Delivering large capital projects on time and on budget has long challenged organizations. And it’s not getting any easier. Across sectors and asset types, from data centers to liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, the scale and complexity of delivery continue to increase, as do the expectations of shareholders, regulators, and communities.
Even the most sophisticated organizations are vulnerable to a familiar trap: the comforting illusion of being in control. Project delivery is “on track”—dashboards stay green, updates sound positive, and risks appear contained—until it isn't. This trap creates significant challenges for the companies building these projects, and for the CEOs, CFOs, and CCOs accountable for their performance.
To understand how the world’s best organizations mitigate these risks, we spoke with more than two dozen senior executives who have collectively delivered hundreds of billions of dollars in capital projects. Their experiences span some of the largest and most complex energy, infrastructure, and industrial developments in North America and beyond.
These executives were open about the challenges. Project teams will hide bad news. Contracts aren’t as watertight as you think they are. New project management technologies are good, but most companies are only just beginning to implement them. They also identified clear actions those responsible for large capital projects can take to ensure project success, and the signals to watch for along the way.
These leaders were emphatic that senior executives should probe beneath the surface of “green status” and identify the signals that prompt executives to start asking sharper questions, interpreting what teams are really saying, and intervening before small gaps become big problems. We have distilled their guidance into seven insights that show how exceptional leaders navigate the pressures of capital projects and turn them into opportunities for lasting success.
1. Independently validate planning and schedules
- The signal: Teams present forecasts with confidence—but without independent validation of what the project should truly cost or how long it should actually take. As more information becomes available, schedules and cost estimates are repeatedly re-baselined.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives treat independent validation as a leadership discipline. They push teams to quickly mature to Level 3 design and schedule definition—and then commission independent cost and schedule assessments to validate the baseline and latest progress.
One recurring lesson from senior executives was blunt: Never rely solely on what the project team tells you the cost and schedule will be. Even the best teams are subject to optimism bias. Without intending to mislead, they may present a plan that fits within available capital or schedule expectations rather than one grounded in external realities.
For that reason, leaders emphasize rapidly advancing engineering and schedule definition to a credible Level 3 baseline, then subjecting it to independent “should-cost” and schedule validation. Independent reviews stress-test productivity assumptions, sequencing logic, contingency levels, and execution risk. They force a candid answer to a critical question: What should this project really cost, and how long should it really take?
On a major LNG project, independent “cold eyes” reviews were used periodically to stress-test schedule and cost forecasts. Senior executives described these reviews not as punitive, but as a “gift”—even when they painted an uncomfortable picture. In one case, an external assessment flagged overly optimistic assumptions around concrete productivity. The initial reaction from the project team was resistance; the conclusions felt exaggerated. But the scrutiny sharpened focus, drove mitigation actions, and ultimately prevented a manageable risk from becoming a structural schedule problem. The value of independence was not in catching failure—it was in preventing it.
Leaders who prize realism over reassurance create the space for early course correction. They confirm cost and schedule independently rather than accepting green dashboards at face value. They then drive plans to evolve with learning and become the organization’s most powerful leadership instrument.
2. Design and contract for long-term value, not short-term simplicity
- The signal: Contract award decisions prioritize mobilization timelines and lowest price over long-term capability and fit, embedding complexity that becomes expensive in the future.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives integrate design, procurement, and execution from the outset. They simplify aggressively, select partners for performance, and structure contracts to reward shared success rather than downstream claims.
Early contracting decisions often defer complexity instead of eliminating it, resulting in later rework and higher costs. Executives can guide teams to prioritize early integration, capability-based selection, and design simplicity. They should encourage scope reviews, constructability assessments, and contract models that reward shared success.
At a petrochemical facility, the owner actively negotiated terms and conditions agreements with 15 prequalified contractors before scopes were finalized. Then two or three contractors were brought on site for a given scope. Work was released in packages, with high-performing firms earning future scopes. This approach rewarded performance, maintained competitive tension, and significantly reduced delay risk compared to traditional procurement.
Designs were challenged rigorously up front. “By the time you get to the construction package, it’s too late,” one project executive says. “Trying to value-engineer pump stations after final design wasted a year and saved little.” Early design simplification and continuous scope validation created options, not rigidity—keeping the project responsive to evolving commercial and regulatory realities.
On an LNG project, the leadership team recognized that modularization—a key enabler of cost and schedule certainty—also concentrated execution risk. To address this, the owner and EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) contractor developed a fully integrated design–execution framework that brought engineering, fabrication, and construction leaders together from the outset. This joint model aligned interfaces, improved constructability, and prevented late-stage rework across the module yards. By linking design accountability directly to execution readiness, the project turned modularization from a risk factor into a driver of performance and predictability.
3. Design project teams around collaboration and transparency
- The signal: Project teams have arm’s-length or adversarial relationships with contractors. This compromises communications, slows decision-making, and negatively affects project execution.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives build project teams based around trust, collaboration, and proactive alignment between all project stakeholders, including their counterparts from the contract organization.
High-performing organizations treat owner capability as strategic infrastructure, not administrative overhead. The senior executives we spoke with deliberately assembled a team with deep expertise across engineering, construction management, project controls, contracts, and safety, and established multilevel “zipper relationships” with their contractors, including senior-executive-to-senior-executive links above the working teams.
In today’s constrained EPC market, owners cannot assume that every contractor team arrives fully staffed with its “A-team” or that capacity pressures won’t dilute focus across portfolios. Strong owner teams therefore supplement contractor capability. By combining deep experience with technology-enabled insight, effective owner organizations maintain control in an environment where execution risk is rising.
Importantly, contract structure is no substitute for owner strength. Even under lump-sum arrangements, engaged owner teams are well connected with contractors. Formal oversight may define responsibilities, but it can also divide problem solving from accountability. True performance comes from partnership: shared goals, transparent measures of progress, and clarity on roles and accountabilities. The contract should effectively be the backstop or worst-case outcome, not the starting point upon which claims and shortfalls are added.
At a large petrochemical complex, one owner unified multiple contractors and engineering partners under a single governance model to recover lost schedule. The owner instituted a weekly forum to ensure interactions and problem solving throughout the organization and across stakeholders. Progress reviews focused on tangible outcomes rather than activity, and open conversations replaced rigid status reporting. The approach fostered trust, transparency, and shared accountability across what had initially been fragmented organizations. What began as a recovery effort became one of the best-performing units on the project.
Contractor relationships reflect leadership philosophy. Executives who institutionalize transparency—through alignment forums, shared data, and clear accountability—create an ecosystem where collaboration becomes a performance multiplier. Trust built in stable periods pays dividends when challenges arise, keeping delivery momentum and protecting value. This is built on knowing your contractors. As one leader notes, “You get what you pay for, but you also get who you hire. Interview contractors. Look them in the eye. Know they’ve done this before. Vet the individuals leading delivery and create a shared narrative across all stakeholders—eliminating finger-pointing, accelerating decisions, and ensuring teams execute with ownership rather than compliance.”
4. Make risk management a daily discipline
- The signal: Project teams can produce a risk register, but they cannot quantify the range of impact, the key drivers, or demonstrate how they are managing these risks at a detail level—often failing to respond to emerging risks and delegate responsibility for ongoing risk management to contractors.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives insist that the owner’s team embed real-time risk analysis, tracking, and management into every level of the organization.
It’s easy to assume that issues are contained because risks are documented and contracts allocate ownership. But risks evolve daily, and static registers don’t capture emerging threats or the weak signals that precede major problems.
Executives can guide teams to treat risk management as a continuous behavior, not a compliance step. They should promote transparent discussions about uncertainties, embed risk thinking into daily decision-making, and reward teams that escalate early rather than hide problems. Megaprojects rarely fail because of unknowns; they fail because known risks are ignored, deferred, or downplayed. What distinguishes the best projects is a culture that treats risk as a mission-critical daily management exercise, not a quarterly review. As one executive puts it, “This is about managing risk, being on top of risk, and being on top of the things that can catch you out and making sure you are ready for those things.”
At one metal manufacturing project, the owner’s team created a “claims avoidance” group. The group proactively identified potential disputes and schedule risks before they happened. This allowed them to make decisions to avoid claims entirely, or at least build a dataset to help resolve issues with the contractor.
In capital project delivery, risks rarely disappear; they evolve. The best executives embed real-time awareness of those shifts into every layer of management. They promote transparency, encourage escalation without fear, and ensure that cross-functional teams act on emerging risks before they escalate. When risk management becomes part of the daily rhythm, organizations shift from defensive reaction to proactive control, protecting both margins and relationships.
5. Engage regulators and communities early, and strategically
- The signal: Permitting and regulatory conditions are not fully understood at the outset. Compliance activities emerge as uncontrollable constraints and are used as justification for delays and cost.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives engage regulators and communities as partners early. They co-define implementation pathways, clarify expectations up front, and actively manage social and environmental commitments as part of delivery strategy.
Waiting for approvals or accepting conditions without negotiation might seem to be the pragmatic approach, but it often creates downstream bottlenecks and reputational risks. Executives can guide teams to engage regulators and communities as strategic partners, not obstacles. They should encourage early dialogue, codesign of compliance pathways, and active management of environmental and social commitments.
A major infrastructure project learned hard lessons from permit complexity. One project leader reflects, “We agreed to conditions early and didn’t fully understand the implications on the project—then spent years trying to meet them.” Early-stage appeasement, such as committing to stringent provincial standards to gain political support, introduced far-reaching operational constraints later. Terrain-specific challenges—from undisturbed archeological zones to fish habitats—further compounded the burden.
“We should have been more prescriptive about protocols early on,” the leader told us. Later phases of the project took that approach, working together with regulators to define clear, pragmatic implementation protocols before final approval. This partnership reduced ambiguity, shortened approval cycles, and built trust that endured through construction and beyond.
On other successful projects, teams got this right from the start. They proactively codeveloped regulatory protocols and sought explicit agreement on how to implement them—rather than treating permit conditions as immutable and opaque. Environmental and archeological leads were embedded within each construction scope to create tailored, practical implementation plans that exceeded compliance while improving productivity.
This clarity of ownership, combined with early and meaningful engagement with First Nations1 and community stakeholders, transformed the social license from a checkbox into a competitive advantage. As one leader notes, “Casual promises are remembered. You have to do what you say—early, often, and consistently.”
6. Anchor all decisions to delivering the business case, not just the project
- The signal: Material changes in market context or project cost and schedule do not solicit any response from project leadership. Often projects miss their full potential because teams optimize relentlessly for scope, schedule, and cost—without explicitly testing whether those decisions continue to maximize returns.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives push teams to really understand how cost and schedule adjustments impact the business case, if external conditions have changed, and to make decisions that deliver or exceed the original business case.
Once a project achieves a final investment decision, project teams often focus on a narrow set of metrics tied to the original plan: meeting budget, keeping to schedule, and satisfying operator requests. However, they can lose sight of whether decisions ultimately support the business case that justified the original investment. Those decisions can suboptimize and destroy project value.
Executives can guide teams to reframe success around value realization rather than milestone completion. They should challenge teams to justify every decision through the lens of value—how it improves reliability, speed, cost efficiency, or stakeholder confidence. Project success isn’t about finishing the design or staying on schedule; it’s about fulfilling the investment promise and delivering long-term returns.
On one major energy project, horizontal drilling of pipeline tunnels was a high-risk activity and a critical component of the overall business case. When tunnel construction costs began to balloon, the company established a special task force empowered to explore the broadest possible range of potential solutions—from changes to pipe specifications to rerouting the tunnels. Access to options that went far beyond those normally available to project delivery teams unlocked a range of possible solutions that delivered greater returns for the project.
7. Integrate operations from the start
- The signal: Operations’ engagement with the project team is treated as a “future” handover point versus parallel activity; commissioning is treated as a downstream phase rather than a core input; and projects hand over assets that meet specifications but underperform in operation, safety, or reliability.
- The leadership move: High-performing executives adopt a project-to-asset mindset. They embed operations early, align incentives around start-up readiness, and deliver sustainable, high-quality, reliable assets.
Many projects run with a clear separation between construction and operations. But treating operations as someone else’s problem often results in assets that are harder to run, maintain, and optimize.
Executives can guide teams by including operations in design, constructability reviews, and commissioning. They should align project teams and operators on common goals, including the business case, from day one.
On an LNG megaproject, the owner embedded operations leaders into the project team nearly a year before commissioning began. Their involvement in planning, constructability assessments, and systems walk-downs brought an operator’s perspective that improved maintainability, sequencing, and long-term reliability. Working alongside construction and commissioning teams, the leaders codeveloped detailed start-up procedures and refined the “block handover” strategy, enabling systems to be tested and energized progressively. This integration prevented costly rework, enhanced safety readiness, and created continuity between project and asset teams, allowing the plant to achieve a smooth, derisked start-up and faster ramp-up to stable production.
Early integration of operations avoids late-stage friction by shifting mindsets from “build and hand over” to “build to run,” ensuring the asset performs as designed in a showcase of readiness rather than recovery.
Leading beyond the dashboard
In megaprojects, “green” doesn’t always mean “healthy.” The difference between projects that deliver the business case and those that disappoint lies in the executive mindset.
The most effective leaders don’t accept reassurance at face value. They listen for evidence of discipline—of proactive risk management, clarity of accountability, and alignment to business value. They make curiosity a leadership habit, asking the questions that surface reality early enough to act.
In doing so, they transform oversight from a reporting exercise into a strategic capability. These leaders know that the goal isn’t just to deliver a project once—it’s to build the muscle to deliver repeatedly, confidently, competitively, and sustainably.
