Chapter VI turns to commissioning and project closeout, the final phase where systematic startup sequencing, performance testing, and operator readiness determine whether the plant actually runs as designed, and where your documentation, punch lists, final acceptance, and lessons-learned processes determine whether the project ends cleanly or leaves a trail of unresolved obligations that follow both…
On any large industrial project, disputes are not a possibility. They are a certainty. Each party reads the contract through the lens of its own interests, its own experience, and its own institutional pressures. The result is an endless stream of disagreements, over scope, over schedule, over responsibility, over compensation. A well-crafted contract reduces the…
Signing the EPC contract feels like the finish line. The contractor is selected, the price is fixed, the risk is transferred. What remains, it seems, is execution. That instinct is understandable and nearly always wrong. The contract creates the framework. What happens inside that framework, how it is managed, documented, and enforced from day one,…
The Promise of the EPC Model The appeal of the EPC contract is straightforward. The owner writes a check, the contractor handles the engineering, procures the equipment, builds the plant, and hands over the keys. Risk is transferred. Schedule is guaranteed. Performance is contractually bound. It is a clean arrangement on paper, and for the…
The Step Most Developers Skip There is a deeply embedded habit in energy project development: when it is time to procure an EPC contractor, someone pulls the last contract off the shelf, updates it with new plant specs, and sends it out. Or calls one of the contractors they worked with in the past that…
This is the first installment of a six-part series on energy infrastructure project delivery — from development alignment through construction, commissioning, and operations. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be covering EPC selection and contracting, execution discipline, dispute avoidance, and handover — drawing on three decades of experience across gas-fired generation, P3 structures, and campus utility…