Welcome to the week

Welcome to Week 3 of Major engineering project performance. You have started to think about how projects are managed and structured. You are also familiar with the difference between projects, programmes and portfolios. Now, you will consider what characterises a major project and how major projects perform.

This week, you will begin by identifying the characteristics of major projects. You will then consider how these types of projects perform and explore the measures practitioners and the public use to assess major project delivery. You will also analyse some of the key reasons why projects perform poorly in respect of their budget and schedule.

In this lesson, you will be introduced to two problems you may encounter in your own experience of projects: optimism bias and strategic misinterpretation. You will end the week by participating in a peer review research task.

By the end of this week you will have demonstrated that you have met the following course learning outcomes:

• understand the key challenges in the delivery of a major project

• discuss major project performance related to time and budget and explain the causes for major projects to often go over-budget and be delayed.