Toward a Systemic View to Cost Overrun Causation in Infrastructure Projects: A Review and Implications for Research

Cost overrun in infrastructure projects receives significant attention in research. However, there is a paucity of evidence to support a claim that their size or frequency is reducing. This paper reviews the methodological weaknesses in the dominant approaches adopted to explain cost overrun causation. We find that much of the research effort undertaken is superficial, replicative and has stagnated in the development of a robust theory to explain cost overrun causation. Future research should move from single-cause identification and traditional net-effect correlational analysis to a search for causal recipes through system thinking to address the high-level interactions between multiple factors.