Title: How to improve performance in public investment projects

Authors: Leandro Pereira; Álvaro Dias; Renato Lopes Da Costa; Rui Gonçalves

Addresses: WINNING Lab, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE), Lisbon, Portugal ' Universidade Lusófona/TRIE and ISCTE-IUL, Campo Grande, 376, 1749-024 Lisboa, Portugal ' Business Research Unit (BRU-IUL), Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE), Cidade Universitária de Lisboa, Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal ' Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE), 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract: The objective of this research work is to understand and identify the main cause failures and errors of public investment projects, which lead to significant deviations from the values estimated in economic studies and to propose solutions to prevent it in the future. This research was conducted in Portugal has as a sample of dozens of investment projects that were executed in the last 20 years. The main findings indicate that the factors that explain the low performance of the project are the adoption of non-validated assumptions, the lack of risk analysis, and the insufficient qualifications of the project evaluators. Considering the contributions, the main suggestion is the existence of a preventive entity to evaluate, analyse and assess in an independent way, social and economic return on investment for the society and for the shareholders.

Keywords: investment project; project analysis and evaluation; case study; ROI methodology; Gateway Review Process; GRP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPM.2022.121182

International Journal of Procurement Management, 2022 Vol.15 No.2, pp.219 - 235

Received: 20 Aug 2020
Accepted: 11 Oct 2020
Published online: 28 Feb 2022 *

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