The common themes for project management failure in South African megaprojects are governance or procurement failures, corruption, equipment delivery delays, and legal and community issues. These “themes of failure” are not unique, but unfortunately, endemic to large capital projects, says tertiary education institution University of Pretoria associate professor Giel Bekker.

Citing ‘How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration’ by economic geographer Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and author Dan Gardner – which includes a study of 16 000 projects, most of which were publicly developed and a significant number being transport infrastructure projects – Bekker notes that only about 8.5% of megaprojects are completed on time and within budget.

Given that transport infrastructure is “core to any country’s economic activity”, as it provides the logistical backbone for the movement of goods, services and people, the provision of transport infrastructure is a government imperative and key performance indicator, Bekker states.

Flyvbjerg and Gardner identified six categories of failures that are prevalent in large capital projects, namely complexity, underestimated uncertainty; psychological and political biases; poor early planning and delayed execution; ignoring experience, modular design and repeatability; stakeholder misalignment and poor governance; and scope creep, overreach and unclear outcomes.

To illustrate these categories, Bekker cites large, high-profile transportation projects undertaken by the South African government over the last 15 years.

For example, State-owned enterprise Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (PRASA’s) rolling-stock programme involved the renewal of the fleet of 268 Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) trains, alongside the refurbishment of the older fleet. “As of 2024/25, only 142 EMUs are operational, and after millions spent, the older fleet appears to be redundant. Irregular expenditure totalled R3.8-billion in 2022/23.”

This project suffered from complexity and underestimated uncertainty as well as stakeholder misalignment and poor governance.

State-owned freight company Transnet’s Port Upgrade in Durban, meanwhile, suffered from poor early planning and delayed execution, with schedule delays in crane and straddle carrier procurement leading to a backlog of more than 60 vessels, and resulting in hundreds of millions in lost revenue.

Bekker points out that large capital projects are complex, with long timelines, many stakeholders and dynamic environments, and as such the risk of extreme cost or time overruns is much higher than most planners imagine.

“Many projects underestimate uncertainty or treat unknowns as if they were known, which leaves them exposed to surprising and cascading issues,” he states.

Moreover, planning fallacy, optimism, uniqueness bias, and strategic misrepresentation all contribute to failure, with planners and decision-makers often underestimating cost and timelines while overestimating benefits.

Bekker adds that project managers will often assume that a project is unique, which results in them dismissing past projects and prior experiences.

As a result of most transport infrastructure projects’ public nature, there are often political or organisational incentives to ensure that these projects are approved at a low cost, within a short timeframe and with large benefit figures – even if they are unrealistic.

Bekker, therefore, advocates for a philosophy of ‘think slow, act fast’, by investing time into a detailed plan, scenario-thinking and right-to-left mapping, and only progressing to full execution when the plan is robust.

In contrast, many projects are started prematurely under tight deadlines or political pressures and therefore incur costs, delays or require re-working later.

In their book, Flyvbjerg and Gardner highlight that projects that adopt a modular design, repetition and/or rely on prior experience tend to “perform better”.

Consequently, “bespoke one-off mega-projects with little precedent tend to carry higher risks”.

Bekker summarises that Flyvbjerg and Gardner argue that failure in large projects is not a mystery or a purely technical problem, but stems from predictable patterns.

As such, recognising these underlying causes is the first step toward improving the odds of success.

He states that South African transport infrastructure projects will be more likely to succeed if these patterns for failure and extreme levels of corruption are averted, calling for intervention and political will to improve the state of the sector.

He points to countries that experienced similar challenges, including Norway and the UK, concluding that, with strong leadership and private, public and academic interventions, project delivery models were developed that focused on proactive assurance practices rather than solely on retrospective auditing practices, in turn improving project delivery.