(vi)  Estimates made at Business Case

The initial estimates quoted were based on business cases developed at different project life-cycle stages: strategic outline case, outline business case (BC) and full BC. The optimism bias levels for traditionally procured projects tended to be measured from either the strategic outline BC or the outline BC and also at contract award. Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects tended to be based on the full BC as the outline BC was not available. A representation of the project life-cycle is given below.

Figure 1  Project Life-cycle