Boston's "Big Dig"

Boston’s “Big Dig”
The “Big Dig” was a tremendous highway project that was conceived in Boston Massachusetts in the 1970s and completed in 2005.   The project would undertake many never before accomplished engineering and construction marvels.   The goal of the project was to bury the interstate in an effort to restore much real estate that had been taken away from the city decades ago when the Central Artery was constructed (Gelinas et al., 2007).
At the conception of the project many stakeholders were skeptical and downright against the project.   The plan was to gain public and political support in an effort to secure federal funds and to get the project started.   The initial price tag for the big dig was approximately $2 billion dollars when the planning took place in the late 1970s.   In date of completion dollars this equated to just over $4 billion dollars.   In terms of calculating the estimated cost of the project, the first error was not calculating for inflation and any unexpected problems.   By the time actual construction had begun in 1991 the initial estimate was too low due to inflation and the cost of mitigation to gain support of the project.    
“Over 14 years, Massachusetts, its consultants, and its contractors carved canyons under Boston while the city hummed above. They designed and built seven and a half miles of highway—161 miles of separate lanes—more than half of them in tunnels. They built six interchanges and 200 bridges” (Gelinas, 2007).   Although the project seemed to be on track and a success on the surface, at least to the public, it was a well known fact to the state, the project manager and the consultant company that the project was over budget, going to take longer than expected, and the federal money was gone.   This information was hidden from the public in an effort to prevent a loss of public support.  
Early on in the project, there was little or no communication between many of the internal and external stakeholders.   There...