Navigating mega projects through complexity and uncertainty: strategic and adaptive capacity in planning and decision-making

Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in mega projects from both policy makers and academics. Of particular concern to both has been the seemingly structural time and cost overruns associated with these projects. In response a tendency, especially of policy makers, has been to look for ways of simplifying the decision and planning process. In academia the focus has been more on how to increase transparency and accountability in an attempt to prevent issues such as strategic misrepresentation or optimism bias, and on more adaptive project management to be more responsive to changes in the context of a project and within the project itself. And so it seems that policy and academia address the same problem, but are diverging into different directions concerning the solution. This dissertation develops concepts of strategic and adaptive capacity in order to analyse mega project planning and decision-making. Three Dutch infrastructure projects are examined. The HSL-Zuid is a high speed line running from Amsterdam to Brussels. RandstadRail is an inter-regional light-rail project between Rotterdam and The Hague. The Beneluxlijn is a metro extension in the Rotterdam region and forms a link between two already existing lines. The research shows that the tendency, especial

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