Looking for Project Success in Infrastructure Projects - How Can We Archive It?

Abstract

Even though the main aim of project management (PM) is to assure successful projects, the PM literature still lacks a clear definition of project success (PS), since it highly depends on the stakeholders' expectations and the point in time in which the project was evaluated. In this context and due to their specialties e.g. long duration or a large number of stakeholders, the infrastructure projects are subjected to time delays and cost overruns and therefore, criticized in the society and described as failed or unsuccessful projects. This paper hypothesizes the need to adapt our PM approach to follow more systemic methods and presents the main principles of systematic project management (SPM) as a success factor (SF) for infrastructure projects. In addition, a case study about the Gotthard Base Tunnel is presented to verify the literature findings.