Lessons from Project Disasters

Abstract

In the continuing endeavour to work towards ever better management, experience plays a crucial role. We learn from success, but we can learn much more from failure. Further, it is far better and cheaper when we learn from other people′s failures rather than our own. This monograph assesses the requirements of project management in relation to industrial projects, illustrating the factors that can result in failure by means of a series of case studies of completed and abandoned projects worldwide that have failed in one way or another. The key roles played by project planning and project cost control in meeting and overcoming the practical problems in the management of industrial projects are examined in detail. In conclusion the lessons that can be learned are evaluated and presented, so that we may listen and learn – if only we will.

Citation

Kharbanda, O.P. and Stallworthy, E.A. (1992), "Lessons from Project Disasters", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 92 No. 3, pp. 2-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579210010045