What is the most common cause of big projects over running on their estimated budget? For example, I recently learned that the HS2 train line in the UK will be nearly £75bn over the estimated budget! How was the estimate so wrong?
In: Engineering
I’ve had a 25 year career in enterprise software. The kind of solutions that have a 1-2 year procurement process and a multi year implementation process. I’ve seen a LOT of projects run long. By far the biggest cause is change.
The customer changes their minds about what they want, or, there is a clarity gap between what they described in the tender and what they meant. The customer will be adamant that when they said they wanted a chair, it should be obvious that means a chair with arm rests. The supplier, who only has chairs without arms, will be equally adamant that the chair they are supplying will do the job and adding arms is a change – a change that will impact the project timelines (because they need to design and build arms) and needs to be paid for.
There will be literally hundreds of things like this in a major programme.
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