1. Introduction
To meet the demand for better management and control
of major public investment projects, an arrangement for
external Quality-at-entry analyses of all public investments
in Norway with an expected budget larger than NOK 500
million (EUR 60 million)2 has been established. This socalled
Quality-at-entry Regime became operative from year
2000 and was the result of an initiative from the Norwegian
Ministry of Finance. The main factors leading to the establishment
of a mandatory external assessment of public
multi-million projects were the poor performance of many
such projects especially in terms of cost. The introductionof the Regime was, among other factors, an attempt to
avoid and control cost overruns [1].
This paper is the first attempt to analyse the development
of cost estimates in the early stages of the quality
assured projects. Very few of the projects have yet reached
completion, which explains why studies of actual costs do
not constitute a part of the present research. The objective
is to develop an understanding of the current Quality-atentry
Regime and to point out its relevance and impact
on the cost estimation process and how it could contribute
to more realistic budgets. The paper is thus concerned with
impacts of quality assurance concerning the efficiency issue,
i.e., focus on the cost criterion. In a broader perspective,
however, it also concerns the more substantial issues of
project viability and long term effects since the end result
of inaccurate estimates could be that nonviable projects
are prioritized (a central perspective in [2,3] for example