Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost.
Value engineering (VE) is a systematic analysis of the functions of various components and materials to lower the cost of goods, products and services with a tolerable loss of performance or functionality. Value, as defined, is the ratio of function to cost. Value can therefore be manipulated by either improving the function or reducing the cost. It is a primary tenet of value engineering that basic functions be preserved and not be reduced as a consequence of pursuing value improvements. The term "value management" is sometimes used as a synonym of "value engineering", and both promote the planning and delivery of projects with improved performance
Scope creep in project management refers to changes, continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project’s scope, at any point after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered harmful. It is related to but distinct from feature creep, because feature creep refers to features, and scope creep refers to the whole project.
Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance. More specifically, it is a branch of microeconomics that studies the urban spatial structure and the location of households and firms.
The planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed. This phenomenon sometimes occurs regardless of the individual's knowledge that past tasks of a similar nature have taken longer to complete than generally planned. The bias affects predictions only about one's own tasks. On the other hand, when outside observers predict task completion times, they tend to exhibit a pessimistic bias, overestimating the time needed. The planning fallacy involves estimates of task completion times more optimistic than those encountered in similar projects in the past.
Nuclear decommissioning is the process leading to the irreversible complete or partial closure of a nuclear facility, usually a nuclear reactor, with the ultimate aim at termination of the operating licence. The process usually runs according to a decommissioning plan, including the whole or partial dismantling and decontamination of the facility, ideally resulting in restoration of the environment up to greenfield status. The decommissioning plan is fulfilled when the approved end state of the facility has been reached.
Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice is a 1998 book by Bent Flyvbjerg, published by the University of Chicago Press. The book focuses on "the application of critical theory to urban and community development". Flyvbjerg here deploys the methodology for doing social science, which he developed in Making Social Science Matter (2001). Upon publication, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research called Rationality and Power, "a notable addition to the literature," the reviewer adding, "I cannot think of a better account of how power relations are embodied in local governance."
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known by these terms.
Boston Transportation Planning Review (BTPR), published in 1972, was a transportation planning program for metropolitan Boston, Massachusetts, which was responsible for analyzing and redesigning the entire area-wide transit and highway system in the 1970s. The major contractors involved were Alan M. Voorhees Company (Virginia), project manager; Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, architect; ESL Incorporated (California), air quality and acoustics. The program had close guidance from the national Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the US National Academy of Sciences. The first director of the program reporting to the Governor was Alan Altshuler; the project manager was Walter Hansen.
Bent Flyvbjerg is a Danish economic geographer. He was the First BT Professor and Inaugural Chair of Major Programme Management at Oxford University's Saïd Business School and is the Villum Kann Rasmussen Professor and Chair of Major Program Management at the IT University of Copenhagen. He was previously Professor of Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and Chair of Infrastructure Policy and Planning at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He is a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.
Nuclear power construction costs have varied significantly across the world and in time. Large and rapid increases in cost occurred during the 1970s, especially in the United States. Recent cost trends in countries such as Japan and Korea have been very different, including periods of stability and decline in costs.
Reference class forecasting or comparison class forecasting is a method of predicting the future by looking at similar past situations and their outcomes. The theories behind reference class forecasting were developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The theoretical work helped Kahneman win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a proposed class of nuclear fission reactors, smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, which can be built in one location, then shipped, commissioned, and operated at a separate site. The term SMR refers to the size, capacity and modular construction only, not to the reactor type and the nuclear process which is applied. Designs range from scaled down versions of existing designs to generation IV designs. Both thermal-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors have been proposed, along with molten salt and gas cooled reactor models.
Project assurance or programme assurance is a discipline that seeks to provide an independent and objective oversight of the likely future performance of major projects for those responsible for sanctioning, financing or insuring such undertakings. The discipline has emerged as a response to consistent problems in major projects and the need to provide confidence for project or programme stakeholders of technologically advanced, high capital or high risk projects.
Benefits Realization Management (BRM) is one of the many ways of managing how time and resources are invested into making desirable changes.
Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition is a 2003 book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, and Werner Rothengatter, published by Cambridge University Press. According to chief economist and director of transportation policy at Infrastructure Management Group, Inc., Porter K. Wheeler, "this book makes an important contribution to understanding the infrastructure development process worldwide, with focus on megaprojects." The New Scientist wrote upon publication, "Love them or loathe them, megaprojects capture the imagination. [This] damning analysis concentrates on a series of financial nightmares that should bring even the most casual reader out in a sweat."
The hiding hand principle is a theory that offers a framework to examine how ignorance intersects with rational choice to undertake a project; the intersection is seen to provoke creative success over the obstacles through the deduction that it is too late to abandon the project. The term was coined by economist Albert O. Hirschman.
