Presented By: Lee Jordan & Chuck Centore

This presentation reframes team dynamics as a measurable and manageable component of the project delivery system. Drawing on applied experience across complex projects, it introduces a pragmatic framework that works with existing teams, not idealized ones, using structured behavioral assessments and deliberate development of team dynamics across all levels of the organization.

We will demonstrate how improving team dynamics enhances project predictability by reducing miscommunication, strengthening cohesion, calibrating judgment, and mitigating behavioral risk.

Attendees will gain a structured approach to diagnosing team dysfunction, implementing targeted interventions, and embedding team performance as a core control within the broader project delivery system.

Presented By: Chuck Centore

This presentation examines the intersection of unique bias and cross-industry learning, two forces that, when misapplied, quietly erode project performance. While projects may differ in form, the drivers of success and failure are remarkably consistent. 

• Scope clarity 

• Risk exposure

• Decision quality

• Execution discipline 

These DO NOT change with context. What changes is the willingness to recognize and apply what is already known.

Drawing on examples across energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure, this session reveals the patterns that persist regardless of industry. It shows how high-performing organizations resist the temptation to reinvent with every project, and instead codify experience into repeatable systems that improve predictability over time. 

Attendees will be introduced to a practical framework for distinguishing what is truly unique from what is universally applicable, and how to embed that distinction into the project delivery system.

Presented By: Mark Myhre & Tommy Boutwell

This presentation will focus on:

• Technical root causes such as incomplete systemization

• Premature mechanical completion

• Poor turnover quality

• Control system integration issues

These failures typically result in high punch volumes, low loop test success rates, and delayed energization. The analysis shows most issues stem from early-phase planning and interface management gaps, not technical complexity.

Mitigation strategies emphasize early commissioning involvement, system-based execution, and disciplined readiness processes to achieve reliable startup.

Presented By: Lincoln Welch & Cody Davidson

This presentation challenges the assumption that CM and Cx can be managed independently. It introduces an integrated model in which commissioning is embedded throughout construction, guiding sequencing, verification, and system turnover based on operational readiness.

We will explore what changes when commissioning is no longer treated as an endpoint, but as a continuous discipline influencing execution. When systemization drives priorities. When progress is measured by readiness, not activity. And when construction is aligned from the outset with commissioning objectives. Real-world examples will demonstrate how this integration reduces rework, compresses schedules, improves safety performance, and accelerates startup. 

The deeper insight is straightforward: Projects are not delayed because the work is difficult. They are delayed because the work is disconnected. This session examines what becomes possible when that disconnection is removed and the project is delivered as a single, unified system.

Presented By: Eric Caldwell & Suresh Subramanian

This presentation explores the unseen boundary between technical success and practical viability, the space where technologies encounter regulatory friction, supply chain constraints, capital discipline, and operational complexity. It is here, in what is often called the “Valley of Death,” that otherwise promising innovations stall, delay projects, or quietly fail. Building on recent advancements in aligning TRL frameworks with other processes, this session introduces an expanded model of readiness, one that integrates Adoption Readiness Levels (ARLs) alongside traditional technical assessments.

This approach moves beyond evaluating performance in isolation and instead measures whether a technology is truly prepared to be deployed, scaled, and sustained within the constraints of real projects. 

The central premise is simple, but rarely addressed: most technologies are declared “ready” at precisely the moment they are most vulnerable. This session will explore why and what can be done about it.

Presented By: Chuck Centore & Eric Caldwell

This presentation examines a fundamental flaw in how projects are assessed, from reliance on qualitative judgment, fragmented analysis, and metrics that create the appearance of rigor without delivering decision-grade insight. These approaches fail not because uncertainty exists, but because it is not properly measured or governed. 

A different approach is needed: quantitative project assessment grounded in data, proven methodologies and integrated risk models. This presentation will explore how uncertainty can be translated into predictable outcomes through objective scope maturity assessment (e.g., PDRI), empirically based systemic risk modeling, and quantitative risk analysis (QRA) that produces transparent probabilistic forecasts tied directly to underlying drivers. 

We will also address how bias distorts judgment, how contingency is often misapplied, and how project maturity should inform both estimate accuracy and risk allocation.

Presented By: Suresh Subramanian & Eric Caldwell

This presentation challenges a foundational assumption in project delivery: that FEED quality is understood. In reality, it is rarely defined, seldom measured, and almost always inferred. Critical deliverables, particularly P&IDs and the data they drive, are accepted without a clear standard for what “ready for detailed design” actually means. The result is predictable: variability, inefficiency, and erosion of delivery confidence. 

The session explores a more rigorous approach, one that defines FEED quality not as a phase completion, but as a deliverable-specific standard tied directly to downstream execution. It examines why FEED developed by one party often fails to support detailed design by another, and why this gap persists across projects and organizations. Attendees will be introduced to a structured way of assessing FEED readiness at the level that matters: the individual deliverable. 

The objective is not to improve FEED in theory, but to ensure that when detailed design begins, the project is truly ready to proceed. Because the most expensive decision in a project is not a change made late. It is the decision to proceed early without knowing what is still unknown.

Presented By: Suresh Subramanian & Stephen Young

This case study examines a different approach, one that treats uncertainty not as something to be worked through gradually, but as something to be deliberately exposed, structured, and reduced before major commitments are made. At the center is a mobile ammonia demonstration unit with a modular design, constrained by transportability, and intended for deployment across multiple locations with varying conditions. 

The challenge was not simply to design the system. It was to determine whether the system should be built at all. This session traces how a disciplined front-end loading (FEL) process transformed an ambiguous concept into a decision-ready project. It explores how technology readiness, modular constraints, cost uncertainty, and execution risk were integrated into a single, coherent framework, one that allowed stakeholders to see not just what the project could become, but what it would require to succeed. 

This discussion will reveal how clarity was achieved without over-engineering, and how confidence was built without false precision. More importantly, it will show how early decisions, made with the right structure and rigor, can determine whether innovation advances or stalls. The greatest risk in first-of-a-kind projects is not that they fail. It is that they proceed without ever truly being understood.