A while ago I did some work for TfL (the body that co-ordinates London’s public transport and road network). They had different levels of planning: very detailed plans for the next 2 years, mid-level detail plans for the five years after that, and a long term plan that covered the next 20 years or so in broad strokes.
This has got me wondering- are there any organisations that have plans going out much further than this? I don’t mean just long term statements of intent- I mean ‘in this year we’ll do this, then in this year, we’ll do that’- but with timelines extending far into the future; perhaps several decades, or even centuries?
In Florida, we have a 20-year planning horizon. But for actual specific actions, 5 and 10 year horizons are the standard. Our Capital Improvement Program explicitly lists each project and how much funding it will receive for each of the next five years. The DOT will have further projections for the 5-10 year period, but that’s more for determining future needs than specific allocations of funds.
I don’t know if the (US) Department of Defense actually plans in all phases for fifty years, but I know they often plan for aircraft (and presumably other equipment) to stay in service for up to that long. The B-52, for example, is scheduled to remain in the fleet until at least 2040.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection began work on Water Tunnel #3 in 1970, with the expectation that it would be finished in 2020.
So far it’s ahead of schedule and under budget. (Really).
This may not be exactly what the OP was talking about, but it compares to friedo’s contribution: La Sagrada Familia is a church in Barcelona which began construction in 1882 and is expected to complete in 2026.
In a similar vein, I would say that religions tend to plan for an eternity.
Simply read up on Yucca Mountain-- if the planning/forecasting for nuclear waste disposal doesn’t satisfy the OP’s question, I don’t think much else does.
On a slightly less-than-geologic timescale, there’s the recently-opened Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
I’ve been in that mine and seen the outside of the door of the seed vault.
Power generation companies (non-nuclear) plan for some decades ahead. We would have plans for new investment (based on forecast generation adequacy requirements) out as far as, say, 2030. For a new-build plant, there might be a 2 to 5 year lead time, and a maintenance regime with contractual implications extending as far as a mid-life refurbishment, to take place 15 years after commissioning. So generally, our longest time horizon is of the order of 20 years.
