Participants’ power asymmetry in public infrastructure projects

Abstract

© 2017 Dr. Hamzeh ZareiMany large infrastructure projects around the world significantly exceed their budgets and take longer than expected to complete. The cost overruns and delays in such projects cause significant economic and social challenges around the world and in Australia. This research focuses on seven large infrastructure projects in Victoria, Australia to better understand why these projects fail to deliver what government and the public expected. This thesis answers the question; “why did the projects fail to meet expectations” and “how could this be avoided in future”? The explanations on infrastructure project delivery failure have been covered by many studies, some decades old. These include, among other things, exaggerating benefits, overlooking risks, and unrealistic assumptions promising benefits that fail to materialise. These explanations do not explain the reasons why large infrastructure projects continue to fail. Large infrastructure projects are complex and contain many stakeholders, including central agencies, delivery agencies, government departments, construction companies and contractors. Based on thorough analysis of a Parliamentary inquiry of the Committee of the Public Accounts and Estimates the research identified the notion of power as an important factor in investigated infrastructure projects. The analysis found that the interplay between the stakeholders involved in a project is affected by the power distribution among the stakeholders. A new concept of informal authority is postulated to provide a consistent explanation of how a delivery agency’s self-interest in the presence of an asymmetric distribution of power may result in project failure. The research concludes that power asymmetry is a critical success factor in public infrastructure and makes suggestions for its management and control that would improve project outcomes