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

Independent evaluation of the health of capital projects is even more difficult during a due diligence because of the limited documentation and lack of access to the project team. Still, it is possible to infer independently the project health and forecast, and the associated risk, by measuring indirect indicators which are known to be closely related to project success: overall project management maturity, specific project maturity and accuracy of the current project condition. From there, it is possible to independently assess a project estimate / forecast and conclude about the quality of the numbers used in the business plan. In addition to an expected estimate or forecast, it is important to always take into account the high variability of capital project outcomes, and thus evaluate the related uncertainty, which will be highly dependent on project maturity. This will provide useful inputs for the transaction business plan sensitivities and may lead to a provision for risk to be included as part of the negotiations.

Read our new White Paper 2025-05 ‘How to Conduct Due Diligence Project Reviews: Project Assessment in Incomplete Information Context’ for a much more detailed development and method on how to address this particular challenge.

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/2025-05_Due_Diligence_Project_Review_v1.pdf

Fostering systematically independent feedback to generate different viewpoints on various areas of a complex project is essential to its success. There are various areas and scales to achieve this objective. Fostering those observations alone will influence the project, and it is essential to actively encourage independent feedback to constantly interrogate one’s current view and understanding. This requires developing benevolence and is finally a major element of the project manager leadership capabilities.

In the White Paper, we expose how commonly used setups and communication / reporting systems actually play the role of providing multiple viewpoints on complex projects. Emergence of those different viewpoints must be fostered to gain a better understanding of the situation.

All those viewpoints must provide objective pictures of the project, and also be benevolent and combined with the context of the observations. There must be a willingness to provide feedback; and conversely, a willingness by management to consider feedback as a basis for meaningful discussions leading to decisions. Refer to our White Paper 2013-12 ‘Actual Project Leadership is About Organizing Effective Conversations – not to Run Properly Complicated Tools’

By definition, encouraging the emergence of different viewpoints on the situation will be disturbing as it may question one’s personal, current understanding of the situation. It thus requires from managers sufficient openness, and even more, actively seeking uncomfortable feedback and reacting positively to having received such feedback (negative or defensive reactions will discourage future feedback and limit the possibility of issues surfacing). It will also require the ability to be sufficiently flexible in one’s priorities and action plans to accommodate the feedback received.

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/2025-04_Organise_meaningful_conversations_project_success_v0.pdf

Setting up a project assurance function is a must to generate powerful conversations around the right decisions to be made in project-driven organisations. This needs to remain a very small organisation. Setting it up must be considered as a transformation journey as it will disturb the status quo and may question the sense of authority of project directors. It must strike the right balance between effectively supporting projects and being an independent expert reviewer able to identify and anticipate issues to raise them in a timely and understandable manner to executive management.

The project assurance function has two complementary objectives, which may be seen in some way as contradictory by some stakeholders:

• Provide support to the projects whenever needed on relevant topics that can make a difference.
• Provide an independent second opinion on project condition and perspectives to executive management – which may be different from the project director view and reports,

An additional third objective for organisations that have a wide portfolio of projects is to identify systemic issues that need to be addressed portfolio-wide.

In reality, those objectives are actually complementary: by developing trust with the project teams by supporting them when needed, and through a benevolent and transparent attitude during project reviews, it will be possible to have better access to the reality of projects and identify the key areas to be raised to executive management for consideration. Those issues will also have been discussed and pre-digested, clearly identifying the sources of difference of opinion and providing executive management with a higher quality basis for effective discussions. Project assurance activities should lead to positive tensions and discussions, leading to the best decisions for the interest of the overall organisation.

We observe that the project assurance function posture between the two main objectives described above may be very different from one owner to the other. Some owners may place more emphasis on project support, and others on independent review and opinion. Still, both objectives need to be considered simultaneously to make project assurance effective.

Read our new White Paper 2025-03 ‘How to Setup a Project Assurance Function within a Wider Project-Driven Organisation’ to understand better how project assurance can be setup and developed within your project 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/2025-03_Setup_organisation_level_assurance_orga_v0.pdf