It’s a potential train wreck that’s easy to see coming.

The new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center needs more space and more hotels to keep the meetings and shows rolling in.

The state authority that oversees the $800 million hall has commissioned a lengthy study of its expansion needs.

Anyway, the writing is on the wall when it comes to the hall’s expansion. Such studies are not free thinking intellectual exercises, but rather the first step in a lengthy bureaucratic justification of a major project.

Not to put down the idea, for by all accounts, the place is buzzing now and likely needs both additional meeting rooms and, most importantly of all, more hotel rooms.

But wouldn’t it be smart to start planning and construction now, when the economy is down and construction prices are falling for the first time in years?

It’s an idea that I throw out there in my latest column for B&T.

Let’s just say I have seen the alternative – and it’s not a happy one.

One of my first beats as a business reporter for the Boston Herald was tracking the construction of the new convention center.

Work got rolling back in 2000 – just as construction prices, particularly steel, began to soar.
As a business reporter for the Herald, I began looking at the potential for some big overruns based on those construction costs – but was pretty much laughed off by state officials and the high-powered construction exec they had hired.

Of course, the train wreck happened and the project’s budget began to spiral out of control, as anyone who casually followed construction price trends could have figured out.

“Outraged’’ state leaders at one point halting construction to figure out how to deal with a looming, $100 million overrun.

Now, no one could see that one coming, right?

Of course, cuts were made, the project got back on track, and opened duly a few years later.

It was fun to write about – but I am not so sure it was the greatest ride for state taxpayers.