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You waited too long, and you're losing money
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As I was involved… I still look at it very closely. A multibillion-dollar bridge ready. Roads built. Border facilities prepared. And traffic still waiting. The opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Canada and the United States had to be postponed while both governments resolved a series of outstanding issues. Not construction issues. Interface issues. Don’t blame Trump. It’s deeper than that. People consistently underestimate in major infrastructure: The asset is not complete when the concrete is finished. Or when the road is “safe to be used” It is complete when every party required to make it operational is ready to say yes. The authority. The operator. The emergency services. The utilities. Even… the lenders… And normally, there is a bible… called the Contract. One unresolved issue can hold a billion-dollar asset hostage. And every day spent “working through it” has a cost: Revenue does not start. Benefits do not arrive. Resources remain mobilised. Financing continues. Executives spend their time in emergency meetings. Look. You know this. Time is not merely part of the programme. Time is money. And the most expensive issues are often not the largest ones. They are the ones nobody took ownership of early enough. During years, I’ve always mentioned the one million dollar paper forgotten in a drawer… Those things happen. The lesson for today? Do not wait until commissioning to discover who can stop the opening. Find them years earlier. Ideas to make that happen? Below. ​THE ROOM: 15 Great Lessons of a Successful PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: The 15 Top Lessons of a PPP Project Nightmare​ ​THE ROOM: How to Break Into PPPs (Without the Bullshit)​ ​The ROOM: The ONLY way of doing a proper procurement process​ ​THE ROOM: Back-to-Back PPP Gap Analysis Explained​ ​THE ROOM: The Top 10 Errors That Kill Your PPP Deal​ ​THE ROOM: How to Deal with Frustrating Lenders' Approvals in PPPs.​ ​THE ROOM: THE ROOM: Minimum size for a PPP Project​ ​THE ROOM: Buildings in PPP - Discussions with an African colleague​ ​THE ROOM: Key Challenges and Solutions in PPP Highway Projects - 5 Clauses You Should Improve​ Or… of course, you can have them all… and many other interesting lessons in The Room. ​The Room​ PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
As Robert Kiyosaki once said: “Opportunities repeat themselves because people repeat the same mistakes.” Markets change. People don’t. New projects. Same optimism. New investors. Same herd behaviour. New PPPs. Same bad risk allocation. New SPVs. Same surprise when operations become a monster. The great advisers are not the ones chasing the hot market. They are the ones studying the repeated mistakes. Once you recognise the pattern, you stop being another consultant with opinions. You become...
Some time ago I talked about a kind of message. One like this one: "It’s interesting what you say, I even read you every day, but I would never buy anything from you because I don't believe I can learn what you know without going through what you've been through." OMG… And then, you wonder why there are adults that cannot tie their shoes… or get any success in life. I'll tell you something crazy: knowledge can be recorded. And another: it can be transmitted. And the last one: whatever you...
Most contractors enter a negotiation with the wrong assumption. They think: “The agency has the money. The agency has the power. The agency has the contract. So the agency has all the leverage.” Not in their dreams… In PPPs and major infrastructure projects, agencies also carry something very heavy: Loss aversion. They do not want a project failure. They do not want the Minister asking questions. They do not want the newspaper headline. They do not want the contractor collapsing. They do not...