ABSTRACT
Major infrastructure projects are generally high profile, incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Mistakes in projects can alienate stakeholders, waste resources and create a lack of confidence in other major projects. Problem-solving and decision-making are key tenets of managing major infrastructure projects. Major infrastructure projects can impact the economy, the environment, benefit society as a whole and contribute to sustainable living. Successful infrastructure project outcomes, therefore, are not limited to the traditional outcomes of a physical end product which is working, functional and well designed; it must provide value and work well for the environment and those that use it. This requires collaboration with stakeholders, including previously siloed departments, to solve what is termed “wicked problems.” Wicked problems are at the heart of major infrastructure projects today, as goals of expediency and budget, maximizing performance or efficiency while minimizing costs and meeting a desired level of service. They are replaced by the domain of complexity, where rapidly changing environments and fragmentation of goals require fundamentally new approaches (Chester and Allenby, 2019). This chapter looks at how to address the problems with major infrastructure projects, the multiple stakeholders involved and the complex nature of outputs in terms of building, climate, people and value through two separate yet in some ways aligned processes: design thinking and systems thinking.
