[forapurpose]

> lots of public projects seem to skyrocket in prices as they progress

So do lots of private projects. Large-scale projects in general have this problem. I'd like to see a comparison of private and public.

Also, at the end of a public project, the public owns valuable assets.

[pkaye]

Can you give an example of a large scale private project with skyrocketing prices?

[tialaramex]

Essentially all EDF Nuclear power plants? Apple's replacement for the classic Mac operating system scheduled for the mid-nineties as an internal project but eventually achieved by buying an entire OS company?

A large number of movies, split roughly equally between masterpieces like Alien and forgettable failures like Water World?

[isostatic]

> forgettable failures like Water World?

I don't think anyone who was around in the 90s will forget Waterworld, just not for the reasons the studio wanted!

[ubernostrum]

Almost any major corporate IT project?

The idea that the private sector is somehow more efficient at large-scale projects can only be believed by people who deliberately ignore the track record of large-scale private-sector projects.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533563/it-project-man...

> In 1993, FoxMeyer Drugs was the fourth largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S., worth $5 billion. In an attempt to increase efficiency, FoxMeyer purchased an SAP system and a warehouse automation system and hired Andersen Consulting to integrate and implement the two in what was supposed to be a $35 million project. By 1996, the company was bankrupt; it was eventually sold to a competitor for a mere $80 million.

> In 1998, two years after filing for bankruptcy, FoxMeyer sued Andersen and SAP for $500 million each, claiming it had paid twice the estimate to get the system in a quarter of the intended sites. The suits were settled and/or dismissed in 2004.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533563/it-project-man...

> Installed in 2003, the system promptly ran into what were then described as "horrendous" barcode-reading errors. Regardless, in 2005 the company claimed the system was operating as intended. Two years later, the entire project was scrapped, and Sainsbury's wrote off £150 million in IT costs. (That's $265,335,000 calculated by today's exchange rate, enough to buy a lot of groceries.)

Target's failed expansion to Canada makes for a fun read, too: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-cana...

[forapurpose]

Speaking of dramatically inflated costs, you could have made the same point in just three bytes: S A P

[Graham24]

OS/360?