Optimism bias and strategic misinterpretation regularly cause delays to major engineering projects. Learn how to manage large projects by identifying their key characteristics, examining the key factors and risks that affect their performance and exploring methods to counter their impact on the successful delivery of projects. Looking into examples of best practice, you'll explore the relationship between projects, programmes and portfolios. You'll also discover the roles performed by the project manager, examine the difficulties associated with quantifying transaction costs in major project management and consider how different management approaches impact on these costs. Using stimulating case studies, you'll evaluate the measures of success and compare and contrast 'project success' versus 'project management success'. In the final week of the course, you'll research and present a contemporary example of a major engineering project from your own country. This is the first course in the Managing Major Projects Specialization and first step towards earning degree credit from the University of Leeds. Learners who successfully complete the Specialization will be invited to apply to the enhanced, for-credit Capstone project which will run as a private session on Coursera, and will include live support from tutors. Credit earned by successfully completing the Capstone project can be used as evidence of accredited postgraduate study.