Capital project advisory · Houston, Texas
Independent due diligence, lender's engineering, and readiness and execution management across every phase of a major energy or industrial project — from a principal who has delivered more than $20 billion of them from the client's side of the table, not reviewed them from a distance.
Where we work in the project lifecycle
Concept → Operations
The problem
Overruns are rarely a construction failure. They are decisions taken years earlier — a concept locked in before the trade-offs were understood, a schedule built to a funding announcement rather than to the work, a contracting strategy that moved risk onto a party who could not carry it.
By the time the problem is visible in the report, the options are gone.
The value is in the front end — in an honest look at whether a project is actually ready to pass the gate in front of it, and in the discipline to say so before the money is committed.
Proof
Advisory credibility is not something you claim. It is a record of first-of-a-kind facilities that had to be engineered, permitted and built with no precedent to copy — and the safety record they were delivered with.
24 million work hours without a lost-time injury — 10 million at Energía Costa Azul, 14 million in Hong Kong.
Services
Five of these are scoped to a decision someone has to make — an investment committee paper, a final investment decision, a mobilisation date, a recovery plan. The sixth is about making sure the next person can make those decisions without us.
An independent, evidence-based view of whether a project will deliver what its sponsors are promising — for boards, investment committees and acquirers.
Technical support to project financing — from pre-close review through construction drawdown and completion certification.
Building the assurance framework itself, for organisations moving from one-off projects to a repeatable capital delivery system.
FID readiness — the work between the decision and mobilisation that determines how the next three years go.
Senior delivery leadership on the ground, embedded in the client's team for as long as it is needed.
Training for the people who will run the next generation of megaprojects — built from what the job actually demands above a billion dollars, not from a body of knowledge written for projects a hundredth the size.
Very few project directors ever own a full project arc; most rotate in and out mid-execution. The knowledge is thin precisely because of that, which is why it has to be taught deliberately rather than left to be absorbed.
Who we work for
Owners, lenders and acquirers ask different questions about the same project. We work for one of them at a time, and say which.
Sponsors taking a project from concept to operations who need senior delivery capability without building a permanent organisation to get it.
"Are we actually ready to pass this gate, and what will it cost us if we go anyway?"
Banks, export credit agencies, infrastructure funds and equity investors needing independent technical assurance before and after financial close.
"Is the cost and schedule we are underwriting the one this project will actually deliver?"
Buyers of projects and platforms in development, where the value sits in execution risk that a data room does not show.
"What are we inheriting, and what does it take to finish it?"
Track record
Most project people are either front-end people or execution people. Very few have carried projects from concept selection through FID and on into construction and operations — which is what makes the judgement at either end worth buying.
Two marks against St Charles FEED: two parallel FEEDs run for separate work scopes. Sectors span LNG export, FLNG, FSRU, FSU and offshore LNG import platforms, blue ammonia and hydrogen, gas power generation, and greenfield and brownfield projects — delivered across Australia, Canada, the USA, Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, France and the UK.
Project detail — open any project to compare configuration, technology, contractor and contracting strategy against your own.
Capability
A reviewer is only as useful as the technology and contract structures they actually understand. This is the ground covered first-hand.
Delivered across Australia, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, France and the United Kingdom.
Principal
Principal
I have spent twenty-five years delivering major energy infrastructure from inside the client's organisation — setting projects up, taking them through gates, financing them, and running them through construction and into operations.
That is a different vantage point from a large consultancy's. I have signed the estimate, argued the contracting strategy, carried the schedule to the board, and lived with the consequences. It is why the advice here is direct: what the project is actually ready for, what it is not, and what has to change before the next decision.
Engagements are led by me. Where a piece of work needs more hands or a specialist discipline, I bring in people I have worked with and named on the proposal — never an anonymous team you meet after the contract is signed.
How we engage
Two to six weeks, fixed fee
A defined review with a written deliverable: due diligence report, gate readiness assessment, IE report or a second opinion on an estimate.
Three months and up, day rate or retainer
Working inside the project team in a named role — interim project director, PMO lead, execution readiness lead — with agreed outcomes.
Ongoing, monthly retainer
A standing call on senior judgement: gate reviews, monthly construction monitoring for lenders, or a sounding board for the client's project director.
Contact
The first conversation is short and free: what the project is, what has to be decided, and whether I am the right person for it. If I am not, I will say so.
