Capital Projects & Infrastructure

Every rand or dollar invested in infrastructure has the potential to yield many-fold returns for governments, businesses and citizens. On the other hand, planned shareholder value and stakeholder benefits are rapidly eroded when project delays and budget overruns occur as a result of poorly-managed project implementation.

Given their increasing complexity, large infrastructure projects require intense focus on transparency and accountability to ensure that they are funded, completed in a timely, cost-effective manner and can be run efficiently. Poorly-defined projects almost always deliver suboptimal results no matter how well executed.

Our services

PwC has a dedicated team of engineers, project, programme and portfolio managers and investment, business and change consultants. They provide capital project-related services that serve the full value chain of acquiring, financing, investing in, planning, designing, procuring, constructing/implementing, commissioning, operating and maintaining complex medium to large scale greenfield or brownfield capital assets, programs or portfolios.

1. Strategic Portfolio level services

  • Identifying and planning capital projects that will maximise long-term value for organisations by performing conceptual planning, high-level pre-feasibility studies, options appraisals and cost/benefit analyses.
  • Developing appropriate operational and financial models to analyse alternatives to provide decision-making support information.
  • Developing the project business case including the strategic project briefs, which will contain the highest level pre-conditions and strategic directives that will govern the downstream planning, budgeting design, procurement, execution, operationalisation and maintenance of your capital projects.
  • Ensuring strategic alignment between the portfolio of capital projects and the organisation’s goals and business objectives and assisting you to balance your portfolio through application of project categorisation, evaluation, selection and prioritisation tools and techniques.
  • Performing risk management and control of your capital project and infrastructure programme to minimise the potential impact of the associated risks.
  • Working with portfolio level governance management and ensuring that governance requirements are seamlessly integrated vertically and horizontally across infrastructure programmes and capital projects.

2. Tactical Programme level services

PwC can help you set up and manage your Project/Programme support offices from where you can maximise the long-term value of your capital and infrastructure projects through the increased efficiencies obtained through centralised coordinated management of project risks, project governance and project performance.

Our programme management services include:

  • Programme design and optimisation
  • PMO establishment with PMBOK and/or PRINCE II aligned methodologies tailored to your organisation’s governance requirements
  • Benefits mapping and realisation management
  • Programme stakeholder analysis, planning and management
  • Programme procurement strategy development and management
  • Programme performance monitoring, reporting and review
  • Programme governance and risk management and control
  • Programme implementation management and control

3. Operational Project level

Capital projects that achieve cost, schedule and quality goals are typically the result of implementing sound governance practices which provide organisations with a higher degree of confidence in a project’s successful outcome.

PwC will assist you in achieving this by providing the following project level services:

  • Sharpening internal processes and systems
  • Clarifying contract expectations and commercial terms
  • Detailed and specific project planning
  • Active project scope management
  • Enhancing awareness of fraud and corruption risk
  • Implementing formal internal controls, including the full suite of risk management processes from identification to mitigation strategies, including quantification
  • Fostering open and timely communication with suppliers, contractors and other key stakeholders

Project Review Services

On ongoing projects we provide project review services to provide assurance to top management and internal audit that the progress and performance of the organisation’s capital projects is as reported. Our project review services provide independent assurance to management to verify what is being reported by the contractor or the contracted project manager.

Our tools and techniques used in our review services are:

  • Rapid assessment of project and contract alignment with various strategic parameters
  • Earned Value Analysis to verify schedule and cost variances from baselines
  • Predictive cost analysis to determine final outturn costs
  • Schedule analysis to determine the manner in which the schedule is used to manage and track project performance
  • Project governance and project risk process and controls analysis

Our project review approach allows key risks and critical success factors to be mapped, allowing management to understand and influence the actual in-life performance of projects. This in turn allows pro-active management intervention to maintain or improve project performance where necessary. Learning is thus fed back to other projects in the organisation’s portfolio.

Project recovery and dispute mitigation

For projects in distress, management's focus must shift from normal operations to recovery. Failing to recognise the symptoms of a distressed project will delay the taking of appropriate remedial action. This in turn will compound the issues resulting in increased costs, further delays, failure to achieve business objectives and in the worst case, total project failure.

Organisations may want to seek external guidance in this regard. Experience has shown that rescuing distressed projects often requires:

  • Making bold decisions
  • Robust information on physical and financial status and forecast outturn costs
  • Rapid investigation into root causes of schedule and cost variances
  • Injection of enthusiasm, experience, resources and finance
  • Rapid resolution of commercial/contractual issues

A third party perspective is invaluable when disputes arise. PwC has extensive experience in this regard and can provide financial, economic, and business services to both lawyers and organisations globally who are in litigation, arbitration and other alternative dispute resolution forums. Our experienced professionals can offer assistance with:

  • Early case assessment
  • Class certification
  • Discovery assistance
  • Quantification of exposure
  • Claim preparation
  • Rebuttal and expert witness testimony

No matter how complex or urgent your situation is, obtaining seasoned support is key. A qualified advisor can offer a combination of forensic accounting, capital project management and investigative skills to the legal and financial implications of your issues to help you make intelligent, informed decisions, be it in the boardroom or the courtroom