Olivia: A quick data-driven shocker for you. Of all the massive projects in the world—think stadiums, railways, IT systems—only 0.5% succeed. Jackson: Hold on. Zero-point-five percent? Not five percent, but half of one percent? That's not a typo? Olivia: Not a typo. That means 99.5% of big projects go over budget, over schedule, under-deliver on benefits, or some combination of all three. It’s a staggering rate of failure. Jackson: That’s an insane failure rate! It’s like saying the only way to win is to not play the game. Where does a number that bleak even come from? Olivia: It comes from the world's largest database of its kind, compiled by one of the authors of the book we're diving into today: How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. Flyvbjerg is an Oxford professor who has become the go-to global expert on megaprojects. He’s consulted on over a hundred projects costing a billion dollars or more, and his team has analyzed over 16,000 projects to get to these numbers. Jackson: Okay, so this isn't just a hot take. This is based on an unprecedented amount of data on failure. So where does it all go wrong? Is it just bad luck? Olivia: The book argues it's almost never bad luck. In fact, it's so predictable they call it the "Iron Law of Megaprojects": over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again. And the fascinating part is, projects don’t go wrong during delivery. They start wrong.

Jackson: They start wrong. What does that even mean? Like, the first shovel in the ground is in the wrong place? Olivia: It's even earlier than that. It starts with the dream. Take the story that opens the book: California's High-Speed Rail project. The vision was pure California Dreamin': a bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. You could zip between them in two and a half hours for about eighty-six bucks. Voters approved it in 2008. The initial cost? A cool $33 billion. Jackson: I feel like I know where this is going, and it's not to San Francisco. Olivia: Not even close. The cost estimates just kept climbing. First to $43 billion, then $68, then $77, all the way up to a current high estimate of over $100 billion. Finally, in 2019, the governor basically pulled the plug on the original vision. The new plan? To complete just a 171-mile section. Jackson: Okay, a smaller piece, but maybe a useful one? Like, LA to Silicon Valley? Olivia: The section connects Merced and Bakersfield. Jackson: ...Merced and Bakersfield. I'm sure they're lovely towns, but that sounds less like a high-speed rail and more like a very, very expensive agricultural shuttle. Olivia: Exactly. Critics dubbed it the "bullet train to nowhere." They spent the GDP of a small country to connect two relatively obscure towns in the Central Valley. And this, the book says, is a perfect example of the Commitment Fallacy. Jackson: The Commitment Fallacy. Is that like swiping right on a dating app and immediately planning the wedding before the first date? You lock in way too early. Olivia: That's a perfect analogy. It’s the tendency to rush to a decision, to commit to a plan based on a shallow, optimistic analysis, and then you're locked in. You've announced it, you've got political capital tied up in it, and you start digging a hole. And as one politician in the book cheekily admits, the strategy is often to "start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in." Jackson: That is so cynical, but it feels painfully true. But surely that's just for massive, political projects. What about something run by, say, the military, where discipline is everything? Olivia: You'd think so, but the book gives another fantastic example: the Pentagon. In 1941, on the brink of World War II, the army needed a massive new headquarters, and they needed it fast. The general in charge, Brehon Somervell, was a man who got things done. He gave his team just a few days to come up with a plan. Jackson: Move fast and break things, but with national security at stake. I'm nervous already. Olivia: They found a site called Arlington Farm, but it was an awkward shape, bounded by five roads. So, to maximize the space, the architects drew up a misshapen, asymmetrical pentagon. Somervell loved it, got it approved by President Roosevelt within a week, and was ready to build. Jackson: An asymmetrical Pentagon? That just feels wrong on a spiritual level. Olivia: It was! And worse, critics pointed out that this massive, ugly building would block the pristine view from Arlington National Cemetery across the river to Washington D.C. It was a classic case of acting before thinking. Fortunately, the critics managed to halt the project. They found a much better site nearby, a former airfield called Hell's Bottom, which allowed for the perfect, symmetrical Pentagon we know today. It was a near-miss, saved only because they paused their rush to action. Jackson: Wow. So even the Pentagon was almost a victim of the Commitment Fallacy. It seems like this instinct to just do something is the original sin of every failed project. If rushing is the core problem, what's the solution? Just... plan forever and never build anything?

Olivia: It's a great question, and it leads to the book's central, counterintuitive mantra: "Think slow, act fast." It’s not about endless planning; it’s about the right kind of planning. And the best way to understand it is to contrast two of the most famous buildings in the world: the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Jackson: Both are architectural masterpieces. I'd assume they were both triumphs of planning. Olivia: Far from it. The Sydney Opera House is what the book calls a "Think fast, act slow" disaster. The architect, Jørn Utzon, won the design competition with what was essentially a beautiful sketch, a "magnificent doodle." But nobody knew how to actually build those iconic shells. The premier of New South Wales, facing an election, rushed construction to start before they'd figured it out. Jackson: Oh no. That sounds like the California rail story all over again. Olivia: It was a catastrophe. The project was supposed to take four years and cost $7 million. It ended up taking fourteen years and costing over $100 million—a 1,400% cost overrun. Utzon was fired mid-project and left Australia in disgrace, never to see his finished masterpiece. It was a human and financial train wreck. Jackson: That's heartbreaking. So how did the Guggenheim avoid that fate? It looks just as complicated, if not more so. Olivia: Because its architect, Frank Gehry, is a master of "Think slow, act fast." After a previous project went badly over budget, he learned his lesson. For Bilbao, he and his team spent an enormous amount of time in the planning phase. They used sophisticated 3D modeling software, the same kind used to design fighter jets, to build the entire museum virtually. They tested every curve, every joint, every bizarre-looking panel on the computer. Jackson: So Gehry basically built the entire museum digitally before a single piece of steel was cut? Olivia: Precisely. He was doing what the book calls "Pixar Planning." Think about how Pixar makes a movie. They don't just write a script and start animating. They create rough storyboards, screen them for the whole company, get brutal feedback from their "brain trust," and then tear it down and start over. They do this eight or nine times. They are experimenting and failing in a low-stakes, low-cost environment. That’s what Gehry did. He front-loaded all the problems and solved them in the digital world. Jackson: And the result in the real world? Olivia: The Guggenheim Bilbao was completed on time and, astonishingly, under budget. Because he thought slow, he was able to act incredibly fast. The construction was smooth because all the problems had already been solved. Jackson: That is a powerful contrast. But there's another layer to it, isn't there? The book talks about Lego. How do Lego bricks fit into building a museum? Olivia: This is the second part of the genius. Gehry's complex, unique-looking building wasn't built as one giant, unique sculpture. It was built from thousands of smaller, standardized, repeatable panels. Each one was designed and fabricated with precision, but they were essentially modular components. The book's big idea here is "Find your Lego." Jackson: Find your Lego. Olivia: Yes. The secret to building big things is to break them down into the smallest possible repeatable units. Think of a massive wind farm. It's not one giant, bespoke project. It's the same turbine, foundation, and blade, repeated hundreds of times. The first one is hard, but by the hundredth, you're an expert. You get faster, cheaper, and better. You're building with Lego. Jackson: Ah, so the secret to building something huge and unique is to actually build it out of small, boring, predictable things. That's brilliantly counterintuitive. It feels like the whole book is about fighting our natural instincts. Our instinct is to rush, to believe we're special, to tackle the whole giant problem at once.

Olivia: Exactly. The book directly challenges the romantic myth of the lone genius who succeeds through frantic improvisation. Think of the movie Jaws. The mechanical shark was a disaster, the script was terrible, so Spielberg had to improvise his way to a masterpiece. It's a great story. Jackson: But it's a story. It's not a strategy. Olivia: It's a dangerous strategy because it's a classic case of survivorship bias. We celebrate the one Jaws and forget the thousands of productions that fell apart for the exact same reasons. The data is ruthless: for every one project that is saved by chaos, hundreds are destroyed by it. The book's analysis of over two thousand projects found that the "Hiding Hand"—the idea that underestimating problems is good because it forces creativity—is a fantasy. In reality, four out of five projects that start with underestimated problems end up costing more and delivering less. Jackson: So the big takeaway for anyone listening, whether they're planning a kitchen reno or launching a startup, is to resist that immense pressure to just do something. The most valuable, most creative, and most productive work you will ever do on a project happens in the quiet of the planning phase. Olivia: That's the core message. Your project doesn't go wrong, it starts wrong. The fate of your big thing is sealed long before you ever begin the "real work." Jackson: It's a powerful shift in mindset. So what's a practical first step? If someone is about to embark on a project, what's the one thing they should do after listening to this? Olivia: The book offers eleven great heuristics, but I think it boils down to two simple questions you must ask before you do anything else. First: "Why are we really doing this?" Get to the fundamental goal, like Gehry did. Was the goal to renovate a warehouse, or to revitalize a city? And second: "What's our Lego?" How can we break this massive, scary thing down into small, manageable, repeatable blocks? Jackson: Why are we doing this, and what's our Lego. Get those right, and you're already in that tiny 0.5% club. I love that. We've all got a "bullet train to nowhere" in our past, a project that went off the rails. We'd love to hear about yours. Share your project horror stories and what you learned with the Aibrary community. Let's learn from each other's spectacular failures. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.