Defining ‘project governance’ for large capital projects

During the past decade corporate governance has received ample attention. Lately the principles of governance have been applied to other management disciplines, especially project management. This evolution of the concept of project governance resulted in various uses and applications of the term, causing confusion among academics and practitioners in various industries. Especially for large capital projects the formal definition of the term 'project governance', and agreement on the content of a project governance model, have been largely neglected. This paper reports on exploratory work to define the concept of governance for large capital projects. An international Delphi survey, that involved credible practitioners as well as academics, was conducted to better define the term 'project governance'. Finally, the paper introduces a framework for project governance.