How do you define project success?

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Conflicting perspectives

Project “success” is a word thrown around by every stakeholder in Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) – yet ask five people and you’ll get five different answers. An engineering manager might brag about meeting all design deliverable dates. A contractor might celebrate a positive profit margin or zero lost-time incidents. A project management consultant (PMC) may point to rigorous processes followed. But does any of that matter if the facility isn’t operational as promised for the owner? Too often, the answer is no.

This fundamental misalignment – each party chasing its own KPIs – is at the heart of why so many projects “bleed time and money” and leave owners frustrated.

Stakeholders frequently have conflicting interests baked into their business models. The traditional EPC contractor model can even perversely profit from inefficiency – more change orders and billable hours mean more revenue. Designers might prioritize aesthetics or technical “perfection,” while owners care about ROI and a running facility. PMCs and subcontractors each focus on their slice, often with little incentive to optimize the whole. When there are “misaligned incentives”, achieving intermediate successes may be futile – completing a design on schedule or finishing a construction phase under budget means nothing if the overall project fails. In short, everyone can check their boxes and still fail the owner.

Owner’s outcome

The proper definition of success

Let’s cut to the chase: a project is only successful in the eyes of the Owner. If the plant or infrastructure we build isn’t safely up and running, on time, on budget, and meeting its intended performance, nothing else counts.

As we put it, “a successful project should be defined by meeting the client’s goals: safely operating on time, within budget, and fulfilling functional requirements.”

From the owner’s perspective, all the awards, internal metrics, and contract KPIs in the world are secondary. Their investment must start generating value as planned – full stop.

This principle is what is called “Creating Customer Impact.” It means keeping the end-goal in mind at all times. The ultimate goal isn’t a set of documents or interim milestones; it’s a living, working facility delivering value. For the client who commissioned a new refinery or data center, success is not “we met the phase-2 schedule” but rather “the facility starts up when promised and works as expected.” Any definition of success that doesn’t trace directly to that outcome is chasing the wrong target.

Bold claim? Perhaps. But this owner-centric lens is the only perspective that prevents us from getting lost in our silos. It forces engineers, contractors, and managers to ask at every decision: “Does this help ensure the owner’s outcome?” If not, it’s not really project “success” – it’s just activity.

The cost of misalignment

Realities and statistics

The industry’s track record makes one thing clear: misaligned projects fail at alarming rates. The data is frankly sobering. According to a McKinsey analysis, 98% of megaprojects suffer cost overruns or delays, with an average cost increase of 80% and schedule slip of about 20 months. Think about that – almost every mega-project ends up late or over budget, usually both. Broader studies find even routine projects fare poorly: nine out of ten projects go over budget, with an average 28% cost overrun. Schedule performance is no better – in one three-year survey, only 25% of projects came within 10% of their original schedule targets. These aren’t mere statistics; they represent billions of euros in value lost and countless broken commitments to owners.

Why do we tolerate this? It’s become so normalized that a 30-45% overrun is considered business-as-usual in construction.

Such failure rates barely raise an eyebrow because nearly everyone expects them. Owners carry the burden in the end – no matter what the contract says about risk, “in the end, the owners foot the bill” for overruns and delays. Berlin’s new Brandenburg Airport (BER) is a stark example: it opened nine years late and €4 billion over budget, turning Germany’s pride into a national embarrassment. There was plenty of blame to go around – faulty design approvals, contractor snafus, political pressure – but at its core was a lack of unified focus on delivering the operational airport. Each contractor finished pieces of work, yet collectively they failed the end goal.

And for every BER, there are countless less-publicized projects where teams met internal targets but missed the bigger picture. Perhaps the engineering team hit all their drawing deadlines, but construction crews later found those designs unconstructible, causing month after month of rework. The project manager might have kept procurement costs down, only for the start-up to be delayed by “surprise” integration issues. These breakdowns aren’t random – they’re the direct result of teams optimizing for themselves instead of the project’s overall success. As one construction law analysis noted, when stakeholders diverge in goals, the result is often bottlenecks, delays, rising costs, and eventual disputes. In other words, everyone loses.

Unified focus on the objective

If misalignment is poison, then alignment is the antidote. True project success demands that every contributor – EPCs, PMCs, designers, subcontractors – operate as one team laser-focused on the owner’s outcome. That means shared goals, transparent communication, and incentives that reward the collective result rather than individual piecework. It sounds like common sense, yet it’s shockingly rare. The Construction Industry Institute (CII) found that projects with genuine early-team alignment delivered costs 6.5% below budget on average, whereas those that failed to align early underperformed by 3.3% on cost and a whopping 24.5% on schedule. Alignment isn’t a warm-and-fuzzy ideal – it’s a pragmatic necessity if we want better results.

What does alignment look like in practice? It looks like what was delivered in Belgium using a different mindset. A group of engineers, planners, and project leads aligned not around process milestones, but around a single shared outcome: a chemical facility, fully operational, safely delivered, on time and to spec. This was not a standard EPC rhythm. It was structured differently. Sequenced deliberately. Designed to serve the end, not just the next deliverable.

It was a mid-sized EPC project in the petrochemical sector – tight timeline, complex scope, and the usual pressure to issue fast. But instead of defaulting to speed over quality, the team introduced a new way of working. Clear priorities. Visual dashboards. Smart sequencing of tasks. Deliverables that enabled downstream action, not just document control. Engineering became enablers, not bottlenecks. Procurement moved early, because they had what they needed. Construction was never left waiting.

The impact was hard to ignore. The engineering phase was completed three months ahead of schedule. The core team size was reduced by 33 percent in the final nine months. Drawing revisions were kept below 1 percent—against an industry backdrop where 70 to 300 percent is not unusual. Handover was clean. No loose ends. No last-minute recovery plans. No friction between disciplines. Just progress, day after day, because everything had been structured with the end in mind.

One of the individuals at the heart of that shift – who would later go on to found Buro Matei – was instrumental in developing the dashboards, the planning rhythm, and the mindset that enabled that outcome. It wasn’t a question of working harder. It was a question of working aligned. And it proved a simple truth: when you focus every move on the owner’s success, you deliver what matters. Not just in theory. In practice.

Conversely, when teams remain divided, chaos reigns. We’ve all seen the blame game of misaligned projects: engineering blames construction for poor execution, construction blames engineering for bad drawings; the contractor files claims, the owner fires off angry letters – and everyone spends late nights fighting fires that should never have started. It’s a tragic waste. Project success is a team sport – if one player only cares about their stat line, the whole team loses the game.

Rethinking KPIs: From Vanity Metrics to Value Metrics

To align around the owner’s vision of success, we must change what we measure and reward. Too many EPC organizations fixate on internal KPIs – profit margins, utilization rates, schedule slippage on their portion of work, etc. While managing cost and schedule is important, these metrics become dangerous when taken in isolation. They tempt teams to declare victory too early. Hitting your construction productivity target means little if late engineering changes caused that target to shift in the first place. Traditional KPIs can devolve into vanity metrics – numbers that look good for one stakeholder’s report, but don’t reflect the true health of the project. It’s time to replace vanity metrics with value metrics that track outcomes the owner cares about: overall schedule to first production, total cost to beneficial operation, lifecycle performance, and so on.

Imagine if EPC contracts and dashboards were built around owner success metrics – for example, an incentive bonus only when the plant produces at X capacity by Y date, not for just handing over a pile of documents or reaching a sub-phase. This would force the tough conversations early. It would drive contractors to proactively coordinate with each other and with the owner to solve issues, not hide them. In fact, progressive contract models like integrated project delivery (IPD) and alliance agreements are doing exactly this. They tie everyone’s financial outcomes to the same definition of success. As McKinsey observed, “there is clear evidence that better program and budget outcomes can be achieved by pooling delivery risk and sharing profits among the owner, engineer, and constructor.” Under such models, even the contractors see higher returns when the project succeeds for the owner. In other words, when we all row in the same direction, the pie gets bigger for everyone.

It’s not just about contracts, though – it’s about mindset. We need to foster a culture where telling the hard truth early is valued more than saving face. If a supplier sees a risk to the start-up date, an aligned team addresses it now, not after it festers into a crisis. If the architect’s stunning design is creating costly complexity, an aligned team finds a compromise that protects the end goal (instead of bickering until budgets explode). This requires psychological safety and trust – hallmarks of aligned teams. It also means rewarding collaboration.

Why not make “no significant rework” or “zero scope gaps between disciplines” key performance indicators? These directly correlate to final outcomes.

In short, we must measure what actually matters. As one of Buro Matei’s data-driven principles states: “Zero Rework” – start with reliable information and get it right the first time. That’s not just efficiency talk; it’s recognizing that every revision or do-over is time and cost that threaten the final delivery.

The new playbook

Principles of owner-aligned execution

Achieving unified success in practice calls for a different playbook than the traditional siloed approach. Here are key principles – a manifesto of sorts – drawn from industry best practices and industry thought leadership, that can transform how we execute projects:

Keep the End in Mind at All Times: Every team member should continually ask, “How does this decision affect startup and operation?” This echoes Stephen Covey’s famous habit and Buro Matei’s first data-driven principle. By working backward from the desired end-state (a running facility), we make better choices in the moment. For example, engineering shouldn’t just aim to issue IFC drawings – they should aim to issue constructible, error-free IFC drawings that enable smooth commissioning. It’s about focusing on outcomes, not just outputs.

Data-Driven Execution: Leverage data and analytics to illuminate issues early and guide decisions objectively. In an aligned project, data becomes the single source of truth – not hunches or fragmented reports. Modern projects generate enormous data; the winners use it. By establishing real-time dashboards (schedule, cost, risk, quality) accessible to all, the entire team can rally around facts instead of perceptions. Patterns like late design changes or site productivity dips can be spotted and corrected before they jeopardize the end goal. A data-driven approach also means baselining what “success” looks like (in throughput, costs, etc.) and tracking leading indicators. No more flying blind.

Advanced Work Packaging (AWP+) and Phased Planning: AWP is a best practice that breaks the project into manageable, sequential work packages – aligning engineering, procurement, and construction in the correct sequence. When done right, AWP ensures that construction has the right information and materials at the right time, dramatically reducing delays. Research shows projects using AWP see up to 25% gains in field productivity and 10% reduction in total install cost. Buro Matei’s “AWP+” refers to augmenting this with additional data integration or early planning steps, and fully automated work packages. The message: plan thoroughly and holistically. Every handoff (from design to field, from vendor to site) must be orchestrated with the final startup date in mind. No more waiting on late deliverables or missing materials – those failure modes are prevented by design.

LOD-Based Engineering: Ensure that the Level of Development (LOD) of deliverables matches what’s needed at each stage. Too often, teams either gold-plate designs (wasting time on details irrelevant to early phases) or under-detail them (causing downstream confusion). Adopting LOD-based planning means you define, for example, that by 30% design review, all major equipment and layout is fixed (LOD 300), and by IFC all deign is final for first-time-right construction (LOD 400), etc. This avoids the scenario of “design is 100% complete” on paper but still unbuildable in the field. It ties back to zero rework: do it once, do it right, at the right level of detail. Clear LOD standards align everyone on what “done” looks like at each phase, again with the end goal steering those decisions.

Digital Twin Integration: Embrace the use of Digital Twins not as buzzwords, but as practical tools to keep the project team and owner on the same virtual page. A Digital Twin – a live digital replica of the facility – can be used during execution to simulate and validate decisions. Buro Matei advocates developing the digital twin from the engineering phase onward, so that it’s ready by the time the physical asset is operational. This provides a continuous thread of information. Changes made in the model can instantly flag clashes or deviations, reducing errors. By the time of startup, the owner not only gets a real plant but a fully populated digital model to support operations. This approach “reduces costs, minimizes errors, and provides lasting value for clients.” In short, it prevents the common disconnect between what was built and what was designed – the digital twin captures it all, keeping stakeholders aligned through a single, evolving reference of truth.

Lean and Agile Project Management: Lean construction principles – such as pull planning, and continuous improvement – foster a culture of collaboration and eliminate waste. High-“Lean intensity” projects have been found to be three times more likely to complete ahead of schedule and twice as likely to complete under budget. Why? Because lean forces you to remove non-value-add activities (like waiting, rework, excess inventory) that often stem from misalignment. It also empowers teams at the frontline to plan together and commit to tasks in small cycles (weekly work plans), increasing reliability. Similarly, an agile mindset helps teams adapt to changes rapidly without losing sight of the end goal. The takeaway: be disciplined about efficiency, and stay flexible to address issues, but never flexible about the final objectives. Lean/Agile methods provide the framework to do so.

Relentless Focus on Owner Value: Every decision, from major scope changes down to minor RFIs, should be evaluated by how it impacts the value delivered to the owner. This principle sounds obvious, but making it a habit is transformative. It means, for example, that if a choice arises between two design options, the one that better meets the owner’s business case (faster to market, lower operating cost, etc.) wins – not the one that is simply cheaper upfront or more convenient for the contractor. It means contractors and suppliers actively look for ways to save the owner money and time, even if it might reduce their short-term revenue. Far from being altruistic, it’s enlightened self-interest – satisfied clients come back with more work, and successful projects build reputations that win future contracts. In an aligned model, the owner’s victory is the team’s victory. So make their KPIs your KPIs.

By embedding these principles, project teams create a shared playbook. Silos break down, communication channels open up, and people start pulling in one direction. It’s a fundamentally different rhythm – proactive, transparent, and obsessed with outcome over output.

When the whole team wins

It’s inspiring to see what happens when stakeholders truly unite around a common definition of success. Suddenly, stories emerge that sound almost out of place in the grim context of usual project stats: teams delivering months ahead of schedule, contractors willingly cutting out fluff to save the owner money, engineers and construction crews co-locating and solving problems in real time instead of via paperwork wars. When alignment hits its stride, you get projects like the one where early risk-sharing and scope clarity let a contractor reduce the overall project price, enabling the client to reinvest savings elsewhere. Or programs like the “alliance” contracts in Australia and the UK, where contractors, designers, and owners share profits and pain – yielding projects that consistently meet or beat targets to the mutual benefit of all. These examples are not fairy tales; they exist in pockets today wherever leaders have had the courage to break the mold.

Even on a smaller scale, the wins are tangible: fewer change orders, faster decision cycles, improved safety (because a less chaotic project is a safer project), and quality built right the first time. Take an owner like Exxon or Shell on a complex petrochemical build – when they insist on integrated planning and one-team execution, their mega-projects have finished under budget, saving tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, competitors on similar projects who stick to the old adversarial approach drown in claims and overruns. The gap is real and growing between those who align and those who don’t.

It’s Time to Choose: Internal Comfort or Actual Success?

Ultimately, redefining project success is about choosing what we value. Do we value our own comfort metrics, our familiar ways of working, our excuses (“that’s just how projects go…”)? Or do we value the outcome – the promise we made to the client and the tangible impact of a facility delivered right? We can’t have both. As this manifesto-styled argument has laid out, the status quo in EPC has rewarded internal metrics at the expense of owner outcomes for too long. That status quo is untenable – not only for owners, who are justifiably fed up, but for the EPC industry itself. In a world of tightening budgets and demand for efficiency, those who cannot deliver real success will be left behind.

It’s time to align or be left on the bench. Project managers, engineers, contractors: ask yourself if you’re truly defining success by the client’s yardstick. Are you fighting for the end-goal, or just your piece of the puzzle? Are your project controls measuring impact or just activity? It takes courage to admit that the old way isn’t working. But acknowledging this is liberating – it frees us to change. As the saying goes, “start with the end in mind.” If we all do that, we draw the collective map to get there.

The bold truth is that a project either succeeds together or fails together. The only victory that counts is the one where the Owner/Client stands at the finish line, plant running, product flowing, or passengers boarding, saying “Yes – this meets our vision.” Everything else is noise. So, how do you define project success? If your definition is anything short of that client’s smile at handover, it’s time to rethink, re-align, and recommit. The future of EPC will be written by those who deliver outcomes, not excuses. Join that future – one where we celebrate a unified success measured in real-world impact, not just slide-deck metrics. The choice is yours, and the time to choose is now.

In the end, there is only one project scoreboard that matters: the owner’s. Let’s make sure that when the final whistle blows, everyone on the team has won.