Welcome to the IPM podcast. APM is the childhood body for the project profession. My name is Emma DeVito, and I'm the editor of project apm's coarsely journal and your host today. I'm speaking again with bent flew via. The first BT professor and inaugural chair of major program management to the University of Oxford Sayid business school, who has just published a new New book together with journalists and Gardner, called how big
things get done. The surprising factors behind every successful project from home renovations for science, exploration published by MacMillan Avid podcast. Listeners might remember, I spoke to Bent back in March, 20 21 about how to make your projects, a success in which he
spoke about reference class. Forecasting, one of the ways in which to help ensure the realistic planning budgeting, as setting of expected benefits for your projects, Been formulated the iron law of Mega projects that contends that 1 billion dollar plus mega-projects rail tunnels nuclear power stations Olympic games were almost always blow their budget and schedule and yield fewer benefits and promised his new book, outlines how the data shows this is no mystery.
It's usually the result of terrible forecasting and planning. The good news is that he explains how every projects from a house renovation to the building of a new nuclear power station can be done far more More successfully, in fact, his approach which hinges on his reference class, forecasting tool, will he hopes help us to get to grips with the most critical mega-projects of all the climate change. Emergency, we all face but hello, welcome back to the Opium podcast.
So I'm delighted to have you back. Thank you very much and thank you for having me again. Let's get down to your book, How big things get done, the surprising factors behind every successful, Checks from home, renovations to space exploration. First thing I wanted to congratulate you and such a gripping read, which is not something I usually say about most business books. Why did you want to write this particular book when you did because they had to do something
during the pandemic. But I started thinking about it before the pandemic and planning. Its and the reason that I wanted to do it was that I wanted to do something that was written in a more popular fashion, you know where you Have to be an academic or a professional project manager in order to understand what we were saying in the book, but it was written in a language. We are pretty much any person. Could pick it up and understand what it was about and also understand that it actually
relates to their life. It's not just about these big projects you hear about in the news like hs2 or a new skyscraper somewhere in the world. It's also about the products we do in our daily lives like you know, Organizing a holiday or a wedding or doing a home. Renovation is an example. We love and we use in the book. So we also wanted to write about project management in the way that it became clear to people that this is actually about your
life. It's not about something that is happening, only in professional circles. It's also happening in your daily life. One of the messages that really stuck with me is the central idea is think, slow act fast, could you explain to listeners What this actually means and how it should be applied to
projects. The first thing I want to say is that I think some people would rebel against things slow because they think it means take a long time, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it means that you need to slow down your thinking in accordance with the findings, in behavioral economics. So, you know, Daniel kahneman's book called thinking fast and slow. It's about. We have these two ways of thinking and one is our spontaneous way that we use as a
fallback position. She's the fastest ways, we think fast and that gets us into a lot of trouble. So there's probably a good reason in evolutionary terms that we have this ability to think really fast, you know, but some things are not suited for that. And I would say that a big project is the kind of thing that is not suited for fast thinking that you actually need to carefully, consider what you're doing.
Because the fact that it's big means that it has big consequences, including on your own life. It's one of your private projects, So the we basically use the results from behavioral economics and Behavioral Science and saying, okay this is a very, very well documented finding that we actually need to think slow to be successful. Behavioral economics, don't go further than that.
But we go further, we take the action side in because, of course, that's important when you're doing projects, it's all about action. There's no project isn't worth much. If it's all just thinking or words on paper, it needs to happen in reality and that's Where the action comes in and we've started products very carefully and and many people actually think the bigger the project you do, the more risky and difficult it is.
And we find that's actually not, that's not the main problem, there's a bit of Truth to that but not much actually, the main thing is the longer. It takes the more risky it is and the higher risk of going terribly wrong. So it's actually time that is the killer for projects not size and this is something thing that has never been documented before that, it's actually about time and not size time is the killer.
So that's why we say egg fast. So by aging fast, you can actually reduce your risks enormously, especially you have been thinking slow for her. So that's why we say the rhythm of success in projects is think slow act fast. So when you say act fast and if you act slower, there's higher risk. Can you spell out why that is? Is it because you've got a greater window open to Events. That might disrupt the project. Exactly.
That's that's the key the window and how big the window is and we call it the window of Doom and that's very well founded. I mean, this is based on heart research and because the bigger you make the window, which means the the bigger you make the period that you are delivering in the higher. The risk is that something bad is going to fly through that window and smash up your project, black swans, for instance, to use the term that nesting Nicholas taleb has made
popular. That it actually turns out that the risk of black swans derailing. Your project goes up exponentially with the longer the time you take. So it's very risky to take a long time in terms of black swans. And this is a very important, maybe the most important finding in the book, in my own point of view is that the vast majority of projects have fed Tails regarding performance. So so products are Black Swan inclined.
That means that the best thing you can do to reduce Who's that Black Swan risk and other risks to emphasize is to reduce that window by keeping it short. And and we study successful project leaders who are doing exactly. That probably the most famous right now is Elon Musk. You know, he's been extremely successful in his company.
So that's Tesla and SpaceX in using these principles that we are describing in the book, like getting to production really fast and, and thinking things, Through very carefully before you start actually doing things and how do you square the thinking slow with the current appetite for agile and iterative thinking and just doing something and pivoting and experimenting. So I want to distinguish between two types of projects projects that are easily reversible,
where you can very easily. Reverse your decisions and doesn't matter much, you know, whether you did something and you have to redo it. And that's Agile is good for situations where you can easily reverse your decisions and you can get a learning process going and then you just you revise. So this is common in software and that's where a child comes from, right? But I don't mean to say that a child should be limited to just software. It's actually very useful method in lots of context.
But software is particularly suitable, because you're not building anything physical, and it's very, it's quite easy to change things. And that's why you talk about me. Mum. Viable products also in hii, right? You just build a minimum viable product, your Market, put it to Market your test it, and then you just take it back again and you, and you fix things that don't work and you improve it, then you send it out again and you go through iterations like
that. That's fine for products that are easily reversible, but products that are not reversible so irreversible projects, you can't do that. So, for instance, if you're putting on a wedding, it's not a good idea just to try a little wedding, you know, and then see how it goes, and then you do another one, you know. The same thing. Like if you're building a skyscraper, how on Earth would you say? Okay, we're going to put up a skyscraper, it doesn't work.
We take it down again and then we do another one, that would be agile, right? Doesn't work. So you have to make a very clear distinction between reversible and irreversible decisions. Most big projects that actually irreversible. Now, they don't have to be some big software products can be built in an agile fashion and, and some change management products can be done in an agile versus where you're just changing organizational
structure. Sirs and organizational processes and so on. And where it's not that big of a deal, if you make a mistake and have to redo it. But anything, you know, like you're building a tunnel under the channel between the UK and France. You can't just start boring and then say, okay, if start working, will start pouring somewhere else.
Why does thinking slow and acting fast, not usually happen because we are programmed to not do this, we are hard-wired from nature from biology, for whatever reason. Probably very good revolutionary regions. We have something called availability bias. That whatever pops into our brain first and makes itself available as a thought. And this could be a thought about a project or an idea for the project. We tend to take on to that and then disregard all sorts of
other things. We actually kind of lose perspective because we already have a prospective. Namely, the first thought that came into our mind. This is very well-documented again, in Behavioral Science and behavioral economics, that we have this and this is something to watch out for. And that's why we think fast, we just It jumped to the first thing.
And then we assume that this is all there is Kahneman has the word for he called it. We see a tea which is a terrible acronym, but that's what he calls it it stands for what you see is all there is. So what you see is all there is that's an extremely strong, cognitive bias we have and and can a man spends a large part of his book describing this and how it trips us up. So that's what's happening in projects is that we quickly. Let's go on to some idea.
Maybe even a specific technology technology that we're going to use for this project and then that's all we see. What we see is all there is and we run with ads instead of instead of setting stepping back and saying, okay now I have one idea now let me start to think about some other ideas and we give very clear guidance in the book and and take the readers hand and walk the reader through processes that you can use to step back and think more systematically about what are
the Alternatives here? What are the many other ways that we could do this? This and then decide, which of these ways are you going to use? One of our main means is to ask why we encourage anybody, who's doing a project to First, sit down and ask themselves or whoever is doing this project, why are you doing the project Y? And you need to have a very good answer to that question before you start.
So, you actually know precisely and very well thought out what the reasons are that Doing the project then after you know that you can start thinking backwards from that. That's the really the end product, you want to end up with, then you work backwards through the against diagram and to the left side of the diagram. And then you start thinking about how do I deliver the why? And, and what's the best way to
do that? That's a way to avoid falling into this trap of committing to a bad idea of front which is very common. And if you do that, then you'll get the opposite of thinking slow acting.
So fast. You get think fast X Lo because you have, if you haven't thought out what you are going to do, then all sorts of problems are going to pop up when you can least afford it. And when it's really going to slow you down which is in the delivery phase, I want to talk to you about thinking, right to left. So that connects with what you were saying. Just then about, what is it? Why are you doing this project? What do you hope the outcomes to be?
So thinking right to live is referring to the process. Chart that is used in most project planning and management. So the Gantt chart classically where you have the end result the outcome on the rights and then everything that needs to happen left of that. So you start all the way on the left and then you eventually end up on the right.
We say reverse that process, start on the rights, then work your way backwards to the lift and then you start delivery while you keep your eyes on the right? So, you know that at all times, that anything you do. Do is contributing to what's on the right of the diagram. And the right is established by the question, why, that's why you ask the why question, why are we doing this? What we're doing it? Because we want this, and that
this is your end results. So the why question helps you put the right thing on the right side of the diagram? And then, then you work backwards. And the key thing here is that this helps you having, you know, you, you're basically having a North star that will lead you all the way through the project delivery process. No matter. Complex it is and how much you you you tend to get lost in the weeds from time to time.
If you look up and you look at what's out there on the right you know where what you should be aiming for and then you just look down and see is what I'm doing now. Actually contributing to that outcome and if the answer is yes, keep doing what you're doing. If the answer is no, stop doing what you're doing and start doing something that actually contributes to the outcome. And very often people get lost in their projects, you know, they lose their way. Way, because it's not clear.
What? What's in the, The Box on the right of the process diagram, I was curious on your thoughts about optimism. Optimism bias. How you mitigate against that in a project? Yes. Also, we are seeing that. There are two big things that decide the fate of projects one in Psychology. The other is power and the
optimism bias is psychology. So this is probably the most well established its cognitive bias and the most research cognitive bias that exists it again, very well documented that we are hard-wired to be optimists. And again, probably for good reason we needed to get up in the morning and get to Work and take care of our kids and and do projects and and nobody and certainly not me would deny
that. We need optimism in our lives and we need optimism in project management and project delivery. However, optimism can be misplaced, it can really get you into bed situation. Like just imagine if you are getting on a plane and you hear the first pilot saying to the second pilot, I'm optimistic about the future. Situation. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be on that plane. I want to get off. I don't want a pilot who's optimistic about the future
situation. I want the pilot whose they did certain and realistic about the fuel situation. Now, what's the fuel of products? The fuel projects is money and time. We need money and time to fuel our products to get to that box on the right, you know, of the diagram. And I don't want to work with project leaders that are To
Mystic about the budgets. I don't want to work with project leaders that are optimistic about the schedule because I know that if that's the case that we have a huge risk of crashing just like the airplane would have if you optimistic about the future situation. Now I'm lucky. I get to work on a lot of projects because a lot of product making this error and then you know, once they made the error, I can hired into it
too. Deep is the project and get rid of the optimism and and then see if we can, can we can we Salvage the prop? The project can be re-baseline it and then make sure we have a realistic schedule and a realistic budget for for delivering, the rest of the project successfully. And there are, you know, very good ways of doing this and they're different ways. So I've developed a method called reference class forecasting, but they also something called similarity
based forecasting. They are, you know, where you can, you can before you even start the You can try to imagine everything that could go wrong with it and so that's called a pre-mortem. You actually pick the project apart before you start it and see. Okay. If everything goes wrong what could happen here and then you protect yourself against all these things. So there are many ways you can, you can deep is projects. It's called there's a common term for this. Now, that is emerging Court
decision, hygiene. This is a kind of hygiene that you need to do on your decisions, to make them sound, you know, and healthy to make. A healthy decision. You need to Citizen hygiene D biasing is part of decision. Hygiene, we very much need that on Project. How important is the well, the politics side of things and how is the project manager or project leader to. You prepare yourself as best, you can to deal with that side of things. So we haven't.
And if you ristic about that and we call it, builds your Bridges before you need them. It's too late to start developing stakeholder relations, when you need the stakeholders to help you, when things start going wrong with your project, you need to have built those relations. So those are the bridges that I'm talking about. You need to build those bridges before you need them.
So that they are there when you need them and you can cross them, you can, you can communicate with the stakeholders and you can, you can ask them for help, you know, to, to get the project back on track. So that's that's the, the stakeholder management. Part of things. And it's really important, incredibly important. If we find that the many, many successful project leaders that we have studied for the book included, including interviewing them, but also studying their
work, you know, directly. They all do this one successful. IT project manager who's managing multi-billion dollar and multibillion-pound IT projects, you know, said that he that when he's He's leading one of these shoot, I'll see projects, he's spending more than half his time, on stakeholder management. He's like a, he's like diplomats, you know, out there trying to make sure that the project has good relations with everybody and that's in his
view, that's what he needs. To spend his time on and then he's bringing in people to do the more technical stuff and actually running the project. He's just out there way in front of the project, making sure that relations are good. So that when they hit a bump in the road, They actually have the relationship, they need in order to get over it.
So that's, that's the way you can call it, like you say, managing politics because that's the sort of the micro politics of the project is, what do the stakeholders think about the project? Will they support it, or will they be against it? That's very important for the project leader, and the Project Lead. It seemed to be aware of. Of course, there are many other ways that politics can play a part. So one way that we talk about in the book is the is the politics
of manipulating. The business case of France in order to get it approved and that's another type of bias we call it power buyers. So on one side we had such we have psychology that we talked about and there you have the cognitive bias is a which optimism bias is the most prominent on the power side, you have people deliberately manipulating things. So on the psychology size is non deliberate, people actually not conscious of their own biases or
optimists are not conscious. Mostly not conscious, they're optimistic when they're making. Decisions. They actually think they're making realistic decisions when they are making optimistic decisions with political and Power Bars. It's different people actually know what they're doing. They are manipulate that it's called cooking. The numbers in the US they call it cooking the number so you cook, you cook the books and you cook, you cook the business case.
So that the project looks cheap, you know it's much easier to get a project, proved that health and low budget and the same with schedule, you cook the schedule so that it looks short. It's much easier to get a project that proved that looks like it can be delivered quickly. So so that's that's power bias and it has exactly the same effect as psychological bias except it's deliberate. But these two buyers is the psychology psychological biases.
And the power buyers is actually reinforce each other and create these very unhealthy business cases that we see for the vast majority and I cannot emphasize enough. How big that? Make sure it's your projects is that him Bad Business cases. Well, if you're an experienced, project manager project leader, do you become aware? Do you think that you'd have this optimism bias at the more projects you have under the belt?
The more you realize that actually you need to be somehow turn your optimism dial down so it will it will keep happening to some degree but successful product leaders, do get the optimism bias and other buyers is under control, their anchoring anchoring anchoring in the wrong base rates. For instance, That's a classic, you know, that you totally Estimate the risks. That's also a type of optimism,
right? And it's called the base rate fallacy, and it's again a very well-established fallacy and behavioral economics. And this is the kind of thing that said, successful product leaders, get over these big pitfalls, but that doesn't mean that nobody, I'm there. Nobody's perfect regarding psychological bias. It would basically mean that you would have to take your brain out and put another brain in there because it's hot. It's hot. It's truly hard wired for this.
You can get rid of I would say about I would say 50 to 70% of your biases, if you are very, very good but but you will have those 30 to 50 percent bias still, you know, and and Kahneman argue something like the same in his book thinking fast and slow and other Publications that that he did.
So I think that's again also a pretty solid thing but it doesn't mean that it's not worth the biasing, it really is and what I find with with really successful product leaders and I've worked, I've been very fortunate. We work with many for many, many years. And, and some of them we interviewed for the book and new ones, we interviewed for the book, and I find they all have this really attractive disposition and their personalities are being realistic optimists.
So they extremely rigid, they're really realistic about what are the odds in the fields that we are playing in there. Like, somebody going to the casino and totally understanding the odds, not being optimistic about you win on the roulette, you know, if you know what the real odds are But at the same time having an optimistic can-do attitude. You know of course we can find a way to get this project done.
If we have this realism at the outset we are not building a pie in the sky we're building something real. We know what the laws of physics are and the laws of Economics Etc loss of organization. We abide by it. All we think slow, we really think what we about what we're doing. We iterate, as we call it in the book. We experiment.
We do things over and over. And over and over again, in order to learn before we start building in the real world, so that we don't make the mistake that we mistakes that we do during the experimentation on the ground. Once we are building and it's expensive. That's how the successful project leaders work and it's really stimulating to see people working like that.
So I mean, one of the piece of advice in your book is that if you're embarking on a project that you should try and find the most experienced people to be on the team and to lead that project, What is that? Not common place. It doesn't happen that often it happens, but it doesn't happen nearly often enough. Unfortunately, people don't think enough about it. That's another of these, you know, thinking fast things that hey, we have a leader here, he or, she can probably do this project.
Let's get going, you know, and instead of spending the time of thinking about what kind of need to do, we need here and we have a heuristic for that to we call it higher and master builder.
So we call these very successful project leaders for Master Builders and and the term comes from the Middle Ages, you know, where you call the famous Architects and Builders who built the cathedrals of Europe. So the famous Cathedrals that we have and still admire today were built by people who really knew what they were doing mostly and and, and they got the name Master Builders. So we decided to use that name for today, you know, in the Contemporary world, for people
who really good at delivering projects, no matter what, type of products they don't have to be Cathedrals, you know, they don't Have to be buildings. It can be like, we talked about Master Builders at Pixar, for instance, to take an example. So so that's what we call them and they are not being hired enough. I was ours to give you an example. I was an expert witness of on a big hydroelectric, Dam in Canada, that had gone terribly
wrong. So, the usual pattern, huge cost overruns, huge delays, not delivering what we were supposed to deliver and not at the time, it was supposed to do it. Etc. Etc. So they decided to have, you know, an inquiry headed by preeminent judge, you know, to really serious.
And with, you know, with the Firepower that you get, when you can pull people in and question them, and people have to answer and I was, I was an expert witness on that and it turned out during the inquiry that People who were hired to build the dam had never built a dam before. Never can you imagine this is a multibillion-dollar, hydroelectric Dam and you decide to choose somebody to printed who's never built a dam before. And and now this is one thing
and it's okay. And this is actually what got me started? Researching mega-projects was I was thinking, is this normal? You have these crazy stories like the one I just told you From from you know one off Mega projects in different places around the world and I started wondering is this normal? Is there a pattern here? We had one in Denmark, that similarly went wrong for the
same reasons, actually. So what they did in Canada was they figured, you know, it's actually difficult right now to find somebody who can build a dam like this in Canada but we are doing a lot of oil and gas projects. So we had to have a lot of project leaders who are used to building multi-billion dollar, oil, and gas products and listen, you know how difficult can It be, if you know how to build one, big project, you know, how to build another big
project. So that's highest hire somebody from oil and gas and let them build the dam. Now that's what I mean by this is not slow thinking that's for sure, that's fast thinking, let's find a quick solution and it costs billions of dollars. That's what happens you know when you do it like that. So yeah, so it's a kind of laziness of not wanting to go through the slow thinking and really do everything you can to find the Master Builders.
But there's also a real problem and that is there's not enough Talent around. So the world is building more and more big projects at an incredible rate right now. So we are just getting More and bigger projects across the board, across the panel. So there's a lot of demand for people who can do this. So they are not enough as simple as that. They demand far outstrips the
supply of talent in this field. And that means you actually might have to grow your own talent, but then you have to be aware of it. You can't just assume that whoever you hire can build the project if you have, if you are hiring people who doesn't have the talent that you need for building your product and that assumption is often made and that's another heuristic we have don't assume Verify, and we find
that. You know, big products are littered with assumption that that are wrong assumptions that are wrong, you know, like one thing after another is assumed and nobody bothers to spend the time to verify, whether it's actually the case and therefore the products go wrong very quickly with because they have built on wrong assumptions.
What advice would you give to project professionals who are just starting out in their career, about what they need to focus on what they need to do in order to manage their projects successfully and to the government and to become successful project leaders in the future. So, first of all, it is a great time to be in the project management and product leadership field because there's a lot of demand and it's very easy to get a job.
And I also encourage my students, you know, it to choose this field and and, of course, choose the areas that are going up. So I actually have a lot of students who are concerned about being in oil and gas or oil and gas is a huge field in major product. It's been around forever for decades and decades and decades. And now, you know things are not right now.
They're going well because the prices of oil up again, but if you sort of look at it at The last, the last 10 years and the next 10, 20 years, it's probably not the field to be in and like I tell my students, why do you want to be in an elevator that's going down if you can be on one that's going up, you know? And they are all the areas and it's it's easy to give jobs in
other areas. So that's one thing I would say this is great feels to get into but to be concerned and think about things slow about which of the many different areas. Different project types that exist is that you actually want to do and I will Right now I would advise against going into oil and gas, I would advise against going into nuclear unless you are on a team that's trying to develop SMR small modular reactors which might have a future but we don't know.
Nucleus is very unproven technology incredibly as it's incredible as it sounds because you've been doing nuclear for 50 years and at least and but it's still unproven and it doesn't work. It's way too expensive. That's just the effect of nuclear right now is Only economics. Nothing ideological about whether nucleus good or bad or dangerous, or not. It's, it's about economics and it's too expensive. It's that simple. So that's one thing.
Be careful about what you choose and then after that, you know, if you are young and entering the field, make sure you get to work on a project where you leaders are not. The kind of people that I talked about in Canada. They they are people who have never tried to build the project before and they're doing it. That's not what you want to learn. How to do you want to find a master builder? And then you want to work with that master builder and watch that master builder work.
So that you can that you can be a kind of a net princess or just watch things and work on a team. You know, that really works because it is well lit. That's the kind of team you want to get on and not on the majority of teams that are learning by making mistakes. You know, I mean, you have to make some mistakes but it's much more efficient to be on a team that is led by somebody who's successful.
So that's the The second thing I would do, if I was starting a career now and that's what I advise my students to do. Now, back to the thing about nuclear, So we started 25 different product types in the book regarding their performance and nuclear comes out at the very bottom with it projects
actually. And with hydroelectric dams and with storage some nuclear wastes, these are the worst performing projects in terms of being Black Swan prone, meaning that they have extreme outliers in regards, of course, and cost overruns and schedule and schedule over on etcetera. And they are difficult to manage and they end up being very expensive. That's what we can do. We can't afford it. And if we're going to solve the climate crisis, if we if we right now, we're deciding to
focus on those projects. We wouldn't be able to do it in time, 2030 and 2050, which are the timelines for solving, the climate crisis, just would not be made. So, you know, there was no way to do it, it's way too slow even in China and so we have that, we have something that be called a natural experiment in China where Anna has really tried to ramp up all forms of power production that don't produce CO2, and of course, nuclear is one of them and they just can't
ramp it up, it's too difficult. Even in China, where you don't have the safety and environmental regulations that you have in countries like the US and the UK and Europe. The Chinese can't do it. And we take that to mean that you just can't do it. It's not doable.
Nobody can do it right now. Luckily, this is actually Where the focus is in solving the climate crisis, the focus is on Renewables now and especially solar and and wind are the two best performing products of the 25 product types. That we studied they way out there in terms of good performance, they are actually outliers that it's crazy. But everage practice in product management is a disaster and good practice, good practices and Outlier.
It's the exact opposite of what you usually say, when you talk about these things. But it's a fact, you know, and it's document in the book for the first time. This is actually a brand new research result that we have is comparing these 25, different product type, there's a nice diagram, that, that shows it in in one overview, which products are performing well and which are not.
And luckily, you know, the projects that we need in order to solve the climate crisis are doing extremely well and they perform really well. They are done really fast and we also What the reason is, you know, for this, which is the modularity is in it. Exactly. So that's why, that's why I use the term Lego, so I'm Dana Sande. Lego is is a Danish brand is the, it's the biggest toy manufacturer in the world now and with the test with the popularity of Lego and why are
they go so important? So, so popular, and an important in kids lives, I grew up with him. I remember stepping on them as a child and hurting my feet, you know. No, all over our house and I find that that no matter where I go in the world and talk about Lego, people understand what it is and that's why I like to use it as a metaphor for what it is. That works in project management is exactly the process that you can build. Like you build it with Legos and I'm saying the sound of a
successful product. It is click, click click. It's like putting building blocks together like you put Legos together. Click click click and if you look at it look at what a wind Wind Farm is you know it's a bunch of wind turbines and each wind turbine consists of Four Legos. So there's one Lego that is the foundation, there's one Lego that is the tower.
There's one Lego that is nestled which is where the where the turbine itself is sitting and then they are the wings or the blades you know that you Click on the cells so you click the tile on the foundation to click the nacelle on the tower. You click the the blades on the Nestle and you have a wind turbine and it's actually ready to produce electricity immediately. And these giant wind turbines are put up in less than 24 hours now.
Multibillion-dollar wind farms used to take years to to do. Now they're built in seven months, seven months for a multi-billion dollar project is unheard of. That's exactly what we need in order to solve the climate crisis. And that's exactly thinking, slow acting fast. You know, in a nutshell, how optimistic do you feel about the way Mega projects or projects are going to be delivered in the future? Future developed Mystic that there will be greater success.
I'm pretty optimistic. I mean, this is one of the things we discovered while doing the book that I find that there's more reason to be optimistic than I thought there was. And I was already pretty optimistic, you know, because I mean, I've seen a lot of things going well on the projects that I've been working on, and I'm seeing that spreading, there's more and more interest. They didn't used to be much interest about these things.
Now, there's massive interest, everything everywhere in the world for the simple reason that we are doing. So many and so large project like we talked about earlier. So so yeah I'm optimistic and I'm especially optimistic about the discovery that it's actually is already happening it. It's amazing to see how fast Renewables are being built out and I want to emphasize and people often think when I'm - or nuclear, and I'm positive on Renewables that.
That's something ideological and political. It's I'm an economic geographer. I'm looking on the at the economics of this and this is pure Early based on the economics, solar and wind are dirt cheap and they're getting cheaper every year. Nuclear is incredibly expensive and it's getting more and more expensive. The more we try to build it because we can't figure out how to build it right and how to build a cheap, you know, and therefore the price is going up, well, any Economist who gets
that information? Will know that one of these things is not going to work and the other is and it's very clear which is which here and that's that's a very positive thing that we are actually Lucky in the Even that we are in where we're solving the energy crisis is probably the most pressing problem that we have ever had as a species that we just happen to have a technology that is spreading like wildfire right
now. Even the most optimistic organizations like Greenpeace and and you know Green organizations for wind and solar and so on. Underestimated how fast it would develop that. They actually thought it would take much longer than it has done even to this date, you know? And, and instead of taking a generation to do it, it has taken like 19 years to get to where we thought it would take a generation. So what we thought would take 25 years as has taken nine to ten years.
So that's a really good reason to be optimistic and that's Just Energy. There's there are lots of other reasons to be optimistic in other areas. Thank you so much. I think we've really gotta cross what your book is about. So I would recommend this to get their hands on a copy how big things get done, and that's happened. I'm out now by in McMillan, so thank you again for your time. It was it's been a lovely speaking to you. My pleasure.
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