The two blind spots of megaproject appraisal

A database of 500 major projects developed over the past 25 years in 100 countries documents how difficult it is to deliver major projects worldwide.

过去 25 年在 100 个国家开发的 500 个重大项目的数据库记录了在全球范围内交付重大项目的难度。

Data show that eight in ten of the projects reviewed performed below expectations in economic terms, approximately two in three ran over budget (with a median cost overrun of 47%), and more than half finished late (with a median delay of 61%).

数据显示，在审查的项目中，十分之八的项目在经济方面的表现低于预期，大约三分之二的项目超出了预算（中位成本超支为 47%），超过一半的项目延迟完成（中位延迟为 61%）。

These findings are not new.

这些发现并不新鲜。

Several academics and practitioners have documented similar patterns over the past decades, and many reports have sought to explain why.

过去几十年来，一些学者和从业者记录了类似的模式，许多报告都试图解释其中的原因。

Governments and development institutions have invested considerable effort in finding alternative ways of appraising and delivering megaprojects to avoid these problems, including better appraisal manuals , stronger technical safeguards , and more sophisticated risk analysis and risk frameworks.

各国政府和发展机构投入了大量精力寻找评估和交付大型项目的替代方法以避免这些问题，包括更好的评估手册、更强的技术保障以及更复杂的风险分析和风险框架。

Despite advances in the field, the pattern persists, and the figures above suggest the underlying problem remains unsolved.

尽管该领域取得了进展，但这种模式仍然存在，并且上述数据表明根本问题仍未解决。

To change these results, a different way of understanding the problem is needed.

为了改变这些结果，需要以不同的方式来理解问题。

It seems unreasonable to assume that these previous problems persist because decisionmakers lack the necessary knowledge.

由于决策者缺乏必要的知识，认为以前的这些问题仍然存在似乎是不合理的。

This commentary examines two changes that many practitioners recognize intuitively but that have not been systematically incorporated into practice.

这篇评论探讨了许多从业者凭直觉认识到但尚未系统地融入实践的两个变化。

First, a different role should be assigned to politics when appraising megaprojects.

首先，在评估大型项目时，应该赋予政治不同的角色。

Appraisal techniques and methodologies have been built through the lenses of economics and project management.

评估技术和方法是通过经济学和项目管理的视角建立的。

Under this view, when a project is analyzed, politics is usually considered a constraint .

根据这种观点，当分析一个项目时，政治通常被认为是一种约束。

It is not treated as a variable that a technocrat analyzing a project can influence.

它不被视为分析项目的技术官僚可以影响的变量。

Technocrats are used to developing geological studies to understand ground conditions and adapt the engineering design, or conducting a stakeholder analysis to develop a plan and avoid protests.

技术官僚习惯于开展地质研究以了解地面条件并调整工程设计，或进行利益相关者分析以制定计划并避免抗议。

Environmental assessments are produced to check for affected flora and fauna, so that teams act accordingly.

进行环境评估是为了检查受影响的动植物群，以便团队采取相应行动。

Different estimates of the exchange rate are generated to work on a scenario analysis and check how this variable may affect a specific project.

生成不同的汇率估计值以进行情景分析并检查该变量如何影响特定项目。

The norm is to treat these kinds of technical, social, environmental, and economic variables as such, but not politics, which has been understood as a constraint that has to be accepted.

通常的做法是对待这些类型的技术、社会、环境和经济变量，而不是政治，政治被理解为必须接受的约束。

The first proposed change is to adopt a more public policy-based perspective and consider political conditions as variables that can be measured and incorporated into project analysis.

第一个提议的改变是采用更加基于公共政策的视角，并将政治条件视为可以衡量并纳入项目分析的变量。

Second, a different way of understanding and estimating project risks is needed.

其次，需要一种不同的方式来理解和评估项目风险。

Risks are dynamic and interdependent, but they are normally analyzed statically and separately.

风险是动态的且相互依存的，但通常对它们进行静态和单独的分析。

There have been some academic efforts in this direction, but they have not reached mainstream practice.

学术界在这方面做出了一些努力，但尚未达到主流实践。

Any methodology involves a trade-off between detail and completeness on one hand and ease of use on the other, and academic work in this area has not yet been translated into methods simple enough for routine use.

任何方法论都需要在细节和完整性与易用性之间进行权衡，而该领域的学术工作尚未转化为足够简单的方法以供日常使用。

This helps explain why the static risk matrix remains standard, but experience in practice suggests that a more dynamic analysis is needed.

这有助于解释为什么静态风险矩阵仍然是标准的，但实践经验表明需要更动态的分析。

Megaproject risks evolve, migrate, and propagate through a complex system of relationships among technical, social, environmental, economic, and, of course, political variables that are embedded in the risk profile of the analyzed project.

大型项目风险通过技术、社会、环境、经济，当然还有嵌入在所分析项目的风险概况中的政治变量之间的复杂关系系统来演变、迁移和传播。

This commentary refers to these two issues as the two blind spots of megaproject appraisal practice.

本文将这两个问题称为特大项目评估实践中的两个盲点。

The predominant methodologies used and proposed by international and multilateral organizations tend to reproduce them.

国际和多边组织使用和提出的主要方法往往会复制它们。

In seminars and workshops on this topic organized by these organizations, recommendations typically focus on improving pre-investment studies.

在这些组织组织的有关该主题的研讨会和讲习班中，建议通常侧重于改进投资前研究。

Better studies would help, but on their own, they are not enough, because whether such studies are completed before a project advances depends heavily on political conditions.

更好的研究会有所帮助，但仅靠这些研究还不够，因为此类研究是否在项目进展之前完成在很大程度上取决于政治条件。

Insisting on better pre-investment studies when an election is near and a decisionmaker needs to show progress is very different from suggesting them when there is a political window to do so.

在选举临近且决策者需要展示进展情况时坚持进行更好的投资前研究与在有政治窗口时建议进行此类研究有很大不同。

The typical technocratic solution to this issue has been to institutionalize an independent review of project appraisals to screen out poorly justified projects.

这个问题的典型技术官僚解决方案是将项目评估的独立审查制度化，以筛选出不合理的项目。

However, such rules can be circumvented, and a motivated decisionmaker can often find a way around them.

然而，这些规则是可以规避的，并且积极主动的决策者通常可以找到绕过它们的方法。

And is this wrong?

这是错误的吗？

Perhaps it is not.

或许并非如此。

Politicians may be responding to mandates, coalitions, and windows of opportunity that result from democratic processes, and technocratic analysis should account for these dynamics rather than exclude them.

政治家可能会对民主进程产生的授权、联盟和机会之窗做出反应，而技术专家分析应该考虑这些动态，而不是排除它们。

Furthermore, the same international institutions often rely on static risk analysis for the reasons explained above.

此外，由于上述原因，这些国际机构经常依赖静态风险分析。

A static risk matrix is simple to construct and easy to understand; it estimates qualitatively or quantitatively the probability of occurrence and potential impact.

静态风险矩阵构造简单，易于理解；它定性或定量地估计发生的概率和潜在影响。

In fact, multilateral banks use the same tool to analyze their interventions, such as project loans.

事实上，多边银行使用相同的工具来分析其干预措施，例如项目贷款。

There is room to rethink the way that megaproject risks are analyzed in countries and in international development organizations.

各国和国际发展组织有重新思考大型项目风险分析方式的空间。

To that end, a theoretical system dynamics model of risks was constructed, related to technical, environmental, social, economic, and political conditions.

为此，构建了与技术、环境、社会、经济和政治条件相关的风险理论系统动力学模型。

Relationships among the variables included were modeled and calibrated using the database of 500 megaprojects.

使用 500 个大型项目的数据库对所含变量之间的关系进行建模和校准。

For each of those projects, 65 variables were coded, including, for example, political urgency, public salience, cross-party support, and public-value narrative quality, among others.

对于每个项目，都编码了 65 个变量，包括政治紧迫性、公众关注度、跨党派支持和公共价值叙事质量等。

Each variable was defined with a codebook and scored using predefined thresholds, based on how strongly the condition is present in the evidence.

每个变量都用密码本定义，并根据证据中存在的情况的强度使用预定义的阈值进行评分。

Several patterns emerged from the analysis.

分析中出现了几种模式。

One particularly clear example puts numbers on something many practitioners intuitively understand, which is the timing of public announcement relative to feasibility work.

一个特别明显的例子用数字表示了许多从业者直观理解的事情，即相对于可行性工作的公开宣布的时间。

When projects were announced before pre-investment studies were completed, the database shows a median of 37% cost overruns and 49% delays.

当项目在投资前研究完成之前宣布时，数据库显示成本超支中位数为 37%，延误率为 49%。

When the project was announced after the pre-investment studies, the typical cost overrun was zero, with a 5% average delay.

当项目在投资前研究后宣布时，典型的成本超支为零，平均延迟 5%。

However, this variable is rarely included in risk matrices used by governments or international organizations when studying a megaproject.

然而，这个变量很少包含在政府或国际组织在研究大型项目时使用的风险矩阵中。

The broader lesson from the database is that political and dynamic risks are most useful to assess early, when decisions are still reversible.

从数据库中得到的更广泛的教训是，当决策仍然可逆时，尽早评估政治和动态风险是最有用的。

The same model can also be applied to projects still in preparation through an AI-assisted diagnostic tool now being tested by specialists and practitioners.

同样的模型也可以通过目前正在由专家和从业人员测试的人工智能辅助诊断工具应用于仍在准备中的项目。

Used this way, the model can show how current risks could migrate, surface lessons learned from similar projects around the world, and suggest mitigation strategies, both technical and political.

通过这种方式，该模型可以显示当前风险如何转移，总结从世界各地类似项目中吸取的经验教训，并提出技术和政治方面的缓解策略。

It does not produce point estimates of risk; the aim is to support more informed discussion of the project among the public- and private-sector participants involved.

它不会产生风险的点估计；目的是支持公共和私营部门参与者对项目进行更知情的讨论。

These two blind spots can be incorporated more explicitly into decisionmaking.

这两个盲点可以更明确地纳入决策中。

The evidence points to a need to change how megaproject risk is assessed, and the database now makes it possible to compare the political conditions of current projects with those of similar projects worldwide.

证据表明需要改变大型项目风险的评估方式，数据库现在可以将当前项目的政治状况与全球类似项目的政治状况进行比较。

System dynamics modeling can also show how risks are likely to migrate and propagate under a given strategy, and how they change when one or more conditions are adjusted.

系统动力学建模还可以显示在给定策略下风险可能如何迁移和传播，以及当调整一个或多个条件时风险如何变化。

AI-assisted tools may help to make more sophisticated appraisal practical, bringing political context and evolving risks into everyday project decisions.

人工智能辅助工具可能有助于使更复杂的评估变得实用，将政治背景和不断变化的风险带入日常项目决策中。

Juan Alberti is the founder , owner , and CEO of Megaproject Lab , which developed the database , model , and AI- assisted diagnostic tool discussed in this piece .

Juan Alberti 是 Megaproject Lab 的创始人、所有者和首席执行官，该实验室开发了本文讨论的数据库、模型和人工智能辅助诊断工具。

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布鲁金斯学会致力于质量、独立性和影响力。

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我们得到了众多资助者的支持。

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根据我们的价值观和政策，布鲁金斯学会的每份出版物均代表其作者的唯一观点。