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Originally Posted by Nondescript Human
Surely it must be someone out there's job to make these cost analyses?
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Of course. And there'll certainly have been more than one internal memo (or conversation) where a "worst case" (or risk analysis based) figure of ten billion plus would have been floated. But who the hell is going to want to be the one telling the press (during the bidding process, when you're trying to get all enthusiastic) it's going to be that much?
Also, there's often a reasonably good reason for costs inflating massively. Like Koen says, to build something well costs money. The intial quotes were probably with a minimal level of transportation investment (say). But then once you're building stuff, someone quite rightly says "Well, while we've got thousands of people here doing things, and planning permission, political momentum, etc we may as well do this other quite worthwhile thing too, right?".
To use a humdrum analogy from my own work: You're going to paint the fascia of a block of flats. So you need scaffolding. But then, once you've got scaffolding up, you may as well replace the fascia completely in uPVC to reduce future maintenance costs. And once you're doing that, why not do the gutters too if they're reaching the end of their lifecyclce? Oh, and then you discover some roof works once you're up there....and so a repainting job ends up costing 10x the initial quote, despite the fact each addition is economically rational.