A Hetero-Functional Graph Theory Perspective of Engineering Management of Mega-Projects

Megaprojects are large-scale, complex, and one-off engineering endeavors that require significant investments from a public or private sector. Such projects generally cost more than a billion dollars, take many years to develop and construct, involve stakeholders both in the public and private sectors, and impact millions of people. Most of the extant megaproject research is concerned with understanding why the engineering management of megaprojects fails so frequently and which dimensions make them so difficult to manage, including size, uncertainty, complexity, urgency, and institutional structure. Recently, the literature on mega-projects has advocated for a convergence of the engineering management and production system management literature. To that end, this paper proposes the use of Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) and Hetero-Functional Graph Theory (HFGT), where the latter, quite interestingly, finds its origins in the mass-customized production system literature. More specifically, HFGT was developed so that the physical and informatic parts of production system planning, operations, and decision-making are readily reconfigured to support production customization at scale. As the literature on megaprojects is rapidly evolving with a significant amount of divergence between authors, this report builds upon the recent and extensive megaproject literature review provided by Denicol et al. (2020). The paper concludes that MBSE and HFGT provide a means for addressing many of the concluding recommendations provided by Denicol et al. (2020). MBSE and HFGT not only align with current research on megaprojects but also push the boundaries of how the engineering management of megaprojects can gain a unified theoretical foundation.