Project governance & risk
Decision rights, assurance, baseline control, and owner capability: the institutional conditions that protect or abandon a business case.
Research · Method · Evidence
Understand before you prescribe.
SPICE studies how decisions, contracts, rights, technologies, and systems combine to shape major-project performance.
REVIEW The site never states what qualifies a project as a major project. There is no agreed definition in the field, and a cost threshold alone was rejected in the review meeting. Publish the centre's inclusion rule here, because it is the first question a reader asks about why these 55 projects were chosen. S1 S2 S3 S4
Programme
Four connected streams.
The most useful explanations cross disciplinary boundaries.
Performance & productivity
Productivity loss, rework, disputes, claims, and commercial architectures that convert uncertainty into conflict.
Indigenous rights & consultation
Rights, jurisdiction, consultation, and legitimacy treated as project-definition questions, never as a generic delay cause.
Technology & systems integration
Interfaces, software, signalling, configuration control, integrated testing, and reliable commissioning.
Reproducible protocol
The method is part of the result.
A claim does not enter the atlas because it sounds plausible. It enters when its definition, source, and limits are traceable.
- 01
Define
Freeze project boundaries, time window, and eligibility rules before comparison.
- 02
Search
Apply a reproducible, PRISMA-aligned search protocol.
- 03
Rank
Assess sources through the evidence hierarchy set out in the working paper in preparation.
- 04
Code
Record only patterns supported by eligible documentary evidence.
- 05
Compare
Separate upstream conditions, mechanisms, and outcomes before synthesis.
Evidence policy
Show what is known and what is not.
The registry distinguishes paper-verified records from screening candidates. Performance figures stay absent until their concepts, sources, and calculations have been checked.
- Visible provenance for every published value
- No comparison without a boundary caveat
- Director approval before public registry expansion