Developers and promoters
A promoter's job is to get a scheme consented, funded and bought. Most of the risk sits before anyone is on site.
The scheme is shaped long before it is built
The first questions on a scheme are how big, what kind and where, and each answer narrows what consent and procurement can deliver later on.
- OptionSize and configure the scheme against demand, and find where the constraint sits.
- ConsentDecide the consenting strategy, the scale of the evidence base and how much to commit before examination.
- ProcureChoose the route to market, how early to involve specialists and manufacturers, and which form of contract to use.
- Hand overCarry the commitments and the reasons for each decision into delivery.
Where problems tend to arise
Consenting risk sits before the statutory clock starts
The back half of the DCO process runs to a fixed statutory timetable. Nearly all the time and cost risk sits in pre-application, where there is none. A scheme can spend years there without anyone sizing what consent will cost or how long it will take.
Procurement gets blamed for earlier choices
When a procurement result disappoints, the procedure is usually blamed. The cause more often lies in how clearly the promoter defined what the scheme needs, and in who designed the route to market. Early involvement, run loosely, drifts from reducing risk into pricing it, and each iteration moves the price further from the basis of appointment.
What makes early involvement work
Most of it is decided before anyone is appointed:
- Define the decisions, uncertainties and risk reductions the early phase must deliver, and its success criteria, from day one
- Keep competitive tension, or at least leverage, through parallel bidders, break points or benchmarking
- Tie target cost development to evidence rather than negotiation, and end the phase with a decisive gateway
The contract form matters less than the discipline around it. Target cost works where the client and the work are already disciplined, and struggles where it is asked to stand in for that discipline.
How we help
So that the scheme carries its own record from option selection through into delivery.
At option stage, systems modelling and simulation tests configurations against demand before the design is fixed. Through consent, consenting and DCO delivery sets the process out with owners, dependencies and commitments, and sizes the cost and the examination before you commit to them. For the programme as a whole, capital programme control maps the roles, duties and gates for your form of contract. Procurement and early involvement can be run as a process with gates, owners and evidence through process and organisational improvement, with independent strategic and operational advisory on the route to market itself.
Project:OS maps the duties of 79 contract forms, including the full NEC4 family, JCT, FIDIC, PPC2000 and FAC-1/TAC-1, so the governance follows whichever form you choose.
Worked examples and insights
Questions
We're promoting a nationally significant scheme. Where would you start?
With the consenting process itself. Project:OS sets consenting out as nine connected processes, from consenting strategy and route selection to compliance with the Order once it is made, each with a named owner. Alongside it, the DCO Cost Estimator gives a driver-based estimate of what consent will cost and how long it will take, drawing on precedent from 154,723 published DCO documents across 268 projects.
Can you help us test options before the design is fixed?
Yes. We build models that answer the first questions on a scheme. Ports, configured by demand starts from customer demand and works through to the berth, the yard and the capital and operating cost of each option. Airports, optimised as a system traces one peak hour from demand to the kerb and shows which stage binds and who gains or loses. Both are illustrative models, and each states its assumptions and limits.
Which form of contract should we use?
Start with what the scheme needs. On one-off major projects the contract form tends to be a second-order variable; repetition, standardisation, speed and client capability do more to decide the outcome. Once you have chosen, the duties of that form can be mapped so each duty and sign-off has a named owner.
Do we have to replace the systems we already use?
No. The process can run in Project:OS or be deployed into the systems you already run, with each step linked to the evidence it should produce.
Talk to us about a scheme
Whether it is about consent or procurement, either is a good place to start.
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