Empowering Growth: Transforming Project Execution to Achieve Sustainable Success

Context

Startup in the renewable energy sector, focuses on building, owning, and operating power plants for carbon dioxide reduction. Despite having a promising vision and strong investor backing, they faced significant challenges in project execution and stakeholder management.

Challenges

• Significant budget overruns (initial budget of €3.5 million escalated to €7-8 million).

• Delays in project completion (1-2 years overrun).

• Stakeholders and investors losing trust due to unmet expectations.

What this meant

• Proof of concept deficiencies that persisted

• Delayed permissions to operate at a commercial level due to numerous gaps in systems and processes.

• Inability to fulfill promised specifications, operating at only 60% promised production capacity.

• Reactive decision making that was happening on the ground. All resulting in operational chaos due to gaps in the structure, and persistent technical and quality issues.

What we did

• Redesigned organisation structure for project fulfilment:

  • Mapped out to identify and design clear roles and responsibilities.

  • Filled critical roles with strong candidates to ensure readiness and capability for project execution.

• Revamped on-the-ground processes:

  • Revised processes to minimize avoidable errors and failures.

  • Emphasized hiring junior engineers and trained them up to reduce costs while ensuring quality through comprehensive training and coaching.

    
    

• Elevated strategic sales and business development for new projects:

  • Developed a robust new project development process, including how to plan projects and create compelling business cases to attract investors.

  • Established gated process for qualifying projects, ensuring a margin of error within 20-30%, with an expectation of achieving 10% accuracy.

    
    

• Accelerated ramp up of junior engineers into PM roles

  • Trained junior engineers as a project managers to quickly gain self-confidence and readiness for new projects, effectively addressing short-term needs and stopping further financial bleeding
    

Results

• Improved Project Accuracy: Introduction of gatepost projects resulted in more accurate project estimates, leading to better financial planning and resource allocation.

• Reduced budget over-runs, technical and quality issues, through improved operational efficiency, clearer roles, responsibilities and processes

• Better positioned to secure backing for future projects, with a more reliable and consistent approach to project management.

Conclusion

This transformation was crucial for the startup to overcome its operational challenges and restore stakeholder confidence. By redesigning the organization structure, filling critical roles with strong candidates, and revamping processes, the company significantly improved project accuracy and reduced budget overruns. Training junior engineers and developing a robust project development process enhanced operational efficiency and quality. These efforts positioned the company better to secure future project backing and demonstrated the importance of structured project management and strategic planning. The proactive measures taken not only addressed immediate issues but also laid the foundation for sustained success and growth in the renewable energy sector.

At A Glance

Challenges

• Budget overruns

• Project delays

• Lost shareholder trust

• Operational chaos

Benefits

• Improved accuracy

• Reduced overruns

• Enhanced efficiency

• Secured future backing