> my understanding is that the primary source of cost overruns is rather endless appeals and the authorities changing their mind many times over the life of a project.
Precisely because the people who know what to do the first time around are not in-house. So you get a first push where they try to be quick and efficient, don't really know what the issues they're going to face are, and then 3 years in there's a complaint about a frog and they need to spend a million dollars on an expert to tell them "don't build it where the frog lives." It's penny wise pound foolish.
Precisely because the people who know what to do the first time around are not in-house. So you get a first push where they try to be quick and efficient, don't really know what the issues they're going to face are, and then 3 years in there's a complaint about a frog and they need to spend a million dollars on an expert to tell them "don't build it where the frog lives." It's penny wise pound foolish.