This intensive one-day bootcamp is designed for professionals seeking to strengthen their practical understanding of delay, disruption, loss of productivity claims, and dispute avoidance in construction and infrastructure projects. Through a structured and comprehensive programme, participants will explore how claims arise, how they can be analysed and managed, and how better project, contractual, and commercial practices can reduce the likelihood of escalation into formal disputes. Attendees will examine the realities of project delivery in a real-world context, using practical examples, interactive discussion, and case-based exercises to build stronger awareness of the issues that most commonly affect time, cost, productivity, and contractual outcomes. By the end of the bootcamp, participants will understand how to: Recognise the common project, commercial, and contractual conditions that give rise to claims and disputes. Understand the core principles of forensic delay analysis, including methodology selection, concurrency, pacing delay, and extension of time considerations. Assess disruption and loss of productivity issues using clear, reasoned, and credible approaches supported by appropriate records and evidence. Distinguish mitigation from acceleration, and understand the contractual, practical, and commercial issues that arise when parties seek earlier completion. Apply better contract awareness across JCT, NEC4, and FIDIC to support stronger administration, improved compliance, and dispute avoidance. Identify recommended practices across the project life cycle that can help prevent, manage, and mitigate claims more effectively.

As AI reshapes how organizations make decisions, high project complexity becomes the new operating reality. With the rising need for accountability for outcomes in the AI-defined era, the project profession plays a critical role in partnering with the C-suite to turn ambition into measurable impact. In this fireside chat, the CEOs of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Association for Project management (APM) will explore how project professionals, PMO leaders, and the Project Controls discipline are evolving from delivery-support functions into strategic enablers of performance, resilience, and investor trust. The conversation will examine why data maturity matters, how AI can move teams from “here is the dashboard” to providing strategic insights, and why sustainability must be understood not only as a social impact enabler but also as a core measure of long-term project success and a driver of business value through responsible delivery.

As AI reshapes how organizations make decisions, high project complexity becomes the new operating reality. With the rising need for accountability for outcomes in the AI-defined era, the project profession plays a critical role in partnering with the C-suite to turn ambition into measurable impact. In this fireside chat, the CEOs of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Association for Project management (APM) will explore how project professionals, PMO leaders, and the Project Controls discipline are evolving from delivery-support functions into strategic enablers of performance, resilience, and investor trust. The conversation will examine why data maturity matters, how AI can move teams from “here is the dashboard” to providing strategic insights, and why sustainability must be understood not only as a social impact enabler but also as a core measure of long-term project success and a driver of business value through responsible delivery.

Projects rarely fail because nobody knew there was a problem. More often, warning signs were visible, concerns were known, or risks were recognised early—but people chose not to speak up, challenge decisions or escalate issues. Psychological safety is often misunderstood as being about comfort or avoiding difficult conversations. In reality, it is a critical factor in effective project delivery, enabling teams to surface risks earlier, make better decisions and respond more effectively to change. Drawing on research and practical experience from complex project and programme environments, this session explores why people remain silent when it matters most. We will examine barriers including fear, futility and friction, and consider how leadership behaviours, organisational culture and delivery pressures can unintentionally reinforce silence. Attendees will learn how silence contributes to delayed escalations, poor decisions and the familiar challenge of "green dashboards and red reality." The session will provide practical techniques to encourage constructive challenge, improve communication and create environments where concerns and ideas can be raised before they become costly problems. Because in projects, the cost of staying silent is usually paid later, when the opportunity to act has already passed.

Outlining the beginnings , intentions and published thoughts of this first ever national specification for Project controls and then road testing it on an actual huge a huge complex project which needed putting right. And it actually worked! If the creation of the standard is interesting the evidence based proof through use is compelling.

PMOs are traditionally designed to provide governance, reporting, and assurance. While these functions remain important, organisations increasingly expect PMOs to play a far more strategic role—enabling better decisions, improving delivery outcomes, and driving measurable value across portfolios. However, transforming a PMO into a truly value-adding function is rarely achieved through new tools, frameworks, or processes alone. It requires developing the capability, mindset, and confidence of the PMO team itself. This presentation explores the role of coaching as a powerful approach for enabling this shift. By focusing on people rather than just processes, coaching can help PMO professionals build stronger relationships with delivery teams, influence decision-making, and move from compliance-focused activities toward proactive value creation. Drawing on practical experience and real-world examples, the session will highlight how coaching techniques can empower PMO teams to think strategically, challenge constructively, and foster a culture of ownership and continuous improvement. It will also explore how PMO leaders can create the conditions for teams to evolve into adaptive, future-ready functions that support both project delivery and organisational strategy. Attendees will leave with practical insights into how coaching can unlock the full potential of their PMO teams and help position them as a trusted partner.

This presentation sets out the core building blocks required to establish a strong, dependable project controls environment on major projects. It explains how effective project controls provide clarity, confidence, and early warning, supporting informed decisionmaking across the full project lifecycle. The session focuses on the practical foundations that allow cost, schedule, risk, change, and performance information to work together as a single, trusted picture. The presentation explores how clear governance, defined roles, consistent processes, and quality data underpin successful controls. It highlights the importance of early set up, integration between commercial and planning functions, and creating the right behaviours so that controls are used to support delivery rather than simply report it. Attendees will gain an understanding of what “good” looks like, common pitfalls to avoid, and how a wellembedded controls environment enables transparency, accountability, and confidence on complex major projects

Building on Dr Bruna’s 2023 and 2024 Project Controls Expo case studies on establishing a PMO, this session shares the next stage of Laing O’Rourke’s project controls journey: the two-year milestone of the PMO Virtual Control Room influencing portfolio outcomes. Working across central functions and live construction projects, the Control Room turns data into independent, decision-ready insight. Early warnings and portfolio perspectives are surfaced through heatmaps, trends and Boston Matrices, enabling balanced interventions between business and project needs at monthly Executive Business Performance Reviews. The session shares how project controls have developed the leadership capability and culture, shifting: From reactive reporting to proactive executive and operational discussions in psychologically safe environments. From lagging to leading indicators that support timely, strategic decisions. From project-level views to portfolio insights and outcomes. A featured success story shows Operations Directors using the Control Room as an independent ‘conscience’, prompting different questions during site visits and strengthening alignment between operational reality and executive intent. Other benefits realised include improved data quality and process compliance, business analysis and analytics capabilities, and executive confidence in portfolio decisions. Session takeaways include transferable lessons on maturing a business-wide insight-led culture and embedding a more proactive portfolio management culture.

As AI reshapes how organizations make decisions, high project complexity becomes the new operating reality. With the rising need for accountability for outcomes in the AI-defined era, the project profession plays a critical role in partnering with the C-suite to turn ambition into measurable impact. In this fireside chat, the CEOs of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Association for Project management (APM) will explore how project professionals, PMO leaders, and the Project Controls discipline are evolving from delivery-support functions into strategic enablers of performance, resilience, and investor trust. The conversation will examine why data maturity matters, how AI can move teams from “here is the dashboard” to providing strategic insights, and why sustainability must be understood not only as a social impact enabler but also as a core measure of long-term project success and a driver of business value through responsible delivery.

As AI reshapes how organizations make decisions, high project complexity becomes the new operating reality. With the rising need for accountability for outcomes in the AI-defined era, the project profession plays a critical role in partnering with the C-suite to turn ambition into measurable impact. In this fireside chat, the CEOs of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Association for Project management (APM) will explore how project professionals, PMO leaders, and the Project Controls discipline are evolving from delivery-support functions into strategic enablers of performance, resilience, and investor trust. The conversation will examine why data maturity matters, how AI can move teams from “here is the dashboard” to providing strategic insights, and why sustainability must be understood not only as a social impact enabler but also as a core measure of long-term project success and a driver of business value through responsible delivery.

Last year, ‘The People vs. Project Risk’ put our profession’s most familiar offenders on trial - the vanishing actions, the copy-paste registers, the deadline dodgers, the report fabricators - and the room returned a guilty verdict. This year the case comes back on appeal, and the prosecutor is switching sides. The Case for the Defence argues that the people who commit risk crimes are rarely bad practitioners: they are predictable products of the conditions we create. Optimism bias baked into baselines. Incentives that reward green dashboards over honest ones. Meetings where silence is safer than truth. Re-examining the evidence through a behavioural-science lens — from the planning fallacy to psychological safety — and drawing on 15+ years across nuclear, aviation and giga-projects, this session exposes the real defendant: the system, and the leaders who design it. Delegates leave with a practical Leader’s Test for diagnosing the conditions in their own programmes, and condition-level interventions that change behaviour without adding a single new template. Expect humour, jury participation and an uncomfortable closing verdict. You don’t need to have attended last year’s trial but if you did, you’ll want to see how it ends.

As AI reshapes how organizations make decisions, high project complexity becomes the new operating reality. With the rising need for accountability for outcomes in the AI-defined era, the project profession plays a critical role in partnering with the C-suite to turn ambition into measurable impact. In this fireside chat, the CEOs of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Association for Project management (APM) will explore how project professionals, PMO leaders, and the Project Controls discipline are evolving from delivery-support functions into strategic enablers of performance, resilience, and investor trust. The conversation will examine why data maturity matters, how AI can move teams from “here is the dashboard” to providing strategic insights, and why sustainability must be understood not only as a social impact enabler but also as a core measure of long-term project success and a driver of business value through responsible delivery.

In this talk I explore the deceptively powerful mindset of assuming positive intent—and how it can fundamentally change the way we experience work and life. Drawing on insights from human evolution, modern workplace dynamics, and stories ranging from the Apollo 13 mission to everyday mishaps at home, the session examines why our brains instinctively default to negative assumptions, and how this instinct, while once essential for survival, can now create unnecessary stress, conflict, and emotional fatigue. The talk reframes optimism not as naivety, but as a practical skill: a conscious, learnable choice that builds resilience, improves relationships, and helps individuals respond more calmly and effectively under pressure. Through humour, relatable examples, and moments of reflection, I demonstrate how assuming positive intent reduces emotional reactivity, strengthens trust, and positively influences team culture. Attendees are left with simple, actionable strategies to interrupt kneejerk negative interpretations, ask better questions, and lead with curiosity rather than judgement. The talk concludes with a practical 24hour challenge, encouraging participants to experiment with assuming positive intent in every interaction—and to experience firsthand how choosing the better story can lighten emotional load, improve resilience, and make daily life at work noticeably easier.

Malaysia’s aspiration to achieve and sustain 2,000 kboe/d production is increasingly challenged by declining base production and a growing number of non-viable development projects within the national portfolio. In response, Development Resource Integration & Value Enhancement (DRIVE) was established as a structured initiative to systematically assess the viability of development projects and to identify targeted interventions that enhance project economics and delivery certainty. Since its establishment, DRIVE has reviewed 201 development projects initially classified as non-viable or having negative contractor value. Through integrated evaluation and optimization efforts, 66 projects have been reclassified as viable, unlocking approximately 1,485 MMBoe of reserves and supporting production targets for 2026–2028. However, 135 projects remain unresolved, representing significant unrealised value and posing a risk to long-term production sustainability. To address this, DRIVE advocates the institutionalization of Integrated Resource Planning and Optimisation, encompassing standardised designs, long-term sequencing of drilling, floaters and T&I activities, early procurement strategies, and cross-project integration. These measures aim to accelerate project delivery, reduce development costs, and improve overall portfolio resilience. The paper outlines DRIVE’s findings, value creation potential through reduction in projects development schedule and cost as well as the path forward to safeguard long-term production targets.

Too often, PMOs are known for reporting packs, governance gates and chasing actions — rather than for the value they create. In a complex capital delivery environment, the PMO brand matters. As the UK water sector embarks on the largest infrastructure investment in a century, United Utilities has mobilised a huge £7Bn Capital Delivery Programme. This created a clear need to re-build the brand around trust, influence and delivery value. This session shares the practical transformation journey of re-positioning PMO as an “intelligent sat nav” for capital projects and programmes — helping teams plan the route, navigate change, surface risks and make better decisions. The presentation will cover how United Utilities refreshed its vision, operating model, capability framework, digital roadmap and engagement approach. It will explore the cultural shift required to move from reactive reporting to integrated controls, insight-led conversations and future-ready PMO skills. Attendees will take away a practical framework for re-building the PMO brand: define the promise, prove the value, build the capability and high performing engaged teams, digitise the insight, and create a culture where PMO is trusted as a delivery partner rather than tolerated as a backward looking reporting function

The rail industry is at a pivotal moment, with significant transformation underway through the creation of Great British Railways (GBR). This presentation will explore how technology and innovation are driving project controls to new heights in this sector. We'll discuss the opportunities and challenges that GBR presents for project professionals. The session will begin with an overview of the current state of project controls in the rail industry, discussing common challenges such as managing large-scale infrastructure projects, dealing with multiple stakeholders, and ensuring compliance with regulations. We will then delve into the role technology plays in mitigating these challenges by showcasing modern solutions that enhance collaboration, improve data management, and provide real-time insights for better decision making. We finally discuss the importance of change management and colleague engagement throughout this transformative process, balancing the needs for a smooth transition with long-term success. We will conclude by outlining future trends and potential innovations within project controls for the rail industry.

Join us for a practical, thought‑provoking session exploring how project organizations can act as effective data aggregators in complex delivery environments. Major programmes are often characterized by fragmented systems, inconsistent taxonomies and multiple delivery partners, making it difficult to establish a reliable, single view of performance. This session examines a key challenge, whether to pursue large‑scale standardization at source, or adopt a more adaptive approach to bringing data together across live environments. Through an interactive demonstration, we will explore how modern analytics approaches can unify disparate data sources, align structures and improve consistency without wholesale system change. Attendees will gain insight into reconciling inconsistencies, strengthening coding logic and improving confidence in project controls data. The session will also consider the balance between standardization and aggregation, when intervention is worthwhile on live programmes, and how evolving technologies can bridge gaps between legacy systems and modern reporting needs. Drawing on real examples and practical scenarios, this session offers a clear perspective on establishing a coherent view of performance and unlocking deeper insight from complex programme data.

We are entering the most transformative era of program and project management in history. For decades, success was measured by time, cost, and scope. Today, those measures are no longer enough. Artificial Intelligence accelerates transformation at a speed no methodology ever imagined, forcing leaders to rethink not what they deliver, but how and why they lead. The lesson is clear: technology alone does not transform organizations—leaders do. AI may automate execution and predict risks, but only leaders can embed ethics, inspire trust, and guide humanity through change that truly matters. This session will reveal the next step: how program and project management can evolve from tracking progress to shaping transformation itself. The future will not belong to those who deliver faster, it will belong to those who lead responsibly, with vision, courage, and humanity.

Project controls has long been defined by retrospective reporting — variance analysis after the fact, earned value snapshots that confirm what teams already suspected, and dashboards that inform but rarely transform decisions. AI is changing this fundamentally. This presentation draws on real-world implementation experience at Gleeds, a 100-year-old global consultancy, where a bespoke AI language model trained on decades of historical project data and machine learning tools for cost, schedule, and performance forecasting have moved projects from reactive reporting to predictive, decision-enabling intelligence. The session covers practical lessons from deploying AI across a 2,000-person organisation: what worked, what failed, how to build data literacy at scale through structured academies, and how AI-augmented project controls changes the conversations happening in boardrooms and on site. Drawing on insights from 100+ episodes of the Project Flux podcast — featuring project leaders, technologists, and clients navigating AI adoption — this talk provides an honest, practitioner-led perspective on where AI genuinely adds value in project controls today, where hype outpaces reality, and what the profession must do now to remain relevant in an AI-augmented delivery landscape.

AI is increasingly positioned as the solution to poor forecasting, delayed reporting, and weak decisionmaking in capital delivery. Yet in practice, many AI initiatives in project controls underperform or quietly stall. Across infrastructure and captial programmes, a common pattern emerges: organisations move directly from collecting project data to trying to consume AI-generated insight. By skipping the critical data synthesis step in between, the classic “garbage in, garbage out” problem prevails. Therefore, although practitioners invest in copilots, dashboards, and predictive tools, the underlying schedule, risk, and cost data remains fragmented, inconsistently structured, and manually reconciled. Without defined data standards, integrated schedule–risk–cost models, validation rules, and governance ownership, AI does not create clarity, it amplifies inconsistency. Forecast outputs become difficult to trust, adoption declines, and the PMO is left defending the tool rather than strengthening decision-making. This session introduces the “missing middle layer” in digital project controls: cleansing, connecting, and consolidating data into a governed single source of truth. Attendees will leave with a practical maturity roadmap to move from reactive reporting to predictive controls, thus allowing AI to enhance PMO authority rather than undermine it.

Standard forms are balanced ecosystems; amendments often introduce unintended consequences that shift risk, obscure entitlement, and undermine control mechanisms. However, bespoke amendments are the norm rather than the exception. I intend to give examples of aspects of standard forms that often get amended and state how this impacts project controls.

This Presentation focusses on the benefits of ADR. Project challenges occur in difficult factual and causative situations: meaning programmes cannot be revised with firm commitment, nor works with clarity, nor costs with firmness. Humans naturally ignore problems, or dig in: either way, disputes beckon. However, an independent Accredited Mediator or Early Neutral Evaluator can swiftly reconcile parties, and resolve conflict in a commercially-savvy, fair and balanced way. ADR has impressive success rates and is simple to set up and cost-effective compared to Adjudication, Litigation or Arbitration. Construction and Engineering projects can particularly benefit from ADR because they are susceptible to change and the unknown, which lead to contract misunderstanding and practical limbo. Silos form and collaboration disintegrates. Meantime, delivery must continue but is incredibly difficult in the midst of uncertainty and discomfort. On the spectrum of ‘quick deal’ to legal proceedings, neither is satisfactory. Fast-paced environments demand smarter solutions. Ironically, and yet thankfully, English law developments point to ADR. A magical space therefore exists through engaging an experienced Mediator or ENE: hear how your projects can benefit from this expertise, sort problems and save relationships using Case Studies and established research. Meet delivery with more Certainty, Predictability and Accountability.

Two years on from our last presentation on the “data monster”, project controllers still spend up to 50% of their time handling data - yet the technological landscape has shifted dramatically, creating a growing risk for organisations that fail to adapt. What was once seen as an operational inefficiency is now a strategic vulnerability. In a world where speed, accuracy, and foresight define competitiveness, organisations trapped in fragmented data ecosystems are structurally disadvantaged. The breakthrough is not incremental improvement - it is a change of paradigm. Project Controls is moving beyond digitisation into full virtualisation. Structured data is no longer the end goal; it is the foundation for intelligent, agent-driven systems capable of executing, monitoring, and continuously optimising controls activities. This session unveils how “agentisation” transforms the function - shifting effort away from manual data handling towards autonomous orchestration. We will show how data management has evolved into data orchestration, then into agentised platforms, and ultimately into virtual co-workers: hyper-contextualised, intelligent, orchestrated agents equipped with real-life know-how

As AI transforms Project Controls, the profession is moving beyond traditional reporting toward predictive insight, decision support and strategic influence. However, AI readiness is not only a matter of tools, data and processes — it is also a human transition. This interactive session explores the mindset, communication and leadership shifts Project Controls professionals need in order to adopt AI with confidence and turn AIsupported insights into meaningful business decisions. Participants will examine how limiting beliefs such as “AI will replace me,” “I’m not technical enough,” or “my role is only to report the facts” can slow down adoption and reduce professional influence. The session introduces a practical reflection and communication framework that helps participants reframe their role from data/reporting support to strategic decision partner. Through short examples and audience interaction, participants will explore how to communicate risk, uncertainty and AI-generated insights with greater clarity, confidence and impact.

At Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, we are building more than a new hospital. We are designing a digital infrastructure for the New Frimley Park Hospital that learns from two distinct worlds: the rigour of the Norwegian construction industry — where Common Data Environments were not an afterthought but a foundational discipline — and the hard-won lessons of clinical systems implementation, where even the most capable EPR can fail without the right information architecture beneath it. This talk explores how those two worlds shape our approach to the Common Data Environment for a £1.2bn capital programme — and why the decisions made in design and construction will determine whether the building continues to learn long after the last contractor has left site.