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A comment on Consultants, The real reason it costs so much to build new subways in America. Parent comment

Re:Consultants, The real reason it costs so much to build ne... by maCDzP on Monday February 27, 2023 @12:53AM (#34953489)
If you are unlucky the project you are managing doesn’t scale linearly. So a 10 billion projects is 99999999 time more difficult than a 100 million project.

Then we have the problem of previous experience. How many 10 billion projects do we have in the whole country? And maybe they take 10-15 years to finish. You might get one chance at managing and then it’s time for retirement.

When projects of this size start they often have “wicked problems” [0] which demand a lot of competence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

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Re:Consultants, The real reason it costs so much to build ne... by Retric on Monday February 27, 2023 @10:28AM (#34957498)
> How many 10 billion projects do we have in the whole country?

Right now I would guess a few hundred, going back and adjusting for inflation it’s easily thousands. For scale a single aircraft carrier costs more than 10 billion. The US operates at a scale that’s hard to comprehend.

Also,100 million dollar projects also run into Wicked problems.

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