Australia has a remarkably poor record of delivering megaprojects on time and on budget. It is a predictable outcome of a broken system.

Earlier this year, consultants Deloitte found the cost of 13 publicly funded road, rail and energy projects had blown out by A$130 billion more than their initial estimates.

Snowy Hydro 2.0, a renewable energy scheme initially costed at A$2 billion, was meant be completed by 2021. Instead, it’s still under construction, and some reports have its cost rising to $22 billion – eleven times the initial estimate.

There are many similar examples:

Inland Rail’s cost also jumping nearly tenfold, from $4.7 billion to $45 billion

Melbourne’s North East Link road tunnels project more than doubling in cost, from $10 billion to $26 billion

Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop rising to more than $96 billion, also almost double its original price tag

and Brisbane’s $19 billion Cross River Rail, originally announced at $5.4 billion.

When I shared these Australian examples in Brussels while previewing our new book chapter in “Governance for Major Projects”, colleagues from other countries laughed in disbelief at the scale of the cost blowouts. One asked if I was joking.

Here’s what we get wrong and how that could change.

How Australia approves projects the wrong way around

Every major project that goes over time and budget will have specific causes to point to, from tunnelling problems to supply chain disruptions.

However, in Australia, the same structural problems keep repeating.

Announcing projects without a........

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