One of the most technically complex U.S. highway reconstruction projects promised $500 million in annual public gains. But a $12 billion budget overrun and myriad technical challenges pose considerable questions on what the public really gained.
THE BIG DIG, the popular name for the renowned Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston, Mass., USA, has been called one of the largest, most complex and technologically challenging highway projects in U.S. history.
The Big Dig was intended to ease traffic flow through Boston by replacing the old Central Artery (I-93), an elevated six-lane highway, which opened in 1959 and was notoriously congested and accident-prone.
Planning began in 1982. The U.S. Congress approved funding in 1987, and construction began in 1991. In 2003, the new Central Artery opened, now an eight- to 10-lane tunnel under the old highway, which is being demolished. In all, the project team has built or rebuilt 161 lane miles of urban highway, about half in tunnels, in a 7.8-mile corridor.
Designers and builders faced myriad technical challenges, including difficult soil conditions; proximity to glass and steel office towers and fragile historic buildings; and tunneling beneath the elevated highway and near an existing subway line—which required “underpinning,” or digging large cubic holes with a special machine and filling them with concrete to stabilize the ground, in this case, under the existing buildings and the old Central Artery.
Complicating the already complex scope, the project required that some semblance of highway remained open during the 14 years of construction.
The public's gain has been calculated at $500 million a year, the result of minimized accidents, less wasted fuel from decreased traffic and lower costs for late deliveries.
But the project has experienced huge cost overruns. The original budget was $2.6 billion. By early 2004, when 93.5 percent of the work had been completed, costs incurred totaled $13.6 billion. That figure is expected to rise to $14.6 billion by the project's completion in 2005—a 470 percent cost overrun, making the Cost Performance Index (CPI) 0.18. Given the theoretical benefit of $500 million a year, it would take the project about 78 years to pay its costs back.
The trouble resulted from two issues, according to Oliver F. Lehmann, PMP, vice president of professional development for PMI's Troubled Projects Specific Interest Group:
UNDERESTIMATING THE INITIAL PROJECT SCOPE. A universal characteristic of government-funded projects is the lack of detailed scoping at the earliest phases of a public project—nine out of 10 public projects fail to include a comprehensive scope at the beginning, Lehmann reports. Politics shouldn't have played a part in determining the scope of this massive undertaking.
LACK OF CONTROL. The amount of cash flowing between different project participants is enormous, and small mistakes made on any side can mean significantly higher costs and long payment disputes. In April 2004, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority announced that it had received a $3.5 million reimbursement from Jacobs Civil Inc. This was the first success of cost recovery efforts. “We expect this to be the first of many such settlements over the coming months,” Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Chairman Matthew Amorello told The Associated Press.
Project advisers also discovered that conflicts of interest abounded between the public and private sectors. To regain a degree of integrity, the project's management team was replaced, a new tighter progress and cost-control system was developed, and the management grew eager to involve and inform the public as much as possible. PM
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