Infrastructure Project Formulation: A Comprehensive Approach

Infrastructure projects are often prone to time and cost overruns. The reason for this can be attributed to many factors such as erroneous feasibility study, unclear scope of works, uncoordinated execution, inequitable risk allocation due to unbalanced contract terms, etc. While there are several means of achieving the project objectives, the adoption of a particular method is constrained by the cost factor. Therefore, we overlook the additional factors that need to be considered while choosing a delivery method in a given life cycle stage. These factors include consideration of owner priorities over the project life cycle in the design stage itself, value for money analysis, potential for changes, etc. However, in the Indian infrastructure context, these concepts are in a very nascent stage. Therefore, the authors of this paper give a holistic overview of the comprehensive approaches throughout the project life cycle and strongly recommend to bring it in practice.