Capital Projects

We help companies extract maximum value from capital budgets and generate superior returns for shareholders and ratepayers.

Capital programs in today's power industry must address regulatory uncertainty, increasing competition, mismatches between capital availability and demand, legacy mind-sets and practices, and the erosion of in-house technical expertise.

By turning capital excellence into a functional strength, companies can benefit from better-maintained assets, greater customer satisfaction, and higher shareholder returns.

What we do

We help clients with capital productivity in all business areas, project types, and stages: portfolio optimization, project concept and design, lean construction, contract and contractor management, contract close-out, and commissioning support.

Strengthening the corporate portfolio. We help clients reassess the logic for allocating capital expenditure (capex) throughout the business and redesign planning and budgeting processes to link project funding to corporate strategy and value-creation potential.
Supporting individual project development. On mega projects worth $1 billion or more, we help clients minimize risks to the balance sheet and boost net present value by up to 25 percent by improving project concept and setup. On small- and medium-size projects, we help create business cases, optimize concepts and designs, and streamline construction—delivering typical savings of 10 to 30 percent of the addressable budget.
Working across the value chain. In generation, we provide end-to-end support on investment projects across all technologies and including building new power stations and refurbishment projects. In transmission, we help reduce costs, improve reliability, and increase customer affordability for large project portfolios; and optimize design, improve lands and rights processes, and implement lean-construction techniques in major time-critical corridor projects. In IT, we support utilities in capturing value by ensuring that projects meet business needs and are easy to transfer from the building phase to the operational phase.

Examples of our work

We have undertaken more than 200 capital-productivity projects globally in the electric-power-and-natural-gas sector in the past 5 years, including the following:

Capital Transformation for a Leading US Utility

Working with a leading US utility on a comprehensive capital transformation that freed up $30 million during the first year and identified opportunities to release a further $300 million per year for redeployment over the long term.

Increasing Annual Transmission Capital Portfolio Efficiency

Helping a major regulated power-and-gas utility increase the efficiency of its $1 billion annual transmission capital portfolio by capturing near-term savings of 6 percent and ongoing savings of 12 to 15 percent across more than 2,000 projects.

Seven-Year Program of Investments Support

Supporting a utility with a seven-year program of investments worth $50 billion and helping save $1 billion on a $10 billion project bundle through a systematic review of scope and a contract-terms renegotiation with suppliers.

FEATURED CAPABILITIES

To help clients extract maximum value from their capital budgets, we invest in developing tools such as these:

Capital system effective practice review. An assessment of the 106 essentials of a great capital system, with benchmarks and survey results to allow objective comparisons of process strength and capital outcomes.
Capex negotiation framework. A tool for optimizing technical and commercial factors, identifying and quantifying negotiation levers, scripting negotiations, and planning back-office support.
Capex control tower. A tool enabling transparent monitoring and on-time project delivery.
Lean construction tool kit. Systematic approaches to eliminate waste in processes and accelerate construction.
Contract management suite. A contract-terms database, a 48-hour-contract-assessment tool, and forums to support flawless contract execution and claims and counter-claims management.