Infrastructure Development Lessons Learned
This is a practical guide to building a lessons learned for an infrastructure development project — what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects, adapted to the realities of delivering large public or private infrastructure.
What a Lessons Learned is
A lessons learned is what went well and badly, captured to improve future projects. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Lessons Learned. On an infrastructure development project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an Infrastructure Development project
Infrastructure Development projects live or die on delivering large public or private infrastructure. A well-built lessons learned gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how infrastructure development projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What happened
- Impact
- Root cause
- Recommendation
Infrastructure Development-specific considerations
Tailor the lessons learned to the risks that most often derail infrastructure development projects:
- Long lead times
- Permits and land
- Cost inflation over long horizons
Example
On a real infrastructure development project, the lessons learned would be shaped by delivering large public or private infrastructure. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — long lead times, permits and land, cost inflation over long horizons — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.