Executives don’t lose sleep over Gantt charts.
They lose sleep over safety incidents, delayed in-service dates, claims exposure, workforce instability, and reputational risk
Yet most megaprojects still govern delivery using a model that ignores the most basic physical constraint on site:
How many people the site can actually support at one time.
We routinely approve schedules that look technically sound:
✔ Clean logic
✔ Stable milestones
✔ Acceptable cost curves
✔ “Balanced” craft loading
While the site itself tells a very different story:
✖ Congested access points
✖ Overloaded welfare facilities
✖ Diluted supervision coverage
✖ Rising interference and rework
✖ Declining productivity and safety margin
When those signals appear, we label them “execution issues.”
They’re not.
They’re governance failures.
If Capacity Isn’t Enforced, Commitments Are Fiction
A plan that cannot be executed safely, predictably, and repeatedly inside real physical limits is not a plan.
It is a hope statement with milestones attached.
Physics doesn’t negotiate.
Space doesn’t stretch.
Throughput doesn’t scale on demand.
Supervision doesn’t magically multiply.
Yet our schedules pretend they do.
The Leadership Shift Most Organizations Avoid
Modern project governance must treat physical capacity as a first-class control — not an operational afterthought.
That means:
• Total site headcount becomes a governed constraint
• Every population consumes capacity — not just craft labor
• Supervision and support density are visible and managed
• Unscheduled work reserves real capacity
• Shifts are governed independently
• Schedules move when limits are breached — not people
When this happens, the schedule stops negotiating with reality.
Why This Feels Uncomfortable
Because real capacity governance exposes:
Overcommitment baked into portfolios Optimism bias in business cases Political scheduling pressure False recovery narratives The hidden cost of congestion and interference The true limits of site throughput
Avoiding that discomfort doesn’t reduce risk.
It only delays when the truth surfaces — usually in the field.
The Question Leadership Should Be Asking
Not:
“Are we on schedule?”
But:
“Is this plan physically executable inside our real constraints — every shift, every day?”
If leadership can’t answer that with evidence, governance is incomplete.
Resource Management 