Sustainability as a turning point for the success of megaprojects. The Italian approach

Since their birth, megaprojects, defined as projects with a budget of more than one billion (USD) (Warrack, 1985), have encountered considerable difficulties in producing the results initially expected: “Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.” as “the Iron Law of Megaprojects” by B. Flyvbjerg states. Some authors highlights that most of Megaprojects have facing problems in producing the expected outcome because of the traditional adoption of the triple constraint as success parameter, which tends to evaluate project’s success on the basis of a delivery that respects costs, time and quality (Silvius, 2017). However, megaprojects usually have an impact that can go well beyond the immediate completion of the project (Turner, 2012). The different stakeholders tend to evaluate the success of a megaproject at different times and considering non-univocal criteria. The literature (Shenhar and Dvir, 2007; Zolin, 2012; Turner, 2014) generally highlights that the project participants (project manager and team) evaluate project success immediately after the delivery phase, while consumers judge success in the months following the end of the project based on how well it achieves its immediate business objectives. In addition, investors and megaprojects’ sponsors are able to assess the project success only after two or three years, evaluating (a) the financial ability to refund the investment and (b) the alignment of the project output with the company strategy goals (Derakhshan, 2019).