The Unspoken Essentials for Capital Project Success

Despite decades of innovation in procurement, risk management, and delivery models, capital projects across Canada continue to struggle. These challenges aren’t new, but the stakes are rising. Aging infrastructure, rapid urbanization, climate change, and economic uncertainty are converging, making capital delivery more complex and politically charged than ever before.

ADAPTOVATE Canada brought together a panel of veteran infrastructure leaders for a candid fireside chat - “The Unspoken Essentials of Capital Project Success” to unpack this paradox.

Chat participants:

• Ghaleb El Masri, Managing Director and Partner at ADAPTOVATE, brings a global perspective on infrastructure transformation. He has helped governments and private institutions pivot from legacy governance to adaptive, mission-aligned delivery models.
• Lisa Adamo, Founding Partner of Stratix Group and former Commercial Executive Director at Green Line, a $6 Billion public transit infrastructure project in Alberta, Canada, draws on two decades of experience with major capital programs, specializing in owner readiness, commercial partnerships, and culture integration.
• Darshpreet Bhatti, Founding Partner of Stratix Group and former CEO of Green Line, a $6 Billion public transit infrastructure project in Alberta, Canada, has led multi-billion-dollar projects with a focus on delivery leadership, risk navigation, and public trust-building.

The discussion focused on what often goes unspoken: the human, structural, and cultural dynamics that shape outcomes long before a shovel hits the ground. What emerged was not a list of fixes, but a deeper reframing of what it takes to deliver in today’s complex environment.

Below are the core themes that emerged from the discussion:

1. Governance Without Agility Is Just Bureaucracy

Capital projects operate under conditions that stretch the limits of conventional ways of working. While legacy systems are designed for stability, predictability, and compliance, capital delivery also need to manage the need for speed, transparency, and tight coordination across fragmented teams and institutions. These demands don’t align easily with systems built around bureaucracy, siloed functions, and formal hierarchy. Yet too often, we try to deliver complex infrastructure through models optimized for continuity, not complexity.

One of the most overlooked misalignments is decision-making speed, especially as projects transition from planning to delivery. In early design or planning phases, progress is often methodical by necessity but once delivery begins, teams need to operate on a daily momentum, where delays are measured in millions and small decisions have cascading consequences. It is critical to match decision velocity to delivery needs.

Successful capital projects require bespoke governance models. These must be lean, empowered, and sharply focused on execution. The traditional approach where teams rely solely on councils or committees to approve decisions slows the cadence of delivery. These committees are designed to review, not to accelerate. What’s missing is governance that removes blockers, resolves ambiguity, and drives velocity. That pushes autonomy in decision-making closer to the teams designing and delivering the work.

One emerging best practice is the formation of a delivery-focused, program steering committee, comprised of individuals with technical, financial, and project-specific expertise, empowered to make real-time decisions. This isn’t just a task force or PMO; it’s an autonomous, cross-functional engine with its own governance cadence, embedded technical expertise, and authority to act. These boards operate like start-up boards: focused, agile, and deeply embedded in the work. As delivery intensifies, governance should shift into execution mode.

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"Most project failures aren’t technical, they’re behavioral. When culture is intentionally designed, it becomes the operating system for trust and momentum."

Lisa Adamo

2. Culture: The Competitive Advantage You Can’t Buy

Perhaps the most underestimated driver of success is culture. Delivery success depends on how people behave when decisions are ambiguous, pressure mounts, and trade-offs are real. Do they escalate or hide problems? Do they collaborate or defend turf? Do they focus on the mission or the optics?

Culture doesn’t just “happen.” It must be created early, intentionally, and repeatedly. That means onboarding teams not only on process and scope, but also on values, expectations, and ways of working. It means co-locating people to foster informal problem-solving. It means celebrating behaviors that serve the project and correcting those that don’t.

If culture sets the tone, leadership amplifies or undermines it. Great project leaders model the values they expect to see. They act decisively. They promote transparency. They create space for others to escalate, to question, to ask for help. And when leaders stay grounded in purpose and aligned in behavior, the entire system becomes more resilient, and culture becomes a magnet for talent, a driver of engagement, and a shield against misalignment.

This becomes a competitive advantage for talent attraction and retention. High-performing professionals want to work where they feel respected, empowered, and connected to a bigger purpose. Embedding these attributes in the onboarding process and reinforcing them through leadership and daily practice improves retention, productivity, and morale. Over time, it becomes a flywheel: engaged people drive better outcomes, which fuels further engagement.

"When people have clarity, autonomy, and a sense of purpose, they don’t just deliver- they outperform. In complex projects, culture isn’t a bonus - it’s the delivery system."

- Darshpreet Bhatti

Click to watch Ghaleb, Darshpreet and Lisa talk about how Culture & Governance can become a competitive advantage

3. Collaboration Beyond the Contract

Projects often bring together a constellation of partners - contractors, advisors, and public servants - each with their own values, incentives, and behaviors. Expecting them to operate seamlessly as “one team” without deliberate cultural alignment is wishful thinking. True collaboration starts before the contract is signed. By the time you're negotiating terms, the delivery culture is already taking shape.

High-trust projects begin with high-trust onboarding. Teams align not just on scope and timelines, but on behaviors, norms, and joint risk posture. When delivery partners feel safe to share bad news early, problems are solved before they escalate. This requires deliberate rituals: open-book reviews, joint planning rooms, and shared escalation forums. These aren't nice-to-haves - they're essential infrastructure.

Trust must flow across levels. It's not enough for the executive teams to get along. The field teams, planners, and engineers must also feel safe to challenge, course-correct, and align daily. Done well, collaboration becomes a practiced capability, one that compounds project resilience and accelerates momentum.

“You can have the best governance on paper, but if teams don’t feel safe to raise flags or empowered to solve problems, the project will stall. Culture carries execution.” – Ghaleb El Masri

Click here to watch Lisa and Ghaleb talk about the bridge between organizational effectiveness and culture

4. Bringing Discipline to Delivery

While culture sets the foundation, organizational effectiveness brings discipline to execution. Agile-inspired practices, when applied judiciously can unlock major gains. Agile delivery isn’t about abandoning structure, it’s about injecting adaptability into complex environments. In capital projects, where rigid processes and long timelines often stall progress, agile principles offer a way to break inertia.

Shifting from exhaustive up-front planning to iterative decision-making enables teams to move faster, adjust based on new information, and maintain momentum without compromising quality. Instead of spending years perfecting every assumption, project leaders can use iterative cycles, fast feedback loops, and progressive elaboration to accelerate studies, unlock earlier value, and reduce rework caused by late-stage changes.

Visual workflows like digital Kanban boards allow teams to see what’s planned, what’s stuck, and who’s accountable. Daily or weekly standups drive real-time coordination, while regular governance cadences ensure decisions don’t stall. This rhythm of visibility and responsiveness builds delivery resilience—essential in an industry where delays are measured in millions and trust is earned through execution. When paired with empowered teams and a clear mission, these adaptive planning rhythms and transparent communication mechanisms create the conditions for clarity, accountability, and flow.

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"Agile isn’t only about going faster, it’s about seeing sooner. In capital delivery, the ability to visualize work and respond early is what protects outcomes."

Ghaleb El Masri

Click here to listen to Ghaleb and Darshpreet talk about agile in capital projects

Ready to future-proof your capital project?

Reach out to Ghaleb El Masri, Managing Director and Partner at ADAPTOVATE, to explore how ADAPTOVATE can help build the conditions for your capital projects’ success.