Industrial Megaprojects: Concepts, Strategies, And Practices For Success

Avoid common pitfalls in large-scale projects using these smart strategies

Over half of large-scale engineering and construction projects—off-shore oil platforms, chemical plants, metals processing, dams, and similar projects—have miserably poor results. These include billions of dollars in overruns, long delays in design and construction, and poor operability once finally completed.

Industrial Megaprojects gives you a clear, nontechnical understanding of why these major projects get into trouble, and how your company can prevent hazardous and costly errors when undertaking such large technical and management challenges.

• Clearly explains the underlying causes of over-budget, delayed, and unsafe megaprojects
• Examines effects of poor project management, destructive team behaviors, weak accountability systems, short-term focus, and lack of investment in technical expertise
• Author is the CEO of the leading consulting firm for evaluating billion-dollar projects

Companies worldwide are rethinking their large-scale projects. Industrial Megaprojects is your essential guide for this rethink, offering the tools and principles that are the true foundation of safe, cost-effective, successful megaprojects.

Edward W. Merrow is the founder and CEO of Independent Project Analysis, Inc., the world's leading consulting firm evaluating billion-dollar megaprojects of national and international oil, chemical, pharmaceutical, and major mineral companies, and benchmarking their cost, schedules, safety, startup, and operational performance. Before founding IPA in 1987, Merrow was a research analyst and later the director of the Energy Policy Program at the RAND Corporation.

Foreword JAMES B. PORTER, JR.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

Why Megaprojects Fail So Often: Seven Key Mistakes.

Part One: Understanding the Projects.

Introduction: Why Megaprojects Fail So Often: Seven Key Mistakes.

Chapter 1 Introduction and Guide to the Reader.

Chapter 2 Data-Driven Analysis and Decision-Making: A Database From Hundreds of the World’s Megaprojects.

Chapter 3 Glory, Gore, and Your Career: The Outcomes of Megaprojects.

Part Two: Make the Right Business Decisions Before You Commit.

Chapter 4 The Opportunity Shaping Process: What You Need to Know.

Chapter 5 Devising the Shaping Strategy: A Key Driver of Success or Failure.

Chapter 6 Megaprojects and Corporate Governance.

Part Three: Making the Right Project Decisions.

Chapter 7 Basic Data are Basic! Get Them Right Before You Start to Design.

Chapter 8 Teams People Make or Break Projects.

Chapter 9 Organize Megaprojects Differently.

Chapter 10 Define and Plan the Project Fully.

Chapter 11 Contracting: Whose Project is This?

Chapter 12 Maintaining Value: Cost Control, Schedule Control, and Risk Management.

Chapter 13 Summing Up—Focus on Success.

Glossary and Abbreviations.

Notes.

Index.