UCL’s Megaproject Delivery Centre founding director on overhauling megaproject performance

A megaproject is often defined as a large-scale, complex project with a cost exceeding $1bn (£750M). “We are increasingly moving to more expensive megaprojects,” says University College London’s (UCL’s) Megaproject Delivery Centre founding director Juliano Denicol, pointing to the existence of so-called gigaprojects with costs exceeding $100bn. “So you end up having multiple megaprojects in one, being developed as a system of interconnected megaprojects,” he explains.

However, many megaprojects around the world have been facing performance issues, according to academic literature. “The shift in performance is urgent to address the scale of the infrastructure gap. We need to challenge common assumptions, investigate the evidence and highlight what works – or why it doesn’t – to inform infrastructure decisions,” says Denicol.

The aim of the Megaproject Delivery Centre – founded in 2021 – is to do exactly that, with Denicol emphasising that its agenda is solutions-driven. “We decided to investigate the megaproject delivery system and see what good looks like in areas such as procurement, organisation design, leadership and supply chain management. Which approach should we take and where is the research to back it up? The data analysis transparency is often missing in available reports.”

The research centre was created to align with the development of the MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery, launched in 2023, which is the first MBA of UCL’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. A partnership between UCL and Aecom has resulted in PhD scholarships to advance the science of programme management, with the centre growing and moving soon beyond 10 PhD students carrying out research to transform megaproject performance.

Curing poor performance

The Megaproject Delivery Centre’s What are the causes and cures of poor megaproject performance? A systematic literature review and research agenda reviewed 6007 papers to understand why megaprojects run over budget, over schedule and fail to deliver their intended outcomes.

“The study found that no isolated factor was responsible for failure in megaprojects, with a number of interrelated factors contributing equally to poor performance,” says Denicol, adding that these were organisational and political rather than technical.

The review identified 18 causes of poor megaproject performance falling into six overlying themes – decision-making behaviour; strategy, governance, and procurement; risk and uncertainty; leadership and capable teams; stakeholder engagement and management; supply chain integration and coordination.

“It highlights that it’s not enough to focus on one theme. It is a system, so you need to work on all of them,” says Denicol.

He adds that the narrative in scientific literature has been “very pessimistic and problem-oriented” and the research attempted to shift that narrative by focusing on solutions. It outlined 54 solutions, three for each cause.

The client is at the centre of the research conducted by the Megaproject Delivery Centre. “The client is the most important organisation, as it sets the rules of the game and has the overarching visibility of the whole megaproject.”

With organisational issues identified as key causes of poor performance, UCL researchers analysed how client organisations should be designed to deliver megaprojects. The paper Organisation design in megaprojects: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda, published in 2024, reviewed 10,078 academic papers to provide practical guidance on how to design megaproject organisations.

The research offers a comprehensive map of the most common organisational capabilities as a foundation for designing megaproject organisations. The study also identifies eight key decision dimensions that influence megaproject organisational design: efficiency cost; asset uncertainty; organisational identity; level of involvement of the permanent organisation; type of client; policy regulations; product architecture; capability dependency.

Other research areas being explored by the research team are: programme management, integrated delivery models, governance structures, procurement, supply chain management and systems integration.

External influences

“Clients around the world might have all the capabilities in place to deliver but can’t fully operationalise them given external constraints and constant new demands/requirements,” says Denicol. “The sponsor plays an influential role, which is often less discussed.”

The long megaproject delivery timeframe means it stretches through multiple election periods. As a result, the people in power – at local and national level – that the client representatives have to work with change along the way.

“Due to their public/private nature, megaprojects can be steered by political agendas. It becomes a very challenging environment for the team delivering the project.

“Sometimes there are top-down decisions in megaprojects from new people appointed in government. They might say ‘add another station or change the route over there’,” says Denicol, emphasising that these scope changes impact costs and programme.

“Changes demanded by government officials need to be tracked over the programme lifecycle,” says Denicol. He adds that the lack of transparency on such interference can result in unfair criticism about the client’s performance.

He believes that more attention should be placed on the management of the sponsor-client relationship. And he says the industry should explore ways to track who requested scope changes and the consequences of those, as well as explore mechanisms to shield major infrastructure projects from political decisions.

Another factor affecting megaprojects cited by Denicol is bureaucracy.

“Regulations must protect the environment and communities. However, there must be a balance, as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects are critical to unlock country-wide outcomes and improve living conditions. We are observing an expansion in the requirements, scale and duration of planning applications, with thousands of pages that are often too open to changes and challenges. Delays in major infrastructure projects are costing billions to taxpayers and preventing a system-of-systems approach to UK infrastructure. I welcome the Government’s efforts in reforming the planning process,” he says.

Amplifying research

The research conducted by the UCL Megaproject Delivery Centre has received many awards, with the most recent being the Association for Project Management’s 2025 Project Management Paper of the Year Award.

“Obviously academics love awards and the scientific recognition,” says Denicol, “but research must go beyond papers, into action.

“We want the scientific research to be impacting the players in the industry, and see research changing megaproject performance. Theoretical elaboration is important, but we need to produce research that is relevant and applied.”

He is happy that insights from the research centre have informed work by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Department for Transport, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and others. In addition, Aecom has implemented some of the frameworks produced into its global programme management practice.

Denicol calls for investment by governments around the world in academic research to improve megaproject management. Given the cost overruns and level of spending on fixing problems during the delivery phase caused by existing inefficiencies, he argues that the return on investment from even a small allocation of funds to solutions-driven research could be very high.

The government’s 10-year Infrastructure Strategy, published in June 2025, commits at least £725bn of funding across various sectors over the next decade.

“Why don’t we see research funding as a strategic priority? Let’s create 10 to 20 research centres across the UK focused on specific topics. If you’re talking about 10 centres costing £10M each, that’s £100M. With the current cost overruns, it is a no-brainer.”

Beyond further academic research, Denicol recommends the creation of a national database to better record megaprojects’ benefits over their lifecycle.

“We tend to see an emphasis on tracking cost and time over the delivery cycle of megaprojects and not so much on the benefits. How are we capturing the benefits, not only during the project, but later on as well?” he says, emphasising the fact that these assets’ lifecycles span multiple generations.

He adds that having a national database would allow for a wider systems perspective, looking at infrastructure assets as interconnected. This could help build the business case for construction of infrastructure assets which when viewed independently would appear unattractive.

After extensive consultation, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Project Delivery recently launched its report Building a Better Future: Inquiry into improving the delivery of national infrastructure projects.

The report includes the recommendation to ‘treat data as a long-term asset’, highlighting: “Evidence pointed towards the need for mandatory data strategies which outline the data needed, how it aligns with data standards and how it will be organised, managed, governed and shared.”

Denicol adds that: “We need to advance the discussion beyond simplistic accounts of cost overruns and the routine attribution of blame to managers or organisations. Persisting with superficial cost overrun narratives limits our focus on analysing the underlying systemic dynamics affecting performance, including structural, institutional and temporal dimensions.

“The strategic action to build a public database capturing both costs and benefits of major projects could offer excellent value for money, as multiple parts of government often seek the same information. It needs to come from government, an organisation who would have the access to the wider system. I think Nista [the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority] could be a great player to create such a database.

“It would not only transform the UK, but also lead the world by example, as many countries look to the UK Government as a centre of excellence in infrastructure delivery.”

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