The present research is underpinned by material published from the mid 1970s to the near present, an era broadly covering the professionalisation of project management, and a full cycle of global economic activity. Studies in this period often highlight earlier classic mega-projects such as the Sydney Opera House, the Channel Tunnel, Concorde and space missions as examples of massive time/cost over-runs or performance failure. However the dataset is rich with examples of both successes and failures to learn from.