Resilience Strategies for Major Infrastructure Projects

Description of the project

This research advances our understanding of option-based strategies aimed at increasing project resilience to different kinds of environmental perturbations. Our key contribution is the concept of dynamically contingent project resilience and the related theoretical framework. Using multilevel complexity theory, we distinguish four types of perturbation-causing environmental dynamics. These differ in the extent to which project actors can anticipate perturbations before their occurrence and control their impacts in the aftermath. Based on real options and resilience theories, we also identify strategies, combining three types of real options and various in-option levers, likely to increase resilience for each dynamic. Strategies are illustrated with empirical vignettes drawn from four major infrastructure construction projects. The framework opens new avenues for studying how infrastructure project planning and design increase resilience during the infrastructure lifecycle.

• Keywords: resilience; major infrastructure projects; real options; risk; uncertainty; environmental dynamics

Team members involved in this project are:

Skander Ben Abdallah, Member of the scientific committee, ESG UQAM

Serghei Floricel, Professor at ESG UQAM