The Weak Spot of Infrastructure BCA: Cost Overruns in Seven Road and Railway Construction Projects

IF 2 4区 经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS
J. Nilsson
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

This article describes the process from first proposals in the early 1990s to project completion many years later for seven large Swedish road and railway projects. The purpose is to find reasons for the massive cost overruns as well as explanations for why projects are brought to completion despite much higher costs than when the decision to build was made. Cost overruns are set in an institutional context to highlight the interplay among national, regional, and local policymakers. National investment programs are seen as promises by other parts of society, irrespective of whether project costs increase during the process toward procurement and implementation. Another aspect is that the infrastructure manager’s administrative framework currently makes it impossible to compare costs in contracts with final cost, meaning that there is no institutionalized learning process in place. Design preparations and the estimation of costs for new projects must therefore be done without an understanding of what has been working well in the implementation of previous projects. While Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) played no role in the planning of the seven projects, the article sends a stark warning that early cost estimates provide poor input for assessing project rate of return.
基础设施BCA的薄弱环节:七个公路铁路建设项目的成本超支
本文描述了瑞典七个大型公路和铁路项目从20世纪90年代初的首次提案到多年后的项目完成过程。其目的是寻找大规模成本超支的原因,并解释为什么项目在成本比决定建造时高得多的情况下完成。成本超支是在制度背景下设定的,以突出国家、地区和地方决策者之间的相互作用。国家投资计划被社会其他部分视为承诺,而不管项目成本在采购和实施过程中是否会增加。另一个方面是,基础设施管理人员的管理框架目前使得不可能将合同中的成本与最终成本进行比较,这意味着没有适当的制度化学习过程。因此,在进行新项目的设计准备和成本估算时,必须不了解以前项目的实施情况。虽然效益成本分析(BCA)在这七个项目的规划中没有发挥作用,但文章发出了一个严厉的警告,即早期的成本估算为评估项目回报率提供了糟糕的投入。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
5.30
自引率
2.90%
发文量
22
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