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Assessing Risk in Costing High-energy Accelerators: from Existing Projects to the Future Linear Collider

High-energy accelerators are large projects funded by public money, developed over the years and constructed via major industrial contracts both in advanced technology and in more conventional domains such as civil engineering and infrastructure, for which they often constitute one-off markets. Assessing their cost, as well as the risk and uncertainty associated with this assessment is therefore an essential part of project preparation and a justified requirement by the funding agencies. Stemming from the experience with large circular colliders at CERN, LEP and LHC, as well as with the Main Injector, the Tevatron Collider Experiments and Accelerator Upgrades, and the NOvA Experiment at Fermilab, we discuss sources of cost variance and derive cost risk assessment methods applicable to the future linear collider, through its two technical approaches for ILC and CLIC. We also address disparities in cost risk assessment imposed by regional differences in regulations, procedures and practices.