During the project development phase, financial parameters are only some of the inputs into the project business plan. The level of sensitivity of the business plan to each of those parameters is therefore assessed in a comprehensive manner. We identify five main factors that drive the sensitivity of the business plan to the financial parameters:

• Relative weight of Capex and Opex in the total cost of ownership
• Actual construction duration until revenue generation
• Expected duration of facility operation and revenue generation
• Ratio of debt leverage in the facility financing scheme
• Currency basket of Capex, Opex and revenue streams

During project execution, industrial owners generally have strong balance sheets and continuous revenues from other operations in parallel to the project. Therefore, any approach to dealing with financial risks during project execution will depend on the overall situation of the owner. For example, the need to implement specific currency exchange protection will depend on other inflows and outflows in that currency at organisational level. The same applies to interest rates, as it will be the mix of all debt instruments currently valid that will drive decision-making.

If the project is particularly substantial compared to current operations, or in the case of Special Purpose Vehicles with partners for a specific capital project, those owner-wide approaches will be less effective and specific protection will be sought by fixing as much as possible financial parameters through fixed price contracts, hedging, fixed interest rate deals, avoidance of excessive foreign exchange exposure etc.v

Financial parameters may significantly affect the overall profitability of capital projects. During project development stage, sensitivity of the business case to financial parameters will depend on different factors, such as the importance of Capex in total ownership cost, the actual construction duration, the expected operating duration and the debt leverage ratio. At Final Investment Decision the strategy of owners and contractors alike will be to freeze the exposure to financial parameters as much as possible.

Read our new White Paper 2025-12 ‘How Financial Markets Influence Large Industrial Projects’ to understand better how those factors influence project development and execution.

This White Paper has been produced following a question by Baishnab Chand (LinkedIn). Do not hesitate to ask for our thoughts on key aspects of large complex industrial projects!

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-12_Impact_financial_markets_industrial_projects_v1.pdf

Critical path volatility is one of the most influential yet least explicitly managed factors affecting forecast reliability in complex projects. In large EPC and infrastructure environments, schedules rarely remain stable long enough for traditional Earned Value–based forecasting assumptions to hold. When critical paths shift repeatedly and near-critical activities expand, deterministic forecasts lose their connection to delivery reality, even when performance indicators appear positive.

The consistent pattern observed across complex projects is not a failure of Earned Value Management itself, but a limitation in how it is applied. EVM was never designed to interpret structural instability in evolving schedules. When volatility is ignored, forecasts become increasingly optimistic at precisely the point when risk is rising. This disconnect explains why many projects experience late, disruptive surprises despite months of apparently healthy performance reporting.

Integrating critical path volatility awareness through applied artificial intelligence offers a practical and achievable way forward. By learning how schedule instability historically influenced outcomes, AI-augmented forecasting restores structural context to performance metrics. Forecasts become adaptive rather than static, reflecting how the delivery system is actually changing over time rather than how it is assumed to behave.

Importantly, this evolution does not require new data sources, major system replacements, or radical changes to established project control processes. The necessary information already exists within schedule updates and performance reports. What is required is a shift in mindset—from treating forecasts as extrapolations of past performance to designing them as living models that respond to execution reality. For organizations seeking more reliable decision support, the objective should not be perfect forecasts, but earlier and more honest insight. When volatility is recognized and incorporated into forecasting logic, management teams gain time—time to intervene, time to re-sequence intelligently, and time to protect project value before options disappear. In this sense, AI-augmented EVM forecasting is less about advanced analytics and more about enabling better, earlier decisions in an increasingly complex delivery environment.

Read our new Expert Paper 2026-03 “From Critical Path Volatility to AI-Augmented Earned Value Schedule Forecasting: Practical Lessons from Complex Projects” by Tauseef Naz Archad to understand better how AI can be used to improve schedule forecasting capabilities

If you can’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/expert/PVD_Expert_2026-03_EVM_Forecasts_AI_Predictive_Control_v1.pdf

Refer to this link for access to other Expert Papers by Tauseef Naz Archad

The size of the owner team is too often underestimated and therefore forgotten in Capex estimates. The owner has many important functions to cover in an industrial project that needs to deliver a facility that can ramp-up quickly, be operable and be fully integrated in its industrial process. In addition, the effort required for project coordination is too often underestimated, whether this function is performed by the owner itself or delegated to a contractor for an integrated scope.

We believe that an investment in a strong owner team definitely has a very significant return on investment. Unfortunately, it is too often the first budget item to be slashed in Capex reviews. The benchmarks provided in this White Paper, which we use during our reviews, should provide a useful reference to all owners involved in a large Capex project.

Read our new White Paper 2025-11 ‘How to Size the Owner Team on a Large Industrial Project’ to have more comparison points regarding owner team size.

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-11_sizing_owner_team_v1.pdf

This White Paper complements and quantifies White Paper 2023-03 ‘How to Avoid Underestimating Cost Expectations during Project Definition Phase for Owners’

One of the most frustrating issues for project managers is that project sponsors tend to anchor on raw early estimates when uncertainties can be very significant (typically 50% uncertainty at the end of the scoping phase). This early anchoring to a low number by management creates difficult situations when estimates are reevaluated during later stages of project development. This even frequently occurs when the level of uncertainty is explicitly stated and insisting that the upper boundary needs to be taken as a reference in particular when considering financing (raw estimate + upper uncertainty level).

Hence, avoidable misunderstandings and discussions can occur when updated, and generally higher, estimates are produced due to a more detailed description of the project in subsequent project development phases. This discussion is often complicated by project scope modifications that often occur during early development phases, making comparisons more difficult.

Our new White Paper 2025-10 How much Growth Should be Expected for a Project Estimate between Stages of Project Feasibility Studies’ provides an overview of detailed PVD rules of thumb when we are called to assess whether it is normal to have deviations in the Capex estimates between different stages of project development. It provides thresholds where challenges or even investigations should be initiated. Moreover, it shows that estimates usually do increase significantly as project definition progresses, This needs to be understood by project sponsors and executive management of owners.

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-10_Scoping_to_PFS_growth_v1.pdf

In our new White Paper 2025-09 ‘The benefits of the Expert Facilitator for Large Industrial Projects’ we will explore the “features and benefits” of the Expert Facilitation, which is at the core of Project Value Delivery’s activities. We will use the term Expert Facilitator to refer to a facilitator who has deep knowledge of large industrial projects, but who is not a stakeholder to the project or organisation.

The word facilitation stems from the Latin word “facilis” meaning “to make easy” or “to render less difficult”. At its core, facilitation is about creating the structure and environment that makes it easy for discussions to flourish, in a workshop setting. The facilitators’ main role is to guide and catalyse discussions towards a desired outcome, building on the strengths and collective intelligence of all the participants – without influencing the content or taking centre stage. This neutral stance sets them apart from meeting leaders, managers, or experts, whose task is often to steer the content, inform, or provide answers and solutions “from the front”.

Some of the critical skills of a good facilitator are:

• Create a safe space and efficient structure: Making it easy and comfortable to share thoughts, explore solutions, and collaborate efficiently.
• Guide the team towards the goal: Design the workshop strategically and use active facilitation to keep discussions on track, in terms of content and timing.
• Ask questions and summarise ideas: Helping participants clarify and refine their ideas.
• Balance participation: Ensuring everyone has a voice in the conversation.
• Be patient and listen: Understanding that the best solutions often come from within the team, who will ultimately implement them.

Expert Facilitators are knowledgeable on both the subject at hand – e.g. large industrial projects – and facilitation. They can provide tailored, efficient, energising and “safe” project workshop development and delivery. They have the experience, tools and methods to be highly efficient and to allow important and fruitful discussions to take place, while reaching the desired workshop goals. The Expert Facilitator allows all the participants – managers and team members alike – to shine!

Learn more about the benefits of expert facilitation in our new White Paper 2025-09 ‘The benefits of the Expert Facilitator for Large Industrial Projects’

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-09_The_benefits_of_the_Expert_Facilitator_v0.pdf

Mega Oil and Gas EPC projects are inherently complex, capital-intensive, and exposed to significant schedule uncertainty due to engineering variability, procurement delays, and construction risk. Traditional scheduling approaches—primarily deterministic CPM networks and manual forecast updates—struggle to capture nonlinear interactions, dynamic risk propagation, and real-time performance deviations. the first Expert 2026-01 “AI-Driven Predictive Scheduling and Risk Forecasting for Mega Oil & Gas EPC Projects” presents an integrated AI-driven predictive scheduling and risk forecasting framework designed to enhance decision-making reliability in large-scale energy projects. The hybrid architecture combines machine-learning regression models, probabilistic simulation, and pattern recognition to analyse historical datasets, live performance indicators, and schedule deviation trends. When applied to a representative mega-project dataset, the model demonstrated substantial improvements in forecasting accuracy, early-warning capability, and scenario modelling compared with conventional methods. The findings highlight the transformative potential of AI-enabled project controls to enhance schedule resilience, risk visibility, and execution reliability in complex oil and gas programs.

Mega Oil & Gas EPC projects involve the production and approval of thousands of engineering deliverables that must comply with strict client standards, international codes, and complex interdisciplinary interfaces. Manual compliance reviews routinely consume excessive engineering hours, create schedule bottlenecks, and lead to inconsistent review quality. The challenge is straightforward: rigorous reviews are essential, yet traditional manual methods are slow, labour-intensive, and difficult to scale across large engineering programmes. In response to this challenge, a pilot AI-assisted review framework described in the second Expert 2026-02 “AI-Driven Compliance Review and Inter-Discipline Checking for Engineering Deliverables in Mega Oil & Gas EPC Projects” has been implemented to automate first-pass compliance checking and inter-discipline coordination across process, mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation deliverables. The framework applies practical mechanisms such as structured prompts, pre-configured AI bots, and rule-based automated checks aligned with standards, including SAES, PIP, ASME, IEEE, API, NFPA, and Aramco specifications. Rather than replacing engineers, the system augments existing review workflows by highlighting likely problem areas, retrieving relevant historical comments, and reducing time spent on repetitive verification tasks. Results from these pilot deployments demonstrate faster review cycles, improved traceability, and more consistent technical feedback, while maintaining full human-in-the-loop governance. The key lesson is that AI-assisted governance can significantly reduce analysis effort, expand review coverage, and strengthen compliance discipline—provided engineering authority and accountability remain firmly with qualified professionals.

Read our two new Expert papers: Expert 2026-01 “AI-Driven Predictive Scheduling and Risk Forecasting for Mega Oil & Gas EPC Projects” and Expert 2026-02 “AI-Driven Compliance Review and Inter-Discipline Checking for Engineering Deliverables in Mega Oil & Gas EPC Projects” to understandbetter how AI can bring value to your project activities.

If you can’t access the link to the expert papers, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/expert/PVD_Expert_2026-01_AI-Driven_Predictive_Scheduling_Risk_v1.pdf and https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/expert/PVD_Expert_2026-02_AI-Driven_Review_Compliance_Checking_Engineering_v1.pdf

Industry maturity is based on 3 aspects:

• Technological,
• Supply-chain,
• Country-specific environment.

When developing the contractual strategy for an industrial project it is essential to understand the maturity level of the industry. This maturity level involves technological, supply-chain and regulatory maturity. Rushing into integrated contracted scopes is not a good idea if maturity and experience is limited for the particular industry. In that case it is better for an owner to coordinate a number of specialised contractors. However, this will require a substantial investment in owner project team capability and skills.

Read our new White Paper 2025-08 ‘Why Understanding Industry Maturity is an Essential Factor When Developing Project Contracting Strategies’ to identify which is the best strategy to fit your expectations.

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-08_understanding_industry_maturity_contractual_strat_v1.pdf

The construction program for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games faced a dual challenge: to deliver a complex project on time and within budget, while also establishing a new standard for social and safety responsibility. Despite the historical tendency for major projects to exceed costs and sacrifice safety for the sake of speed, the Paris 2024 team, led by a strong political mandate, prioritized a “Managed Safety” approach. This proactive strategy went beyond mandatory “Regulated Safety” principles to create a robust, project-wide safety culture.

Key to this success was the appointment of a visible sponsor who championed safety and social impact as core objectives. Project leadership defined measurable, actionable, clear and understandable metrics and developed a comprehensive health and safety manual that all contractors were required to follow. Rather than a purely coercive approach to safety, project leadership focused on everyone’s involvement and on continuous improvement through concrete actions onsite. Communication was key in ensuring constant buy-in and was done through several channels, both formal and informal. Despite strict schedule constraints, project sponsor and leadership took the time to meet teams on site to discuss safety improvement measures and to provide positive feedback on field initiatives, while at the same time demonstrating that worker safety was a genuine priority for them.

These collective efforts resulted in a sharp reduction of the accident frequency rate for the Paris 2024 construction program, which was ultimately four times lower than the national average in France.

Read our new White Paper 2026-02 ‘Strategies to reduce construction accident frequency rate on complex projects – Lessons from the Paris 2024 Olympics Infrastructure Programme’ to understand how to develop the right combination of approaches to reach an excellent safety record and your large, complex project.

If you can’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2026-02_Strategies_Reduce_Construction_Accident_Frequency_vf.pdf

Most megaprojects fail to stay on track because decisions are not made in a timely manner. More damaging than a poor decision is often the absence of one, which can derail a project in both schedule and cost. For the Paris 2024 infrastructure program, we avoided this major pitfall through a dual approach: a binding decision-making process involving all stakeholders, and a monthly information cycle that provided decision-makers with precise, transparent updates reflecting the project’s actual progress. Effective project controls must strike the right balance between automated data crunching and human judgment to detect early signs of deviation. Timely decision-making depends on high-quality reporting, which should be recognized as a task of strategic value.

Another key aspect of our approach was the strong emphasis on the traceability of all decisions and change requests, at every stage of the project lifecycle. While some may have considered this excessive, in my view it effectively prevented late-stage changes that typically have a damaging impact on both budget and schedule. I believe that robust decision tracking, along with a disciplined approach to contract execution, should be more widely adopted across the project management field.

Ultimately, at its core, this project—like all such endeavours—was above all a unique human adventure. Its success relied primarily on assembling a highly motivated, purpose-driven team with the right blend of skills aligned with our objectives, priorities, and shared values.

None of this would have been possible without starting from a blank slate. The owner organisation was established as a dedicated project entity, which gave us the freedom to implement the key concepts discussed in this paper.

Discover more about how a successful owner organisation has been setup for the 2024 Olympic games with our new White Paper 2026-01 ‘Key Takeaways from Successfully Delivering the Paris 2024 Olympics Construction Programme’.

If you can’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2026-01_Successfully_delivering_Paris_2024_construction_vf.pdf

Yann has a substantial career delivering large infrastructure projects. Just before joining Project Value Delivery, Yann was in charge of the special entity tasked with delivering all the infrastructure for the Paris 2024 Olympics, a very large and complex programme of several billion euros delivered on time and within budget.

Based out of Paris and internationally mobile, Yann will support Project Value Delivery in all its activities, based on our philosophy that project management and project control issues are quite transferable between industries and large, complex tangible projects.

For Jeremie Averous, managing partner and founder of Project Value Delivery “the arrival of Yann is a great addition to our experienced team. His arrival will strengthen our expertise and expand our offering in the area of owner organisation and role, in particular for public projects. We will be able to add even more value to the delivery of large infrastructure projects, their owners and contractors“.

Yann Krysinski stated “I’m thrilled to be joining Project Value Delivery and contributing to the delivery of meaningful value for its clients, particularly in the execution of major capital projects. I’m eager to support project leaders in navigating complexity, staying on budget and schedule, and ensuring that sufficient resources, time, and energy are dedicated to achieving high standards of sustainability and social responsibility. Ultimately, every project is a human endeavour. That’s why I’m especially looking forward to helping our clients develop strong leadership and foster alignment across teams—anchoring everyone around a shared vision of success“.

To share his experience, Yann has authored a couple of White Papers that will be published in the following week. Stay tuned to learn more about the success factors behind the Paris 2024 Olympics infrastructure programme!

This White Paper follows on a previous White Paper 2025-06 ‘How Owners can Decide Whether to Integrate Key Equipment Manufacturing and Facility Delivery in a single Contract’.

Strong differences and antagonism in value creation drivers between manufacturing and project delivery lead to conflict on a number of aspects. In our experience, the most significant conflicts arise from different drivers for design – standardisation vs customisation –  and equipment delivery schedule – manufacturing optimisation vs overall project delivery duration and risk

While the difference in value drivers between manufacturing and project delivery makes differences in approaches irreducible, strong governance and executive involvement must design an approach that aims to minimise the downside for the organisation of alterations to the optimal plans for each side. This requires mutual understanding and collaboration between Business Units, and this governance setup needs to be organised in the long term. Tension is unavoidable – it needs to be positive not destructive!

Read our new White Paper 2025-07 ‘How to Operate Hardware Manufacturing and Industrial Project Delivery within the same Contractor Organisation’ to understand better why it is so difficult to have both activities coexist within the same organisation.

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-07_managing_both_manufacturing_project_delivery_contractors_v1.pdf

Industrial projects generally require large specialised equipment embedded in a wider facility, that is designed and built by a generalist project delivery contractor. A key question for an owner is always whether to separately contract the equipment and the project delivery. In our experience, several factors are involved in the choice:

• The level of equipment standardisation, which will be a major driver of lead time and design,
• Whether the equipment includes substantial elements of owner proprietary and confidential design elements or solutions (in particular in innovative processes), where there may be a need to avoid giving the facility contractor all the elements relative to the solution,
• Schedule aspects: the lead time of the equipment compared to project delivery timeline.

While there are strong benefits for the owner in including equipment procurement as part of contractor facility delivery, in particular in terms of performance guarantee interface risk reduction, it is not always possible due to equipment lead times. Still, in particular when Capex is the dominating business plan factor or there are significant benefits in standardisation, choices can be made towards integration. This may drive the selection and mobilisation of the project delivery contractor, sometimes in alliance with an equipment supplier, already at the start of the detailed feasibility / front-end engineering, and not immediately after the Final Investment Decision.

Read our new White Paper 2025-06 ‘How Owners can Decide Whether to Integrate Key Equipment Manufacturing and Facility Delivery in a single Contract’ to understand better how to drive those decisions.

If you can\’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2025-06_standardisation_integration_manuf_project_v1.pdf