People Against Risk: Strategic Hiring For New Megaprojects

Article initially published at Velocity Quarterly

Why your first hires and earliest investment should be laser focused on identifying and mitigating critical risk

Megaprojects are staggeringly complex and at least $1 Billion to build, involving multiple stakeholders across both the public and private sectors. What’s more is design and construction can span decades, with hundreds or thousands of contractors and subcontractors -- a tremendous feat of organizational logistics and communications.

Unfortunately the “iron law of megaprojects” is still very much in effect today -- over budget, over time, over and over again. And though there are many reasons for megaprojects' failure, the linked article focuses on one: people. We will make the case for the following statement:

The people you hire first are one of most powerful bulwarks against failure.

Click on this link here to read the whole article.