In the current financial downturn, much pressure has been on the government (here in Norway, and I bet elsewhere too) to initiate public works projects or other public investment projects in order to create or save jobs, and last month the Norwegian government indeed presented a plan aimed at securing employment by increasing renovation and maintenance of public buildings, and by investing in railways, roads and harbors nationwide. But, are all projects worthwhile?
Politics?
Part of my dayjob is to do Quality Assurance of major investment projects. Established by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance in 2000, the Quality Assurance Scheme is performed by external consultants under a framework contract, providing a second opinion on major investment projects. So far so good. What is not so good is that our second opinion isn’t always heard, as is the case of rail versus road in Bergen, where the question was whether to build a 2nd parallel rail tunnel because the existing tunnel was stretched beyond capacity or whether to build a road tunnel because the road network is utterly congested. From an overall cost-benefit perspective, building a road tunnel was preferable to building a rail tunnel, yet the government decided to go for rail, and not in favor of the road. Why? Personally I think it is because politically, rail is environment-friendly and inline with the climate change mantra of reducing car traffic and increasing ridership on mass transit. Nothing wrong with that, but what about when it is not economically sound to do? Or maybe it is the economists who have it wrong?
Why QA?
I should add that I was not involved in the particular QA of said project. It just came to my mind when I read this article (in Norwegian), where the head of Jernbaneverket, the Norwegian National Rail Administration, expresses his satisfaction at the governments decision to listen to his particular needs rather than listening to the economists who disqualified the rail project and decided in favor of the road tunnel.
In the end…
…public investment projects are always political decisions, are they not? Is QA even necessary?
