Ask any contractor who has worked on a plant, warehouse, or processing facility what keeps them up at night, and cost overruns will be near the top of the list. Industrial projects are big, technical, and packed with interlocking systems. A small slip in one area can ripple through the entire budget before anyone notices.
The good news is that most overruns are not bad luck. They come from a handful of predictable estimating mistakes. This article looks at where those mistakes begin and what you can do to avoid them.