 8. Conventional Megaproject development; 9. Lessons of privatisation; 10. Four instruments of accountability; 11. Accountable Megaproject decision making; 12. Beyond the Megaprojects paradox; Appendix. Risk and accountability at work: a case study.

'Life is too short to read every tome penned by Scandinavian and German social scientists. But Megaprojects and Risk, written by Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius and Werner Rothengatter, is a cracker. In lurid and startling detail it examines dozens of vast construction schemes around the world.' The Times