From Dream to Reality: Scaling the Construction Planning Hurdles of a Megaproject

Book excerpt: Discusses how the dream of a megaproject is realized, elucidates the various demands, and explains why it takes years to materialize. It asserts that a megaproject is any project that requires a great deal of management courage, capital, patience, and well-conceived plans. And that managing a megaproject is more than managing a major construction effort; it is also managing a public responsibility with the concomitant management accountability and transparency. It advances the Big Dig as the case study megaproject of record, because none of the other notable megaprojects in the 20th century can boast the paradoxes and the lessons that the Big Dig provides. It affirms that leadership engagement, imagination, and political alignment, facilitate the realization of such dream. It espouses good planning and invokes foresight considerations as a sine qua non for getting the right strategic gaps closed, the misdeeds avoided and the right mechanics applied for a successful project outcome.