Principia Programme Delivery is an independent owner's team for organisations delivering capital projects between £20m and £200m - particularly those doing it for the first time, infrequently, or at unfamiliar scale.
Most capital projects between £20m and £200m fail not at construction, but in the months before a contract is signed. Scope is unclear. Risk is in the wrong place. The programme that the board approved is not the programme the contractor priced. The owner discovers, six months in, that they are no longer in control of the project they commissioned.
Principia exists to prevent that - by embedding a senior, accountable owner's representative alongside the in-house team from the earliest investment decisions through to handover. We bring the discipline of NEC4 and FIDIC contracting, COMAH‑grade safety governance, and three decades of delivery experience to the moments where decisions are most consequential and recovery is most costly.
This is not consultancy. It is delivery, on your side, by name.
We scale with the project. A focused engagement may need a single named director; a £100m+ programme may need a full embedded owner's organisation. Principia provides either, and every position between.
Scope definition, target outturn cost discipline, contracting strategy, owner-side programme. The work that should happen before the board commits - and rarely does at the depth it requires.
NEC4 (ECC Options A through F) and FIDIC contract drafting, scope alignment, and pain/gain calibration. We close the gaps that become disputes eighteen months in.
Compensation event regimes, early warning discipline, Defined Cost auditing, and the routine commercial hygiene that keeps projects on the contracted curve.
Construction-phase embedded representation. The named, senior, on-site presence accountable to the board and present in every decision that moves cost, time or risk.
For projects under COMAH, CDM, or equivalent regimes - pre-construction phase plans, regulator interface, and the documented safety case the project must own from day one.
The transition from construction to operations is where projects quietly fail. Commissioning oversight, operational readiness reviews, and the documented handover the operating team must own from day one.
A single named principal, fractional or full-time. The right scope for a focused mandate, a board-level intervention, or an early-stage programme that needs senior shape before it scales.
Director, commercial lead, programme lead, and project controls - four to five people across the disciplines a typical £30m–£80m project most needs to keep in tight control.
A full embedded owner's organisation - commercial, programme, project controls, safety, technical, and document control - for major capital programmes requiring a parallel team to the contractor's.
It needs a different posture: faster cadence, harder questions, and the authority to act. Principia's recovery practice is built on three decades of intervention work across defence, energy, manufacturing and humanitarian programmes.
We are usually called by sponsors, finance directors, or boards who can no longer rely on the project status they are being told.
An independent ten- to twenty-day assessment with privileged access to the project's commercial, programme and governance data. Output: a written diagnostic, a stop / fix / accept call on the major issues, and a defensible position for the board.
Immediate intervention on the issues that cannot wait - contractual non-compliance, safety, commercial bleed, missing governance. The bleeding stops before the surgery begins.
A credible plan and contract position the project can actually deliver against. Often involves restructured agreements, target cost adjustment, or change of scope. Always involves the board.
Either a structured handover to permanent project leadership, or temporary leadership held by Principia through to completion. Decided on the evidence, not the headcount.
First-of-a-kind clean energy assets, including COMAH-regulated hydrogen production and storage.
New-build factories, brownfield reconfiguration, and major plant transitions for industrial owners.
For public bodies and ALBs delivering infrequent, scrutinised capital programmes.
Programmes where availability, regulation, and stakeholder complexity sit alongside cost and time.
First-of-a-kind SAF production facilities under COMAH, with the aviation, fuel pathway, and offtake interfaces these projects uniquely require.
Principia is built for the in-house team that has the operational expertise but not the dedicated capital delivery muscle - the project sponsor, the operations director, the CFO holding the contingency.
We embed where it counts and step back where it doesn't. The work is named, accountable, and pricing is transparent.
Principia is the independent practice of Allan Ross - programme director and thirty-year capital delivery specialist, with a track record across defence, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, and humanitarian programmes.
The thread through that work is recovery and first-of-a-kind delivery: programmes that had to succeed under scrutiny, often where someone else had tried and failed. The current engagement is a first-of-a-kind hydrogen production facility, delivered under NEC4 Option C and COMAH regulation.
Principia exists to offer the same senior, embedded, owner-side discipline to organisations who need it once - and need it done properly.
Thirty years of capital delivery across defence, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, and humanitarian programmes. Currently leading a first-of-a-kind hydrogen production facility under NEC4 Option C, COMAH-regulated. Specialism in first-of-a-kind delivery and project recovery.
NEC4 and FIDIC contract leadership; compensation event regimes, pain/gain calibration, and open-book commercial assurance for owner-side engagements.
Owner-side programme management; Primavera P6 and MSP planning, critical-path analysis, and the programme assurance regimes major capital projects require.
Cost engineering, change control, earned-value management, and the integrated project-controls function that gives boards reporting they can rely on.
COMAH compliance, CDM coordination, technical assurance, and the safety governance regime new energy and industrial projects must own from day one.
Recovery work begins long before a project is officially in trouble. The signals are nearly always present six to nine months earlier - and nearly always missed. A working guide to what to watch for, and when to act.
Most board reporting describes what has already happened. The reporting that matters tells the board what is about to happen. Why predictive reporting is a discipline, not a dashboard.
Target Cost contracts are pitched as alignment instruments. In practice, much of the alignment is one-sided. A practitioner's view of where Option C sits well, and where it needs reinforcing.
Boards routinely commission transformation programmes and budget for change programmes. The mismatch is not academic - it is a primary cause of programme failure. A short clarification, with consequences.