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34agreements on the fractional distribution of actual costs between financing parties. Therefore, itis assumed that an investigation that involves comparison of early and later estimates is justified.This rests on the assumption illustrated in Figure 7 (Samset (2008)), in which illustrates a typicalcost development in a project and underlines the importance of getting things right in the earlystages. Cost overruns or cost savings defined by the difference between final budget and actualcost may often be negligible if early estimates are included in the analysis.As it should have beenCost overunCost savingsStrategicunderestimationAs it wasFront-endimplementationInitialestimateFinalbudgetFinalcostFigure 7 Cost development in projectsThe development of cost from the early stages of definition to decision to build, in the 14projects in which estimates were obtainable, is shown in Figure 8. The cost figures are normalizedto the 2007 level to facilitate comparison. It is shown that the total costs for the 14 projectsincreased by NOK 5.2 billion from the earliest estimates to the estimates proposed by the agencyat the detailed planning level. All projects save one contributed to the cost increase.