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level). Consequently, some of the observed deviations from the early estimates may be said to be“tolerated inefficiencies”. It’s illuminating to combine the numbers and consider the projects as awhole, as illustrated in Figure 3.20 00018460189591871918 00016 00014 00013268NOK million (2007 value)12 00010 0008 0006 0004 0002 000-Early est. Agency Analyst BudgetFigure 3 Cost development from the early stages of definition to budget at the time of decisionto build, N=14All financial figures in Figure 3 are at the 2007 level. In absolute terms, the total costs for the 14projects increased by NOK 5.2 billion (€ 650 million) from the earliest estimates to the estimatesproposed by the agency at the detailed planning level. It should be noted that all save onecontributed to the cost increase. At the detailed planning level, the estimates are reviewed byexternal quality assurers who recommend adding NOK 0.5 billion (€ 625 million). At the time ofdecision to build the projects have a total budget of NOK 18.7 billion (€ 2.3 billion), somewhatlower than the total budget recommended by the consultants, but NOK 5.5 billion (€ 687million) above the costs associated with these projects at the early stages of definition.DiscussionThe data presented in this paper concern projects that have been subjected to the QA2 qualityassurance requirements as conducted prior to the decision to build. The focus in QA2 is on thecontrol aspect. It merely consists of a review by external quality assurers to verify that the basisfor decision on appropriation of funds is acceptable in terms of scope and quality.The nature of the quality assurance is that it is conducted at a stage gate before pre-planning andthe decision to build. The QA2 quality assurance is mandatory, but if and how therecommendations made by the analysts are applied in the subsequent production of the projectoutput rests solely in the hands of the executing government agency and the project owners, thatis the responsible Ministries. The external quality assurers have no formal role in the execution ofthe projects and cannot be held accountable should costs at a later stage get out of control.11