Independent delivery assurance
The programme is a contract document. Nobody has tested it.
It arrives as a file of several thousand activities, it cannot be reviewed by looking at it, and the clock on accepting it runs whether it is read or not. Every claim for the next three years will be measured against the document you accepted.
We test it — independently, monthly, from outside the project — and report to you, not to the team we are reporting on.
The diagnostic is for a project in delivery; the Readiness Check for one at award, before the baseline is accepted. Twenty questions each, about four minutes. Nothing is stored, sent or tracked — the result stays in your browser. Explore the service opens an interactive guide to the modules, the contract clauses they read and the pack you provide — on the same terms: no cookies, no analytics, nothing sent.Reported completion against the underlying position
The problem this solves
A project team cannot be independent of itself
The monthly report and the programme underneath it are two different documents, and on most projects nobody is checking whether they agree.
The reported date holds, and holds, and then moves in one step. By the time it moves, the window in which it could have been protected has closed. This is rarely dishonesty. It is the predictable result of asking an organisation to mark its own work — and of a monthly cycle in which nobody has the time, the tools or the standing to open the native file and test what it says.
Be independent of itself
A PMO reports on its own organisation's work. It is not a failing of the people; it is the structure. An assurance function embedded on a project is captured within a couple of months — which is precisely why auditors rotate.
Quantify the position
A defensible P80 needs correlated Monte Carlo simulation over the real activity network, not a percentage added to the end date. Very few project teams can produce one, and a contingency figure that cannot be defended is not a contingency figure.
Report what it was not given
"The project could not evidence this" is career-limiting written from inside the team and routine written from outside it. It is also the single most useful line in any report you will read this month.
The boundary
Management is not assurance
Appointing a project manager, a PMC or a delivery partner transfers management. It does not transfer assurance. Those are three lines, and the third one is yours — whether or not anyone is standing in it.
| Line | Who | What they are accountable for |
|---|---|---|
| First | Contractor | Delivers the work, and produces the programme and the progress claim |
| Second | PM / PMC / delivery partner | Manages and administers delivery on your behalf, and reports on what it manages |
| Third | You — the client | Assures. Tests whether the reported position is the real one, and whether the contract's protections are being used |
In an assurance engagement we occupy the third line only. We take no decisions on your behalf and give no instruction to the contractor.
What you receive
Five pages, every month, in board reading order
Written to be read by a sponsor in ten minutes and defended in front of the people it concerns.
- The position. P50 and P80 date and cost, derived three ways, with the seed quoted so the analysis can be re-run and audited.
- What moved, and why. This month's programme measured against the one accepted last month, activity by activity — not summary against summary.
- What is driving it. The activities actually setting the date, and whether the mitigation plan being paid for is still worth its cost.
- Findings. Each with numbered evidence and the decision it requires, with an owner and a date — not a list of concerns.
- What could not be evidenced this month. The page no embedded team will ever write, and the one that justifies the fee.
Also every month
The action register — findings as a working spreadsheet, categorised by whether each is a blocker, a decision, an opportunity, a risk or a matter of data integrity, each with an owner and a date, carried forward and closed out month on month.
The Independent Schedule Assessment — a separate, signed document on the native programme alone: whether it is fit to be relied on this month, in terms a board can read and a contract administrator can act on.
An impartial report, issued as it stands — accurate to the information the project supplies, and never altered to suit. Use it in your own reporting as you wish.
An out-of-cycle re-run whenever something material changes, priced low deliberately so that you ask for it.
The monthly cycle
Six stages, anchored to your own data date
The cycle runs against the project's existing reporting calendar and completes inside it. It asks the project for a defined pack and nothing else — no workshops, no attendance, no parallel reporting line.
| Stage | What happens | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Receive M1 | Pack logged, hashed and checked. Anything that fails is returned with a receipt naming every item. |
| 2 | Test M3 · M4 · M5 · M6 · M12 | Programme against programme and against its own logic, progress against evidence, contract date from the register. |
| 3 | Quantify M7 | Correlated Monte Carlo over the real network: contractual and realistic P50 and P80. |
| 4 | Act M8 | The recovery actions, their expected benefit, and whether they are delivering it. |
| 5 | Line in the sand M9 | The month’s position sealed before the outcome is known: the record a later claim has to answer to. |
| 6 | Report M10 | The impartial report and the action register, issued as a set. |
The report reaches you inside the reporting month it describes, in time for the decisions it asks for. Each cycle is entirely independent of every other client's; nothing waits on anyone else's submission.
How we know
The evidence protocol
"Independent" invites a fair question — how do you know? Six rules, agreed at appointment and written into it, are the answer.
Quantities, not judgement
Progress is evidenced by what has been installed, tested or accepted — countable things — not by a percentage somebody is comfortable with.
The native export, never a PDF
The programme is read as the planning tool wrote it. A PDF of a programme is a picture of a programme; the logic, the constraints and the calendars are the parts that matter and the picture does not contain them.
Cost as a defined data set
Committed, incurred, forecast and change, to a fixed schema issued at mobilisation. A cost report reformatted each month cannot be compared with last month's.
Evidence above a threshold
Anything material carries its evidence with it. Below the threshold, sampling does the work.
An unannounced sample, drawn after the pack arrives
Ten items, chosen by us once the submission is in, evidenced back to source. This rule does more work than the other five together — it is the mechanism by which a large project is held to account from outside it.
Unverified is reported as unverified
Not disputed, not estimated, not quietly omitted. Where something could not be evidenced, the report says so and says what was asked for.
Enforcement is structural, not social. A missing or incomplete pack is a finding in the report to you. It is never a chase, and it never becomes a negotiation between us and the project team.
Where the contract meets the programme
Acceptance has a clock on it
The grounds on which a programme can be rejected already exist in the contract. They are almost never used, because using them means opening the native file within a window measured in days.
| Form | Window | If the window passes in silence |
|---|---|---|
| NEC4 ECC, cl. 31.3 | Two weeks to accept or give reasons | The Contractor may notify; a further week and the programme is treated as accepted |
| FIDIC 2017, sub-cl. 8.3 | 21 days for the Engineer to notify non-compliance | The Contractor proceeds on the programme as submitted |
| JCT 2016 / 2024 | No acceptance mechanism at all | Nothing formal — which means less protection, not more |
NEC4 cl. 31.2 sets what a programme must contain, and cl. 50.5 allows a quarter of the Price for Work Done to Date to be retained until a first programme showing the required information is submitted. That is the answer to "how do I make them give me the file" — and it is your protection, not ours. The same tests are applied to your own obligations, because a finding you cannot act on is worth nothing.
The windows above are those of the unamended published forms. On your project they are set by the clauses agreed at award — the schedule of amendments and the particulars — so they are confirmed against your executed contract at mobilisation, never assumed.
This is not legal advice. Findings are set against contract mechanisms so that you and your advisors can decide what to do with them.
When something happens
The months that are not routine
A re-baseline, an extension-of-time claim, the close of the project. Each is handled as part of the service, on the same evidence rules, and each leaves a record the client keeps.
A line in the sand, drawn properly
When the programme is re-set — a supplementary agreement, an implemented compensation event, a revised completion date — the project provides a defined pack: the instrument, the new contract dates, the native programme with its basis narrative, refreshed cost and risk data, and a statement of the entitlement the re-baseline contains.
The new baseline is tested against the old one, activity by activity, before it is recorded. The bridge between them is written down. Nothing is overwritten, and what the re-baseline settled cannot quietly be claimed again.
The claim tested against the record
When a contractor submits a claim for an extension of time, it is set against what the project's own record already holds: the baseline in force, every month's comparison, the verified progress, the notice dates and any earlier re-baseline. Seven tests, each producing facts with their sources.
The result is an evidence pack for your contract administrator and your advisors — facts, with sources. It states no opinion on entitlement and puts no figure on the claim; those decisions remain where the contract places them.
The project record, handed over
Every pack received, every report issued, every contract date and baseline in force, and every re-baseline and claim assessment, in one chronology with its files and their hashes. Built month by month from the first engagement, not assembled from memory at the end.
At close-out it is handed to you as a dated, unalterable set. If a question is asked years later, the answer is in the record and the record is yours.
Each of these reads the same native files, applies the same evidence protocol and reports to the same person — the sponsor. None of them decides entitlement, values a claim or gives instruction to the contractor.
Measured, not asserted
What one month's comparison found
Two consecutive month-end exports from a live capital project of roughly nine thousand activities, compared activity by activity. No client, no project, no sector, no dates. These are measurements, not opinions about project reporting.
Each finding on its own is arguable. Together, in one period, they say something a sponsor cannot un-read: the date being reported is not derived from the work underneath it.
The absence of negative float is the point most often mistaken for reassurance. A programme under real pressure shows it somewhere. One that shows none, while two and a half thousand of its activities move later, is holding its dates by constraint rather than by logic.
Honest limits
What this does not do
It does not manage the project
No instruction to the contractor, no decisions taken on your behalf, no parallel reporting line. Assurance that starts managing has stopped being assurance.
It does not replace the PMO or the project manager
It tests their output. A good team gets a report that says so, in terms they can show their own board. If there is no PMO yet, setting one up is a separate engagement — see PMO set-up.
It cannot verify what is not released
Where evidence is withheld or does not exist, the report records that it was asked for and not provided. It does not fill the gap with an estimate.
It is not legal advice
Findings are framed against contract mechanisms and windows. What to do about them is a commercial and legal decision for you and your advisors.
White paper
The programme you accepted
Seven pages on the one contract document nobody reads: what acceptance commits you to under NEC4, FIDIC and JCT; the six ways a monthly update absorbs delay before it becomes visible; the measured evidence above; and six questions a client should be able to answer every month.
No registration, no email wall. It is more use to you read than gated.
The six questions
If your project cannot answer these every month, the reported position and the real one have already separated. They are set out in full in section 5 of the paper, and they are yours to use with or without us.
The modules behind the service — the monthly cycle, the re-baseline review, the claim assessment and the project record — are set out in the interactive guide. A client briefing on the method is available on request.
No PMO yet?
Looking for a PMO to be set up?
A capital programme approved without a controls function, or a portfolio that has outgrown its spreadsheets, needs a project management office as well as independent assurance — and they should not be the same people. We design and mobilise the PMO: charter, governance and gates, integrated controls, a ninety-day mobilisation and a ready-made folder structure with 175 controlled templates.
Kept apart from assurance
PMO set-up is a separate engagement. The PMO we set up is your second line, and we do not then provide independent assurance on that project or portfolio.
How to start
Four ways in, in this order
Two free instruments — one for a project in delivery, one for a project at award — a free reading of one programme file, then a fixed-scope review. Never the retainer first: the monthly service should be a consequence of what a review found, or it should not happen at all.
The distress diagnostic
For a project in delivery. Twenty questions across eight weighted domains, about four minutes, producing a 0–100 distress index, your three weakest domains and a concrete action for each over the next ten days.
The questions ask what is, not how you feel about it, and every one of them offers the uncomfortable answer in plain words. Nothing is stored, sent or tracked — no account, no cookies, no server.
The Readiness Check
For a project at approval, award or mobilisation. Twenty questions on what is in place before anything can go wrong: the baseline, the contract's programme clauses, the data you will receive, who reports to the board, and what the completion date is worth. It returns an exposure index and the three gaps to close before the baseline is accepted.
Same rules: nothing stored, nothing sent, the uncomfortable answer always available.
The Schedule Review
For any project with a programme. Send one native schedule file — a Primavera XER or XML, or a Microsoft Project export — and it is read as the planning tool wrote it: logic, constraints, calendars, float and the path that is setting the date. You receive a short written review of what the file says and what it cannot be relied on for.
One file, one review, no commitment. The file is held for the review only, and no other use is made of it.
The mobilisation review
A defined scope, a defined price and no ongoing commitment. The accepted programme and the current one are tested properly once: traceability, logic, calendars, constraints, the driving path, the cost data set and a quantified position.
You end with a written baseline of where the project actually is, what the contract still allows you to do about it, and whether monthly assurance is worth buying. If it isn't, you have learned that for the price of a review rather than over a year.
Who does the work
William Lord
Project Central Assurance is a single practitioner, deliberately. The assurance is the person doing it, and a report signed by someone who did not read the file is worth nothing.
Thirty years in capital project delivery across life sciences and GMP manufacturing, oil and gas, energy and infrastructure — client-side, contractor-side and consulting. The recurring work has been recovery: projects already in delay and over budget, taken from a current-state assessment through re-baselining, restructuring and control into commissioning and handover. That includes leading the recovery of a GMP cleanroom and process capital project for a global biologics CDMO, building the project control and risk environment across a circa $200m API capital portfolio, and establishing programme and project management processes for a joint venture running a multi-billion-dollar rehabilitation programme in southern Iraq.
Primavera P6 hands-on rather than in principle, quantitative schedule and cost risk analysis, and forensic planning and delay analysis used in claim resolution. A CIArb-accredited mediator — which matters more than it sounds in a discipline whose findings land on contractual ground.
Based in Cheshire, working remotely by design. Site verification visits are budgeted at appointment and used deliberately, two or three times a year.
No case studies, no client logos, no testimonials on this site. Assurance work is confidential, and an anonymised page of praise proves less than the measured evidence above. Ask by email and you will be told what has been done, by whom, and what could not be evidenced.
Contact
Start with the file
The most useful first step is one programme file. Send the native export if you can — that is where the answer is.
enquiry@projectcentralassurance.com
The link opens your own email client with a short prompt already filled in. Nothing on this site sends anything anywhere on its own — there is no form handler, no analytics and no tracking of any kind.