文章来源：《经济学人》Mar 18th 2023 期 Business 栏目

从高铁到奥运会，为什么大项目会出问题?

巴托比

An entertaining new book spots the common threads between mega-snafus

一本有趣的新书指出了大混乱之间的共同线索

Lots of countries have big construction projects that become a byword for ineptitude. In America the “Big Dig”, a highway project that snarled up the centre of Boston for years, came in five times over its initial budget. The stadium built for the Montreal Olympics in 1976 was unaffectionately known as the “Big Owe” after costs overran massively; the debts from the games were paid off only 30 years later. Even the Germans get megaprojects wrong. Ground was broken at Brandenburg Airport in Berlin in 2006, and the first flights took off in 2020, ten years later than scheduled.

许多国家的大型建设项目已经成为无能的代名词。在美国，高速公路项目“大挖掘”多年来一直困扰着波士顿市中心，它的投入是最初预算的五倍。为1976年蒙特利尔奥运会建造的体育场在成本大幅超支后被无情地称为“大亏欠”; 奥运会的债务在30年后就还清了。就连德国人也不能搞定大型项目。柏林勃兰登堡机场于2006年破土动工，第一批航班于2020年起飞，比原计划晚了10年。

The embarrassment caused by Britain’s biggest construction project is set to last for many years yet. A plan to build a high-speed railway, called hs2, down the spine of England was approved by the government in 2012. This month came confirmation of another in a long series of delays. Now the first passengers will only get on board some time in the 2030s, if they are lucky. Costs have doubled from their initial estimate; bits of the route have been lopped off; and the trains will not zip along as quickly as originally planned.

英国最大的建筑项目造成的尴尬将持续多年。2012年，政府批准了修建一条名为HS2的高速铁路的计划，该铁路将贯穿英格兰的主干线。本月又有一起长期延期事件得到确认。现在，如果幸运的话，第一批乘客只能在2030年代的某个时候上船。成本比最初的估计翻了一番; 部分路线已经被砍掉; 列车也不会像原计划的那样快速行驶。

Megaprojects like hs2 are the subject of an entertaining new book called “How Big Things Get Done” by Bent Flyvbjerg, an academic at Oxford University who specialises in such things, and Dan Gardner, a journalist. Mr Flyvbjerg is the compiler of a database of over 16,000 projects, which tells a grimly consistent tale of missed deadlines and shattered budgets. By his reckoning, only 8.5% of projects meet their initial estimates on cost and time, and a piddling 0.5% achieve what they set out to do on cost, time and benefits.

像HS2这样的大型项目是牛津大学学者Bent Flyvbjerg和记者Dan Gardner合著的一本名为《如何完成大事》的有趣新书的主题。Bent Flyvbjerg专门研究这类事情。Flyvbjerg先生是一个包含16000多个项目的数据库的编译者，这个数据库讲述了一个关于错过最后期限和预算超支的极其始终如一的故事。据他估计，只有8.5%的项目在成本和时间上符合最初的估计，而在成本、时间和效益上达到预期目标的项目只有区区0.5%。

Mr Flyvbjerg’s advice is not a guarantee of success: his team was involved in assessing the risks associated with hs2. But the picture that he and Mr Gardner draw of why projects, large and small, tend to go wrong is compelling.

Flyvbjerg的建议并不是成功的保证: 他的团队参与了与HS2相关的风险评估。但是，他和Gardner所描绘的"为什么大大小小的项目都容易出错"是引人注目的。

Over-optimistic time and cost estimates stem from both psychological and political biases: a reliance on intuition rather than data, and a problem that Mr Flyvbjerg and Mr Gardner call “strategic misrepresentation”. This is when budgets are deliberately lowballed in order to get things going, on the premise that nothing would ever get built if politicians went around being accurate. The sunk-cost fallacy, whereby people hesitate to halt projects because money spent will seem to have been wasted, means that the plug is seldom pulled once work is under way.

过于乐观的时间和成本估算源自心理和政治偏见: 依赖直觉而非数据，以及Flyvbjerg和Gardner所称之为“策略性虚假陈述”的问题。“策略性虚假陈述”是指为了让事情进行下去，预算被故意低报，如果政客们到处精确的话，什么也建不起来。沉没成本谬误，即人们不愿停止项目，因为花了的钱会被浪费，这意味着一旦工作开始，就很少会停止。

Planning is too often done in haste. The authors laud Pixar’s methodical approach to developing and testing films in great detail before they go into production. They also tell the story of how Frank Gehry’s meticulous architectural models helped ensure the success of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. By keeping to a minimum the window when the project is actually being implemented, thorough planning reduces the probability of unexpected events derailing things. The people running hs2 seem to disagree. In theory the most recent delays enable the British government to spend less money each year; in practice they just increase the risk of yet more things going wrong.

计划往往是仓促完成的。作者赞扬了皮克斯在电影投入生产前对其进行细致入微的开发和测试的方法。它们还讲述了弗兰克·盖里细致的建筑模型如何确保毕尔巴鄂古根海姆博物馆的成功。通过将项目实际实施的窗口期保持在最小值，全面的计划可以降低意外事件使事情“脱轨”的可能性。运营HS2的人似乎不同意这种说法。从理论上讲，最近的延期使得英国政府每年的支出减少;实际上，它们只会增加更多事情出错的风险。

Big bespoke projects are particularly likely to run into trouble. The more that a project can be disaggregated into replicable processes, the better its prospects. Mr Flyvbjerg’s database shows that solar-power and windpower installations stand the best chance of not going wrong, in part because standard components can be snapped together into arrays and turbines. At the other end of the risk scale lie gigantic one-off efforts like nuclear-power stations and the Olympic games.

大型定制项目更有可能遇到麻烦。一个项目越能分解成可复制的过程，它的前景就越好。Flyvbjerg的数据库显示，太阳能和风能发电装置最有可能不出问题，部分原因是标准组件可以组合成阵列和涡轮机。在风险天平的另一端，是核电站和奥运会等一次性的巨大努力。【一次性 vs. 可复制】

Mitigating the dangers inherent in big bespoke projects is possible. Some think the future of nuclear energy lies in modular reactors. Paris, the city hosting next year’s summer Olympics, is using existing facilities for most of the sporting venues. Standardised designs and manufacturing processes for everything from train tracks to viaducts helped China build the world’s largest high-speed rail network in less than a decade at the start of this century.

减轻大型定制项目固有的危险是可能的。一些人认为核能的未来在于模块化反应堆。明年夏季奥运会的举办地巴黎，大部分体育场馆都在使用现有设施。从铁路轨道到高架桥，标准化的设计和制造流程帮助中国在本世纪初不到10年的时间里建成了全球最大的高速铁路网。

Projects run into problems for specific reasons as well as general ones: Britain’s quagmire of planning rules is not something that China had to worry about, for instance. And the timescales, the scrutiny and the objectives of big public-infrastructure projects differ from those of corporate initiatives. But there are lessons here for managers of all stripes. If you plan rigorously and standardise where possible, you are less likely to dig yourself into a hole.

项目遇到问题的原因既有特殊原因，也有一般原因: 比如，中国不必担心英国在规划规则方面陷入困境。而且大型公共基础设施项目的时间表、审查和目标都不同于企业倡议。但这对所有类型的管理者都有借鉴意义。如果你严格计划，尽可能标准化，你就不太可能让自己陷入困境。