Institution of Civil Engineers

A key characteristic of major projects is their scale, both in terms of cost and in terms of impact. Such scale rightly means there will be interest from or decisions required by politicians at local, regional and national levels concerned about the level of cost, the distribution of benefits/disbenefits or that another project should be done instead.

In a world buffeted by climate change, geo-political and economic instability, 'major incidents' (or high impact, high urgency events) pose an ever-greater risk to major projects.