Sublime

Planner was a fine tool, but it wasn’t a fare predictor unless you had a regulator guaranteeing that you would make a 12 percent return flying half-full airplanes.

A short-lived capital stock will manifest in accelerated depreciation and a fragile capital structure will incur an undue interest charge.

Flyvbjerg’s analyses are intended to guide the authorities that commission public projects, by providing the statistics of overruns in similar projects. Decision makers need a realistic assessment of the costs and benefits of a proposal before making the final decision to approve it. They may also wish to estimate the budget reserve that they need

When this bias for action is generalized into the culture of an organization, the reversibility caveat is usually lost.

The key to success is to make educated decisions, based on sound design and scope calculations.

States should be humble. Bureaucrats must recognize the limits of their knowledge. There is always a risk that the bird’s-eye view is so grand and sweeping as to induce delusions of omnipotence.

and do not seem to be discounted into net present value (NPV)

After work commences, a well-designed project also lays the foundation for decision makers to evaluate and think through the effect of a proposed change on the schedule and the budget.