Infrastructure development

Projects fail between agreement and delivery

Infrastructure projects rarely fail because the engineering was wrong or the financial model did not work. They fail in the space between the agreement and the delivery, and almost always for the same reasons: the party responsible for execution was never properly consulted, the approvals sequence was mapped optimistically, or the political consensus that supported the project did not survive an election.

Cross-border infrastructure adds a further layer. The host government, the sponsor, the lenders, the operator and the local community each need something different, and each has a different tolerance for delay. Alignment at signing is not alignment at groundbreaking.

What we do

We work on the structure before the shovels. That means establishing what each party genuinely requires — not their opening position — and building an arrangement that survives changes in personnel and government on either side.

Where local capability is the constraint, we design what has to be built alongside the asset itself: the operating capacity, the regulatory familiarity, and the local institutional relationships that determine whether an asset is still functioning in year seven.

We also stay through implementation. Agreements deteriorate quietly in execution, and the point at which a project is most vulnerable is usually months after everyone has stopped paying attention to it.

Who this is for

Governments and ministries developing national or regional assets; sponsors and operators entering unfamiliar jurisdictions; and investors who need an independent read on whether a project's stated timeline is achievable given the actual approvals environment.

This work draws heavily on capacity analysis — an operator's ability to run an asset is a capacity question — and on foreign representation where the sponsor has no standing presence in the country.