Brisconnections’ airport link, the Sydney Cross City Tunnel and 1000s of other projects are set up to fail through bad forecasting and estimating! Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, a leading international expert in the management of major projects, claims ‘the majority of forecasters are fools or liars’ and their forecasts misinform decision makers on projects instead of informing them.
Flyvbjerg’s new paper ‘Quality control and due diligence in project management: Getting decisions right by taking the outside view’ that is ‘in-press’ for publication in the International Journal of Project Management next year, defines the problem and proposes an ‘eight step’ solution.
The governance and control’s failures highlighted in this paper and the Saїd Business School, University of Oxford, press release (read the release) underpins the importance of the Governance and Controls Symposium on the 10th April in Canberra.
It is impossible to govern effectively if the information being provided from the controls systems is inaccurate or incorrect. But it is a governance responsibility to ensure adequate resources are invested in the organisation’s ‘controls systems’ and the organisation’s culture is attuned to requiring good data. The Symposium looks at how these two-sides-of-the-same-coin can be better understood. To be part of this important event either as a presenter, supporter or delegate, visit the symposium website.
Pat Weaver
Lynda Bourne
Mosaicproject's Blog 