The World's Biggest Projects. The Decisions Behind Their Success or Failure.
Investigations into megaprojects, engineering, cost overruns, governance and the decisions behind billion-dollar infrastructure.
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Three ways into the library — pick the question you came with.
The Biggest Projects
The largest programmes on earth, organised by industry — airports, rail, energy, semiconductors and more.
Start here →Why Projects Fail
The failure patterns that repeat across billion-dollar programmes — and the warning signs executives missed.
Start here →How Great Projects Succeed
The delivered successes, examined with the same forensic method as the failures — Delhi Metro, Heathrow T5, the Burj Khalifa and more.
Start here →Editor's Selection
The investigations the editor would hand you first.
Selected investigations covering some of the most revealing project successes, failures and governance decisions.
Boeing 737 MAX
In October 2018 and March 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed…
HS2: How Cost, Scope and Schedule Changed Britain's High-Speed Rail Programme
High Speed 2 was sold to Parliament in 2011 as a £33 billion railway…
Berlin Brandenburg Airport
Berlin Brandenburg Airport was meant to open in 2011. It finally opened…
Ever Given: Six Days That Stopped World Trade
On 23 March 2021 the 20,000-TEU container ship Ever Given ran aground…
Crossrail Delay
Crossrail's tunnels were built on time. Systems integration, testing…
TSMC's GigaFab Programme: The Megaproject Machine That Never Stops
TSMC has industrialised the world's hardest construction problem. While…
Kansai International Airport: The Sinking Island
Kansai International Airport opened on schedule in 1994 as a triumph of Japanese engineering — the world's first major airport built entirely on an artificial island. Ground-settlement behaviour proved substantially more severe than early projections anticipated: the soft Osaka Bay clay compressed far faster and deeper than laboratory models predicted, and the first island had settled more than eight metres before a single flight landed. Decades of jacks, seawall raising and monitoring have kept the airport operating, but parts of the islands are now projected to reach sea level by the 2050s. PIA analysis identifies the central lessons as geological forecasting and long-term settlement contingency planning — an enduring lesson in pricing geological uncertainty.
Latest Investigations
Ryugyong Hotel: The 105-Storey Hotel That Has Never Welcomed a Guest
The Ryugyong Hotel was meant to open in 1989 as the world's tallest…
Three Gorges Dam: Delivered at Design Capacity — and an Invoice That Never Closes
The Three Gorges Dam is the largest power station ever built: 22.5…
Fukushima Daiichi
The National Diet of Japan's independent investigation called Fukushima…
Foxconn in Wisconsin: The $10 Billion Factory That Never Was
In July 2017, Foxconn stood beside President Trump at the White House…
Explore by Topic
Six collections. One question: what should executives have known?
Project Failures
The stories behind projects that made headlines for all the wrong reasons — the people, the decisions, and the moments everything fell apart.
Explore the collection →Megaprojects
Billion-dollar infrastructure and construction projects that spiralled out of control — and the people caught in the middle.
Explore the collection →Data Centres
Inside the digital infrastructure boom across Asia — the money, the power, and the hidden costs behind the facilities running the internet.
Explore the collection →Corporate Disasters
When companies implode — the leadership decisions, warning signals and governance failures associated with major corporate crises.
Explore the collection →Leadership & Decisions
The human patterns behind every failure — why experienced organisations sometimes approve projects carrying risks that later prove more significant than expected, and why warning signs get ignored until it is too late.
Explore the collection →AI Infrastructure
The trillion-dollar buildout of AI compute — chips, power, water, and the coming capacity crunch that will reshape the global economy.
Explore the collection →Investigation Series
Multi-part investigations that follow one theme across several cases.
The Airport Megaproject Series
Four airports, four outcomes — the full range of what megaproject governance produces.
4 investigations →The Billion-Dollar Overrun Files
The cases where the final invoice bore no resemblance to the business case.
4 investigations →Engineering Against Nature
When the adversary is geology, water and physics rather than the budget.
4 investigations →China's Megaproject Experiment
Concrete first, people later — the world's largest building programme under the microscope.
2 investigations →Asia's Infrastructure Race
The delivered side of the ledger — the Asian programmes that beat the megaproject odds.
3 investigations →The Projects That Went Wrong
Warning signs emerged across these programmes. The critical question is whether they were recognised…
4 investigations →Watch Project Insider Asia
The confirmed documentaries and channel films — published first on YouTube.
Boeing 737 MAX: What Investigators Found Before and After the Second Crash
The €7 Billion Mistake: Berlin Brandenburg Airport Analysis
How Singapore Plans to Build the World's Most Advanced Airport : Changi T5
Japan Built an Airport on the Sea. Now It's Sinking.
Systemic Failure: The Pattern Hiding in Plain Sight
ProjectInsiderAsia | The Business Behind Billion Dollar Successes & Failures
Project Insider Asia | 20 Years of Project Failure: The Patterns That Never Change
Shorts from the Investigations
Sixty-second forensic briefings from the evidence room.
Explore by Country
United States
8 investigations →United Kingdom
4 investigations →Germany
1 investigation →Australia
2 investigations →India
1 investigation →Hong Kong SAR, China
1 investigation →China
2 investigations →Japan
2 investigations →Egypt
1 investigation →North Korea
1 investigation →United Arab Emirates
2 investigations →Taiwan
1 investigation →Singapore
1 investigation →Project Management Intelligence
Proprietary Project Insider Asia diagnostic frameworks — tools for diagnosing failure before it becomes visible.
Project Failure Pyramid™
The 4-Level Diagnostic for Cascading Failures
Applied in: Boeing 737 MAX
View FrameworkDecision Quality Model™
How Good Decisions Produce Good Outcomes
Applied in: Kansai International Airport
View FrameworkLeadership Blind Spot Matrix™
Identifying What Leaders Cannot See
Applied in: Theranos Fraud
View FrameworkData Centre Opportunity Framework™
Mapping Asia's Digital Infrastructure Growth
Case application in research.
View FrameworkFuture Readiness Score™
Is Your Organisation Ready for What Comes Next?
Applied in: Changi Airport Terminal 5: The Most Disciplined Mega-Airport Programme Still in Delivery
View FrameworkThe Resource-Constrained Growth Model™
Scaling Infrastructure When Capital Is Limited
Applied in: Palm Jumeirah: The Island That Engineering Built and the Crash Nearly Sank
View FrameworkLessons from the Evidence Room
One executive lesson from each of the most recent investigations.
Prestige Specifications Are Evidence-Proof
The Ryugyong's scope was fixed by a propaganda contest — beat the…
Hypothecated Funding Beats Annual Appropriations
The Three Gorges Construction Fund — a national electricity surcharge —…
Regulatory Capture Is a Design Flaw, Not a Scandal
NISA sat inside METI, the ministry promoting nuclear power, and rotated…
Why I Started Project Insider Asia
Last week I was reviewing a live project risk register. It reminded me of Boeing. Same patterns. Same blind spots. Same governance gaps — just at a different scale. After 20+ years advising on projects across APAC, I see the same failures repeating. Not because people lack expertise. Because warning signs often emerge early, yet organisations do not always recognise, escalate or respond to them effectively. That's why I started Project Insider Asia.
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