Large-scale Infrastructure Projects Research Articles

Bridging the Global Wealth Gap

Joanne Meyerowitz begins her compelling account by asking how in the United States the lodestar of the development enterprise went from modernization, defined as the structural transformation of society, to preventing poverty. While at times the concept of development has appeared elusive enough that it might be capable of encompassing both modernization and antipoverty, Meyerowitz’s study does an excellent job of showing that the shift during the 1970s “from large-scale industrial and infrastructure projects aimed at national economic growth and towards small-scale antipoverty projects” entailed a total reimagination of the meaning of development (2). In order to tell the story of why the 1970s and 1980s are pivotal moments in the history of development, Meyerowitz builds on essential works of earlier generations of historians of development. The historiography on development might helpfully be thought of as consisting of three waves.1 The first wave, starting in the early years of this century, told the story of the rise and fall of modernization theory during the height of the Cold War. The second wave increasingly turned towards the application of development ideas in specific cases and projects. One of the core insights of the second wave of the historiography of development was the persistence and enduring nature of development practices across the colonial and postcolonial divide. The third wave of which A Global War on Poverty makes an excellent contribution is defined by overturning a number of the assumptions of the first two waves. The most important of which is the epistemic divide between the Global North and the Global South. For a long time, the history of development, often inadvertently replicated the division of labor within development studies itself, where ideas/theory came from the Global North, and they were applied in the Global South. This dichotomy has lately been challenged by authors like Priya Lal, Amy Offner, Christy Thornton, and Margarita Fajardo.2

How information gaining affects public acceptance in large-scale infrastructure projects: A comparative case study

Large-scale infrastructure projects (LIPs) make significant contributions to the urban development. However, the public acceptance of LIPs varied in terms of public attitudes and perceptions via information seeking and processing. In order to investigate the role of information gaining on public acceptance in various LIPs, this study combined situational theory of publics (STP) and theory of rational actions (TRA), while a Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) facility and a non-NIMBY facility were selected for a comparative case study. Face-to-face interview surveys were conducted, and the relationship between information gaining and public acceptance was explored via two structural equation models. The results show that: (1) Information gaining has no significant effect on the public acceptance of NIMBY facilities, however, is significantly associated with that of non-NIMBY facilities. (2) Attitudes and subjective norms perform the mediating roles between the main variables in STP and public acceptance. (3) High problem recognition is significantly related to low public acceptance in both cases. For NIMBY facilities, the relationship is mediated by attitudes. By contrast, for non-NIMBY facilities, it is mediated by information gaining and attitudes. (4) People with a high level of involvement are the significant groups that are most likely to engage in information gaining and influence others in both cases. (5) Constraint recognition can motivate the public to communicate with others for the NIMBY facility, yet it could discourage information gaining for the non-NIMBY facility. These findings help authorities to better understand the role of information gaining in public acceptance and to streamline the decision-making process in LIPs.

Study of the Cargo Base of the Northern Regions of the Russian Federation During the Construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway

In connection with the latest events in the country, when the West imposes economic sanctions not only on individual enterprises, but even on entire industries, one of the main goals of the government is to protect and strengthen the national economy, reduce dependence on Western companies and establish ties with enterprises in Asian countries, Africa, Indochina. As a result, the construction of transport corridors for the export of products and ensuring transport accessibility to the most remote regions of the country is of great importance. The need to implement the Northern Latitudinal Railway project has been identified as a priority for achieving the most important goals of developing the transport infrastructure of the region and the country as a whole, reducing the length of transport routes from fields in the northern regions of Western Siberia to the ports of the Baltic, White, Barents and Kara Seas. The large-scale infrastructure project “Northern Latitudinal Railway” will provide an opportunity to export cargo from Yamal and from fields in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. On April 13, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the development of the Russian Arctic zone. During the meeting, the head of state instructed the relevant departments to begin construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway, approve a consolidated plan for the development of the Northern Sea Route until 2035, with the definition of volumes and sources of funding. The aim of the work was to study an additional cargo base, in addition to the one already available on the territory of Yamal (23.9 million tons of cargo), from the northern regions of the Russian Federation, in particular from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, while continuing the construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway to Norilsk.

Procurement for zero-emission construction sites: a comparative study of four European cities

The public sector has a vital role in reducing emissions from construction activities and achieving environmental goals. Therefore, it is vital to investigate the opportunities for reducing the construction industry’s emissions through its procurement practices. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of using green public procurement (GPP) to orchestrate stakeholder ecosystems, including public buyers, construction companies, subcontractors, and equipment suppliers, to achieve zero-emission construction sites—that is, ecosystems for zero-emission construction sites (EZEMCONS). The multiple case study methodology is employed to examine four European cities’ practices and experiences. The findings suggest that cities can improve low-emission machinery infrastructure, promote better networking for builders, and enhance cooperation through early market dialogues. Conversely, EZEMCONS pose challenges to innovation ecosystem (IE) orchestration, particularly when managing large-scale zero-emission infrastructure projects. Cities can use these findings to understand general IE implications for developing more mature EZEMCONS. More specifically, this study summarizes the potential opportunities and challenges of GPP for building mature IEs. GPP has been the subject of much environmental policy and sustainable production research; however, its application to EZEMCONS is limited. Consequently, this research contributes to the emergent literature on EZEMCONS, within the GPP context, by examining its opportunities and challenges.

The reception of Roman Mithras in Transylvania in the 18th-19th century

Transylvania became part of the Habsburg Empire in the late 17th century. Between 1686 and 1848, the region’s urban landscape was radically altered by several large-scale infrastructural and architectural projects that also uncovered a substantial amount of archaeological material from its Roman past. Construction of the Vauban fort and other major urban projects in Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Karlsburg) after 1711 contributed to the creation of the city’s first archaeological collection, established by Ignatius Batthyány in the late 18th century. This paper focuses on the first Mithraic finds from Alba Iulia, the Batthyaneum Library’s valuable collection and the role of Mithraic finds from Apulum in the history of Mithraic studies.

An investigation of the conflict management strategies in international construction joint ventures of Sri Lanka

Purpose Most developing countries, such as Sri Lanka (SL), are now looking for the support of foreign construction companies for large-scale infrastructure projects in return for expertise and resources. Thus, foreign companies may enter into agreements with local contractors through joint ventures (JVs). However, the priorities of construction project stakeholders may differ, which may ultimately end up in conflicts. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the most suitable conflict management strategies for international construction JVs (ICJVs) considering the SL context. Design/methodology/approach The mixed method was used for the research choice by selecting a questionnaire survey and expert interviews. Completed questionnaires (n = 78) were analysed using statistical techniques. The expert interviews with six industry practitioners were piloted to increase the validity and credibility of survey findings through a triangulation process where the collected data was analysed through content analysis. Findings The findings confirm that JV parties should first seek collaborative solutions in a conflict and seek legal redress only when those efforts are unsuccessful. Collaborating and compromising were recommended as the most appropriate tactics if an informal approach to conflict management was chosen. Alternative dispute resolution and litigation were identified as formal conflict management strategies. Originality/value This study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, will be the first of its kind in SL, which will lead to a better understanding of conflict management in IJCVs and will encourage other researchers to extend this study through further work.

Improving Design Quality by Contractor Involvement: An Empirical Study on Effects

It is generally acknowledged that good-quality design is a prerequisite for good quality and productive construction work. One proposed measure to improve the quality of construction has been contractors’ involvement in the design phase, and this phenomenon has been studied by several researchers. However, such approaches have not adequately addressed how this involvement affects the quality of the design. In this study, the aim was to study the effects of the early involvement of contactors on design quality based on evaluating the design quality factors. A case study was used to collect data and content analysis to analyze structural drawings and design meeting minutes of a large-scale infrastructure project. Particularly, the focus was on gathering information on the quality of the design and how it was addressed in the design coordination. We combined this quantitative data with qualitative open-ended thematic interviews, including respondents who led and coordinated the design on both the client and contractor sides. Our findings suggest that despite the vast amount of design changes, contractors’ involvement and development work in the detailed design phase improved design quality and constructability. Our findings also suggest that the contractor’s involvement during the schematic design phase had a design-enhancing effect in the detailed design phase. This study contributes to our understanding of contractors’ valuable role in design quality.

Regional futures in crisis: lived experience and the generative role of intermediaries

ABSTRACT As society responds to climate extremity and the COVID-19 pandemic, and as decarbonisation transforms the economy, regions will bear much of the adjustment burden. Powerful forces are re-imagining and reassembling regions, with investment in infrastructure, rare earth minerals mining and processing, green energy and battery hubs, and sovereign manufacturing capacity. While large-scale projects promise employment opportunities, transitions are unlikely to proceed smoothly – for workers, regions, or the environment. Moreover, they risk concentrating corporate power and sectoral dependencies, with limited community participation in decision-making, and amplified socio-spatial and environmental injustices. Unconvinced of the resilience contributions of such projects amidst profound climatic, geopolitical and health disruptions, this paper shifts the focus to qualitative conditions on the ground. Foregrounded are the lived experience of crises, vernacular initiatives to address crises in a more participatory, less corporatized, ‘minor’ key, and the critical roles played by intermediary actors and care networks. Amidst upheaval and trauma, regions are witnessing a host of quieter transformations: First Nations fire and land management partnerships; social enterprise formation; care practices among skilled agricultural and industrial workers; prosaic disaster response initiatives; and expanded research capacity in regional universities. Regional relationships, and the intermediary networks that sustain them, will prove vital in crisis. Beyond viewing future opportunities for regional Australia principally through large-scale infrastructural projects, planning has a distinctive role to play in mediating quotidian conditions of disruption, nurturing active, durable, and meaningful bonds between diverse regional communities, industries, and institutions. Practitioner pointers Critical scrutiny is needed of visions for regional futures overly fixated on major post-pandemic infrastructure and decarbonisation projects Beyond technical considerations, planning practice must be inclusive of lived experiences of disruption, incorporating and listening to diverse voices Informing principled planning practice, on-going qualitative research is needed to document on-the-ground conditions, intermediary relationships, and vernacular resilience capacities

The Reality Gap: Simplification of Environmental Law as Key for the Acceleration of Permit Procedures for Europe’s Green Deal

To reach climate goals, there is a need for large scale changes to the energy system. This requires speedy permitting procedures. However, permitting procedures are everything else but speedy. Thus, there is a need to simplify the rules to accelerate the permit procedures. While permitting procedures are largely governed by national law, the central issue for large scale infrastructure projects is to handle the high standards of EU Environmental law. Enlarged rights of individuals and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to bring any mistaken application of these rules to court and thus stop projects from realization for years, represent the major risks of delay for the realization of infrastructure projects. Shortcomings on the application of EU Environmental law in permitting procedures are not only caused by narrow time schedules and stingy project promoters, but mainly by an overcomplex system of partly unclear rules that is evolving in the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) only in one direction: Making every single rule even stricter case by case before the ECJ. This is reality. To cut on the duration of permit procedures for reaching climate goals in time, European environmental law needs to be adapted. Without streamlining and simplifying EU environmental law, all efforts to accelerate permit procedures are doomed to failure. This article suggests adaptations of the European Habitats and Birds Directives, Water Framework Directive and Environmental Impact Assessments Directive to significantly accelerate permit procedures. IMO Sulphur Regulation, Shipowner, Charterer, EGCS, Low Sulphur Fuel

Goodbye Washington Confusion, hello Wall Street Consensus: contemporary state capitalism and the spatialisation of industrial strategy

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship has narrated the financialization of development, which Gabor (2021) refers to as the Wall Street Consensus (WSC), whose purpose is to facilitate the investment of global capital in Southern infrastructure by institutionalising the distribution of risk, reward and responsibility between investors and states. Gabor’s conceptualization of the ‘de-risking state’ subordinated to global finance capital stands in stark contrast with scholarship on state capitalism, which charts the unprecedented entrepreneurial role played by states as investors and market participants. Our objective in this article is to reconcile the apparent paradox presented by the simultaneous emergence of the WSC and evolution of state capitalism. We argue that the WSC affords de-risking states scope to pursue autonomous strategic visions, and many have responded by embracing infrastructure-led development designed to integrate places within global value chains in ways that foster economic diversification, industrial upgrading and balanced regional growth. We present three examples in which de-risking states have implemented spatialised industrial strategies – Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, Kenya’s Vision 2030 and Thailand 4.0. In each of these cases spatialised industrial strategies undertaken by de-risking states have fuelled the proliferation of large-scale infrastructure projects and served to justify political centralization.

Value Creation, Capture, and Destruction

Problem, research strategy, and findings Municipalities relying on tax increment financing (TIF) to underwrite large-scale infrastructure and development projects assume that tax revenues from the increase in property values will be sufficient in the short run to cover capital expenses (i.e., that projects are self-financing). By examining a case of TIF in action, we move beyond expectations about how TIF should work in theory. Hudson Yards on the far West Side of Manhattan is one of the largest TIF projects in the United States in recent years and the first one implemented in New York City. We refined the conventional fiscal impact analysis approach by tracking costs and revenue flows of the project between 2005 and 2020 and comparing rents, assessed values, property tax appeals, abatements, and land prices across relevant submarkets. Through this exercise and critical reading of the literature, we developed a framework for analyzing TIF that treats property values as extrinsic and determined by the political arrangements and calculative negotiations that create, capture, and destroy them. Interactions between private property markets and governing bodies cause costs to fluctuate, responsibility for different expenditures and claims on new revenues to shift, and the location and magnitude of spillover effects to change over time. The flexibility of property values in Hudson Yards allowed the taxes to be used at cross-purposes, jeopardizing the payback streams and inflating risks shouldered by the public sector. Takeaway for practice Although our findings are limited by the single case study approach, the creation–capture–destruction heuristic we developed can help planners modify their expectations of the future and spend economic development dollars more effectively in the present. We suggest that municipalities claw back subsidies upon a property’s sale through a local capital gains tax and restrict the use of appeals and abatements in TIF districts to limit the potential for value destruction.

Improved reliability in planning large-scale infrastructure project delivery through Alliancing

PurposePrice reliability for complex and highly complicated infrastructure projects is problematic. Traditional project delivery approaches generally fail in achieving targeted end cost reliability. However, integrated project delivery (and particularly Alliancing), develop a far more reliable and robust project delivery plan and outturn time-cost targets. This paper aims to explore why this may be the case.Design/methodology/approachThis case study investigated the project design, planning, cost/time estimation approach and how risk/uncertainty was dealt with. Five senior project delivery experts from an organisation that delivers multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects in Australia were interviewed. These five experts collectively had 100+ cross-disciplinary experience years delivering complex infrastructure projects.FindingsAlliancing adopts a radically different approach to project design, time/cost planning and risk assessment and management to traditional project delivery approaches. Key findings explain how the project alliance agreement designs-in processes that maximises team integration and collaboration. Analysis concludes that design thinking is used to craft and shape collaborative behaviours and project governance. Additionally, including project owner and facilities operator representatives in the project team adds valuable insights, expertise and knowledge contributing to planning reliability.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is exploratory and focussed on complex infrastructure projects so findings cannot be generalised.Practical implicationsWe unpack Alliancing processes that develop the target outturn cost plan, comprising a holistic and realistic plan to design a project to meet expected project outcomes. This case study may serve as an exemplar for complex project delivery.Social implicationsThis paper illustrates how Alliancing more effectively delivers best value than traditional procurement approaches through its TOC-TAE processes.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the scant existing academic literature analysing these processes. Its novel contribution is explaining how Alliancing treats unexpected events that in traditional delivery forms trigger expensive and time-energy-wasting disputation. This case study may serve as an exemplar for complex project delivery.

PROJECT DELAY PREDICTION WITH EARNED VALUE METHOD: A CASE ON THE CSS-APARTMENT PROJECT IN SURABAYA-INDONESIA

The risk of delay is very likely to occur in a construction project. Especially in large-scale infrastructure projects that are accompanied by high complexity. Careful planning and prediction both related to aspects of design, implementation, including scheduling are very important. Problems that often arise in large-scale and complex construction projects are early predictions related to delays in the final completion of a project. This study aims to predict the occurrence of delays in project completion. Based on secondary data obtained from construction contractors and by using appropriate analytical procedures, the result is that the CSS-Apartment project is predicted to experience a delay of 57 weeks from the planned 146 weeks. The data is obtained directly from the project site. After all the data has been obtained, the processing is carried out using the Earned Value Method. Literature study is done by reading literature related to this writing Based on the case of an apartment project called CSS-Apartment Project in Surabaya - Indonesia, and using the Earned Value method.

Impacts of Determining Economic Life of Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects on Their Economic Effectiveness

The paper deals with the refinement of the Cost-Benefit Analysis methodological procedure for the assessment of the economic effectiveness of large-scale transport infrastructure projects. The basic input is economic Cash Flow which consists of investment costs, operating income, operating expenses, societal benefits, and harms as well as the investment residual value. According to the methodological guidelines, the currently evaluated project period is considered to be 30 years including the investment phase starting in the first year of the construction, the relevant part of the operational phase, and the residual value of the project in the last year of the assessed period. The evaluation of the economic effectiveness of projects is largely influenced by the determination of the construction economic life. A procedure for calculating the residual value of the project while respecting the gradual implementation of partial constructions was established as part of the research. A case study based on the research sample of several investment construction projects of the highway sections in the Czech Republic demonstrates how this methodological procedure affects the economic effectiveness of the project.

Assessing the public participation initiatives in the planning and delivery of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit project

Public infrastructure developments are designed to improve the well-being of society. As they can have an impact on a large number of people and stakeholders, the processes of planning and delivering large-scale infrastructure projects are now expected to enable public participation. Due to pressures from international and developmental bodies, expanding opportunities for public participation is now also being encouraged in developing countries, albeit there is little research available on how to effectively implement such participatory strategies. This paper proposes a framework for assessing the implementation of public participation strategies employed in the planning, appraisal and delivery of major infrastructure projects in developing countries, using the Amman Bus Rapid Transit project as a case study. The aim of the paper is to assess the public participation initiative in the planning and delivery of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit project. The research methods employed include a wide review of relevant literature and current policies, coupled with the collection of empirical data. The latter is based on semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders who are directly involved in the projects and an online questionnaire, which provided insights into the public experiences of involvement in the planning and delivery of the Amman Bus Rapid Transit project. Analysis of data conducted through the framework developed, finds that the public participation strategy implemented for Amman Bus Rapid Transit is rudimentary and fails to address the public’s concerns with regards to the project. These findings confirm that there is a need for the government to extend beyond the informative approach by providing opportunities for key stakeholders and the public to actively participate in deliberations throughout the project lifecycle. This form of increased engagement can improve trust between the public and governments, allowing for the successful delivery of future public transport projects in Jordan.

On Population-based structural health monitoring for bridges

The maintenance and repair of bridges (and other large scale infrastructure projects) is a major area which could benefit from Structural Health Monitoring technology. Inspections on bridges can take a long time and require many people, and are therefore conducted infrequently. This low frequency of inspection leaves the chance that damage and dangerous critical failures can occur during the long timeframes between inspections. It might even be the case that an inspection fails to identify sub-surface damage. Therefore some form of continuous monitoring is desirable, especially if such systems can reliably detect sub-surface damage. However, the application of SHM to bridges is made challenging by the cost and practicability of obtaining damage-state data for bridges. Over the lifetime of a single bridge, it is hoped that a critical failure will never occur, and only a small number of the possible damage states will occur. It is also unpractical to intentionally damage structures to obtain damage-state data. Population-based structural health monitoring seeks to overcome the obstacle of the limited data available for a single structure, by allowing data to be shared between similar structures. Bridges represent an interesting challenge for PBSHM as each bridge is unique. As such, an assessment of how similar bridges are to each other is required. To provide this assessment, one must develop an abstract representation for each bridge, and using this to perform a comparison. This paper describes the use of a general approach for assessing the similarity of structures, applied to several bridge examples which are representative of common types of bridges, to show that it can be applied in this field.

The co-constitution of regional politics and massive infrastructures in the Transaqua water project

ABSTRACT Large-scale water infrastructure projects have seen a sudden surge to the top of the political agenda in many countries as a means of addressing developmental goals at both national and regional levels, despite a decline in funding for these projects in the 1990s and 2000s. The Transaqua inter-basin water transfer (IBWT) project, a 2400 km-long canal aiming to connect the Lake Chad and Congo River basins, has been recently hailed by the Lake Chad basin countries, international and regional organizations, and the private sector as the most feasible solution to revitalize Lake Chad’s declining water levels. It has also started to reconfigure the regional politics of two of Africa’s largest basins. This article focuses on this case study and analyses how regional features shape Transaqua and how it simultaneously reconfigures regional politics. Based on concepts such as ‘region’, ‘regionalism’ and ‘regionalisation’ within the international relations discipline and applying mixed methods of discourse, document and media analysis, we show how the project is influencing regional dynamics, alliances and power relations in the Lake Chad and Congo River basins, and how the Transaqua discourse evolves along with regional features such as droughts, water abundance and regional insecurities, despite being in the planning stage.

Imposing Worlds: Ontological Marginalization and Reclamation through Irrigation Infrastructure in Rajapur, Nepal

In this article, I examine the Rajapur Irrigation Project (RIP), a large-scale infrastructure project to “modernize” a farmer-managed irrigation system in Nepal, as a political encounter between two ontologies or what Blaser called “ways of worlding”: Tharu farmers’ fluid practices of living with the Karnali River and engineers’ methods of structurally training waterways. In tracing how the logic and world-making practices of the RIP overwrote the place-based ontologies of local farmers through the concrete structures it enacted and left behind, I introduce ontological marginalization as a political process that can occur when one situated understanding of what the world is and how it should be (re)made is imposed on another through structural interventions. I demonstrate infrastructure’s power to enforce certain ontologies while marginalizing others, and I also explore how people reassert agency and world-making practices through acts of ontological reclamation in the aftermath of interventions. Ultimately, this article contributes to emergent discussions on infrastructure and its ontological impacts within geography by developing the dual concepts of ontological marginalization and reclamation as ways for scholars to better account for the political implications of infrastructure on diverse ways of worlding.

Model Perubahan Tutupan lahan Akibat Akses Jalan Tol dengan Menggunakan Cellular Automata di Pulau Sumatera

The use of land is a part of the fulfillment of human needs. The establishment of a large-scale infrastructure project often triggers an increase in land cover around its infrastructure project. Most of the increase in built up land tends to occur in areas that are traversed by or located near main accessibility routes such as toll roads. Although the construction of toll roads can improve accessibility between regions, land is a limited resource. So that it becomes the basis for researchers to identify the changes in land use in regencies and cities on the island of Sumatra that are crossed by toll roads that have been operating. The goal of land use change analysis is to give a description or explanation, predict, look at the effects, and make a decision (prescription). This research was conducted by identifying the changes in the existing land cover and predicting the land cover using cellular automata. Cellular automata have proven to be a method that is suitable for predicting the dynamics of land use through spatial simulation. The results show that there was an increase in the amount of land built from early 2017 to 2030. The covered land is developed around the toll gate after it is actively operated. In all provinces studied, deviation discrepancies were found in the conservation and cultivation areas. Deviations that occur in conservation areas need to be considered as there should be no land built in these areas, which means that there are cultivation activities in the conservation areas.

Inter-organisational collaboration and knowledge-work: a contingency framework and evidence from a megaproject in Spain

ABSTRACT This paper provides an exploratory understanding of the process of knowledge-work in the inter-organisational setting of a large-scale infrastructure project. Taking a process perspective, it explores why an autonomous project-owner organisation in the rail industry sector finds difficulties to transform and exploit the project network-related knowledge in a coopetitive context. The paper builds on a case study of a High-speed Rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Based on the longitudinal qualitative secondary analysis, the authors put forth a contingency framework that proposes four contexts linking the transformation and exploitation of the knowledge from the inter-organisational network to the project-owner organisation; whether (i) the interplay between industrial setting and the project arrangement empowers product or process knowledge and (ii) the senior, and programme management awareness to feed-forward learning relies on individual- or institutionalised-based learning. These four contexts and their underlying conditions pose different knowledge-work related problems and suggest implications for practice in inter-organisational collaboration and beyond.