The Risk of Power Imbalance in Project Delivery: A Study of Large Victorian Public Infrastructure Projects

DOI

10.2991/jrarc.2017.7.2.1How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Political risks, Power asymmetry, Infrastructure projects

Abstract

In large public infrastructure projects, political risks due to the power imbalance between central and delivery agencies are often overlooked or underestimated. The primary motive of the delivery agency in distorting information for political gains should be deemed a risk that creates uncertainty for large projects planning the outcome. In this study, seven large infrastructure projects in the state of Victoria, Australia are examined through a workshop involving key stakeholders who had played active roles in these projects. The findings revealed that power asymmetry between central and delivery agencies exist and would lead to optimism bias, which in turn creates uncertainty and risk of overpromising in the business case. Power asymmetry exist in large infrastructure projects because the central agencies usually only have the responsibility but not the skill set needed to measure the robustness of the business case. These types of political risks are difficult to quantify and even detect. This paper recommends a few managerial strategies that have referential values and/or can be used to mitigate and circumvent this risk.

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hamzeh Zarei
AU  - Felix Kin Peng Hui
AU  - Colin Duffield
AU  - George Wang
PY  - 2017
DA  - 2017/07/03
TI  - The Risk of Power Imbalance in Project Delivery: A Study of Large Victorian Public Infrastructure Projects
JO  - Journal of Risk Analysis and Crisis Response
SP  - 53
EP  - 63
VL  - 7
IS  - 2
SN  - 2210-8505
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/jrarc.2017.7.2.1
DO  - 10.2991/jrarc.2017.7.2.1
ID  - Zarei2017
ER  -