Dan Gardner is the coauthor of "How Big Things Get Done," a book that explores why so many billion-dollar projects, from nuclear power plants to Olympic Games, go wrong and how some manage to succeed.

Every engineer knows that look. The moment when leadership announces another massive infrastructure project with impossible deadlines and sky-high expectations. Behind the confident nods and technical ...

Nearly a decade in, the ambitious project to widen Interstate 5 through Portland’s Rose Quarter is stuck in neutral. Meanwhile, its price tag has ballooned. Oregon has spent $143.5 million on the ...