Managing a fast-track megaproject is never easy. It demands close coordination and genuine teamwork among all parties, Client, Consultant, and Contractor alike. In such environments, almost everything is interdependent, time-sensitive, and high-risk. At the same time, projects of this scale increasingly operate under heightened expectations for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance and strong anti-bribery and integrity controls.
At the very beginning, a robust initial risk assessment is critical. It sets the baseline for design decisions, construction sequencing, procurement strategy, testing requirements, approval workflows, and ESG obligations such as environmental impact control, worker safety, community interface, and ethical procurement. However, in fast-track projects, this initial assessment is often developed with limited information and under significant time pressure. As such, it should never be treated as static or final.
Every submission must be reviewed thoroughly, yet approved within tight timelines. Delays in review can clog the system, slow down progress, and create knock-on effects across multiple work fronts. Approvals must also align precisely with the commencement of each project phase, too early invites risk, too late invites delay. These risks, including ESG and governance-related risks, should already be identified, ranked, and mitigated during the initial risk assessment stage.
Beyond documentation, there is the added complexity of Factory Acceptance Tests (FAT), Site Acceptance Tests (SAT), and the crucial task of determining the most appropriate standards and codes of practice. These decisions should be directly informed by the risk register - higher-risk systems demand stricter standards, closer supervision, and more rigorous testing and inspection regimes. Where ESG is concerned, this also includes environmental compliance, waste management controls, worker welfare standards, and safe operational readiness.
In such a pressurised environment, risks and Non-Conformance Reports (NCRs) are foreseeable. What matters most to me, however, is effective supervision, ethical conduct, and never taking anything for granted, regardless of experience, past success, or schedule pressure.
An NCR should always be viewed as a tool for improvement, not fault-finding. Importantly, NCRs play a vital role in validating and refining the initial risk assessment. When an NCR arises, it is often a signal that a risk was either underestimated, improperly mitigated, or not identified at all. This applies equally to technical, safety, environmental, and governance-related non-conformances.
From an ABMS perspective, NCRs and root cause analyses must also be handled transparently and independently, free from coercion, undue influence, or conflict of interest. Decisions must be documented, traceable, and defensible. Shortcuts taken under time pressure especially in procurement, approvals, or inspections represent governance risks that can be far more damaging than technical failures.
Root cause analysis should avoid blaming individuals or shifting responsibility. Instead, it should focus on whether systems, processes, interfaces, or controls are aligned and how they can be improved or amended. The lessons learned from each NCR should feed directly into improving future risk assessments, strengthening ESG controls, and enhancing ABMS safeguards for subsequent phases and future projects.
From experience, system-related NCRs (such as documentation gaps, procedural misalignments, unclear responsibilities, weak approval controls, or insufficient ESG monitoring) are relatively inexpensive to address. In fact, it is far better and cheaper to have five NCRs to improve a system than to allow systemic weaknesses to persist, particularly where governance and integrity are concerned.
Workmanship-related NCRs, on the other hand, are a different matter. Even a single workmanship NCR can be far more costly than multiple system NCRs due to rework, delays, safety exposure, environmental impact, and potential long-term performance or durability issues. Many workmanship NCRs can be traced back to weaknesses in early risk identification, supervision planning, constructability reviews, or inadequate enforcement of ESG and safety standards.
If all stakeholders approach NCRs and risk assessments with this mindset : objective, improvement-driven, ethical, and forward-looking, problems can be resolved diplomatically rather than escalating into conflict. A mature project team uses NCRs to strengthen controls, refine risk registers, reinforce ESG commitments, and uphold ABMS principles, rather than to apportion blame.
At the end of the day, everyone is paid to do their job. But it is how we anticipate risk, uphold integrity, protect people and the environment, respond to non-conformance, and continuously improve our systems that ultimately determines whether a fast-track megaproject truly succeeds not just technically, but sustainably and credibly.
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