Two governance aspects of modern coastal engineering which seem to be of importance to many coastal projects all over the world are considered here. Reflections on these two aspects are related to the context in which projects take place. The first is the fragmentation of decision-making and funding. The second aspect is the growing sense of uncertainty actors experience as a result of the longer time horizons of projects and as a consequence of the integration of a growing number of functions to be served by the projects (including ecological ones). The question is: how to deal with this uncertainty? The issue of uncertainties inherent to “building with nature” is of special interest to projects and of relevance to governance