The Risky Planner™

Albert & Nate w/Dokainish & Company
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Our listener survey is live! Have a say in future episodes. Submit your questions today.  https://forms.office.com/r/KFCi9aiENH  Capital projects waste billions annually on predictable delays, but there's a proven way to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget. Join Albert Brier, Director, Project Controls and Nate Habermeyer, Director, Marketing at Dokainish & Company, as they discuss how current events and trends are reshaping project controls and mega-projects across industries. This podcast is designed for project managers, project controls professionals, IT leaders, and executives. Our listeners grapple with high-stakes decisions, tight deadlines, and inefficient project delivery systems. They face overruns, inconsistent reporting, technology misalignment, and integration struggles, leaving projects vulnerable to delays and cost overages. We'll dissect the biggest industry pain points, including: Meeting critical milestones despite limited capacity and complex project scopes.Lack of standardized processes, forcing teams to consolidate data manually.Technology and system integration failures - where IT projects derail instead of accelerating progress.The failure of risk management practices, leaving organizations blind to their biggest threats.Why change initiatives fail, and how organizations can build a culture that embraces project controls​. Whether you're leading a megaproject or struggling to get executives to buy into project controls, this podcast will give you the tools and insights to take control of your capital projects - instead of letting them control you. Special thanks to our good friend Thompson Egbo-Egbo for the music. Find his original music at www.egbomusic.com.

  1. JAN 28

    Capital Project Time Machine: Why Megaprojects Fail

    Send us a text HELP PICK FUTURE TOPICS, TAKE OUR SURVEY. Most capital projects do not fail during execution. They fail when early approvals accept uncertainty that later becomes unmanageable. In this long-cut episode of The Risky Planner Podcast, Nate Habermeyer and Albert Brier revisit well-known megaprojects to examine what information was available at the start, what risks were visible, and what teams and executive sponsors could reasonably have challenged before work began. The discussion covers projects that were large, complex, and governed by formal PMOs. Many ultimately delivered assets now considered successful in operation. All experienced severe cost growth and schedule delay. Key themes include: Why early estimates systematically understate cost and duration How optimism bias shows up in capital project approvals What “first-of-a-kind” risk really looks like in practice Why some risks exist in registers but still go underpriced What executive sponsors should ask at the first decision gate This episode is relevant for executive sponsors, PMO leaders, and project controls professionals working in regulated, multi-stakeholder environments where early decisions carry long-term consequences. Listen to understand where leverage actually exists—and why it is highest before construction starts. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    1h 4m

  2. 12/19/2025

    Season 1 Finale: What You Missed and Why 2026 Changes Everything

    Send us a text Hosts Nate Habermeyer and Albert Brier recorded this finale in person — a first for the show — to reflect on what shaped the world of capital projects in 2025, which episodes hit hardest, and where they're headed in 2026. Season 1 covered ground: AI tools and their real-world limits in project controls. SMs, BIM, climate risk. Tariffs and political uncertainty rippling through supply chains. The most downloaded episode featured live interviews from the AACE conference floor, where Albert spoke with practitioners like Dr. David Hewlett about what's changing in the field. Albert shares a preview of an upcoming AACE paper on program risk management — co-authored with Roger Bradfield and Rachel Fleming. The core problem: most mega-projects are actually programs made up of hundreds of smaller, interrelated projects. Each brings its own risk setup. No consolidated framework exists. Nuclear waste management projects illustrate this perfectly — individually small, collectively worth hundreds of billions, and loaded with scope uncertainty until work begins. The hosts also pull back the curtain on their production setup (a lot of help from Perplexity) and tease plans for 2026: audience polls, feedback loops, and deeper engagement with listeners. This episode is for project controls professionals, schedulers, risk analysts, and anyone tracking where the industry is headed. If you followed Season 1, this wraps the themes together. If you're new, it's a roadmap to what we covered and why it matters. Subscribe now for Season 2. Visit riskyplanner.com to explore every episode. Connect with us on LinkedIn — we want to hear what topics you want covered next. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    16 min

  3. 12/02/2025

    The Skills Gap Is a Crisis: Why You Cannot Buy Project Controls Experience

    Send us a text Your next billion-dollar capital project faces a single point of failure: the people required to plan and execute it just do not exist. The industry faces a severe labor deficit. Data confirms that 94% of construction contractors cannot fill open project controls positions Additionally, 41% of the current workforce will retire by 2031. You cannot hire your way out of this shortage because the talent pool is drying up. In this episode of The Risky Planner, Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer analyze this deficit. They explain why scheduling and risk analysis require site-specific context that is vanishing as senior experts retire without transferring knowledge. Key insights from this episode: The "Black Magic" of Planning: Effective scheduling is not data entry; it requires specific job-site context to identify risks before they become delays666. Replacing seasoned planners with remote resources removes this context and degrades project intelligence.The AI "Combo" Advantage: AI will not replace the scheduler, but it will expose the unskilled8. Research suggests that professionals who combine their expertise with AI ("Combos") outperform those using only AI or only manual methods.The Multitasking Dilution: Modern schedulers manage 12–15 projects simultaneously, a sharp increase from the historical standard of one dedicated planner per major project10101010. This task-switching reduces planners to data entry clerks doing the minimum required to feed reporting systems.The Risk Premium: Because effective risk management requires mastery of cost, schedule, and scope, qualified risk professionals now command a 20–40% salary premium over general project controls roles.The Strategic Imperative: You must build the talent you cannot find. For Leaders: Stop searching for the perfect senior hire. Budget for the 3–5 years required to train apprentices under your remaining experts. For Juniors: Find a mentor immediately15. Learn the foundational principles from the retiring generation, then apply modern AI tools to become the hybrid professional the market demands. Next Step: Listen to the full episode to restructure your teams before the retirement wave hits your portfolio. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    39 min

  4. 11/03/2025

    Offshoring & Capital Projects

    Send us a text Offshoring project management works for software development. It fails for capital construction. The difference: the feedback loop between physical site conditions and project control decisions. Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer examine why remote project management models that succeed in IT create invisible risks on construction sites—risks that surface when projects run months behind and millions over budget. PMI's 2024 Pulse of the Profession report shows remote teams achieving success rates comparable to onsite teams. But that data reflects primarily IT projects where Agile methodologies thrive. Capital construction operates under different constraints. Physical projects face physical realities. Weather delays deliveries. Soil changes scope. Crane availability dictates sequence. A remote project controls team can't see the mud, can't smell diesel smoke when a generator fails, can't overhear the superintendent mention a supplier issue impacting the critical path. The digital layer—dashboards, sensors, drone footage, progress tracking—promises to bridge this gap. But sensors capture data, not context. A camera shows a crane in position, not the operator who noticed a defect and stopped work. A progress app shows 73% complete, not the workaround creating future rework. When project controls professionals lose jobsite knowledge access, planning quality degrades. Offshore schedulers build timelines that look rigorous in Primavera but collapse when field realities intervene. They lack context to challenge unrealistic durations, spot scope creep, or understand how weather will impact concrete pours. This episode breaks down which functions can move offshore—document control, cost coding, baseline schedules—and which require site proximity: critical path analysis, look-ahead planning, resource allocation. Albert shares insights from power stations, refineries, and infrastructure projects where hybrid models tried to balance cost with effectiveness. Most failed because they skipped knowledge transfer protocols. Organizations that succeeded used buddy systems pairing onsite and offshore staff, required site visits for scale perspective, and maintained overlapping hours for real-time problem solving. The conversation addresses an existential risk: the construction industry is raising project managers who have never walked a job site. They build careers managing from spreadsheets, optimizing metrics that don't reflect ground truth. Without field experience, they can't distinguish between a schedule that looks good and one that will work. For executives evaluating offshore strategies, this episode provides critical questions: Which roles require site proximity? How will offshore teams access real-time field intelligence? What knowledge transfer protocols will maintain institutional memory? Can offshore members visit sites during critical phases? Offshoring isn't wrong for capital projects. But applying IT models to construction creates risks that don't appear in cost-benefit analyses. Labor savings show up immediately. The consequences—delays, overruns, quality issues—show up 18 months later when it's too late to recover. Whether you're an executive evaluating proposals, a project controls professional facing restructuring, or a construction leader balancing efficiency with effectiveness, this episode delivers frameworks for deciding where work should happen. Subscribe to The Risky Planner Podcast for insights on capital project c Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    44 min

  5. 09/30/2025

    Why Annualized Capital Budgets Fail (And How to Fix Them)

    Send us a text Your portfolio hits 98% of its spending target. Leadership celebrates. But individual projects tell a different story: delayed scope, panic Q4 purchases, work pushed to next year. Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer dissect why annualized capital budgets consistently fail to deliver planned value despite meeting spending goals. The data is clear: 20% of projects run behind schedule and 80% over budget. Yet organizations continue locking specific scopes to rigid annual funding windows. When delays hit—and they always do—spending shifts to outer years, creating artificial shortfalls and forcing low-quality purchases to avoid "use it or lose it" budget losses. They outline two proven fixes: Lean and continuous budgeting allocates funds to programs rather than specific projects. Quarterly planning sessions determine which projects to execute based on current conditions. Manufacturing facilities use this approach extensively. Risk-adjusted annual planning maintains project-specific budgets but applies realistic timelines based on historical performance. If projects typically run 30% behind, budget for 9 months instead of 6. Use freed capacity to start additional projects mid-year. The conversation includes anecdotes of ExxonMobil's 25% schedule contingency practices, GAO's Navy shipbuilding research from the 1990s, and refinery debottlenecking program examples. Both approaches require one critical first step: quantify your historical schedule variance. Without data proving current failures, you cannot build the business case for change. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    41 min

  6. 09/02/2025

    AACE Conference 2024: Project Controls Experts on AI & Risk

    Send us a text Hear extended interviews from the AACE conference floor with 13 project controls professionals from Hess Corporation, Pattern Energy, and more, and software companies including Safran, Smart PM Technologies, and TurboChart. Direct insights from the interviews: The future of capital projects varies by perspective. Answers ranged from "AI enabled management" (Frank Pangalon) to "integration" (Franco Yasuyama, Pattern Energy) to "dim" (Ian Nicholson, Emerald Associates). California High Speed Rail divides opinion. Some say yes, it'll get built. Others doubt it. David Hewlett notes it's only being built between Fresno and San Jose now, not the original San Diego to Sacramento vision. Excel dominates daily work. Nearly everyone named it as their most-used software, alongside Primavera P6 for scheduling and various collaboration tools like Teams. Actual advice from professionals: Each guest shared one piece of advice for new project managers. The responses focused on mentorship, communication, field experience, and staying curious about new technologies while mastering fundamentals. Claudette Smith: "Find a mentor" ✓ Frank Pangalon: "Don't let your young age or your lack of experience stop you from feeling empowered to make right recommendations" ✓ David Emanuel: "learn to tell a story from the numbers from the data" ✓ Santosh Bhat: "always be curious. Ask questions" ✓ Rohit Sinha: "think about how you're going to bring all the data together" ✓ Franco Yasuyama: "get in the field" ✓ Albert Dokainish conducted these interviews after presenting at the Safran Summit that followed the conference. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    26 min

  7. 08/05/2025

    Why “Summer Build Season” No Longer Works: Climate Risk Is Reshaping Project Schedules

    Send us a text Albert and Nate talk through a quiet shift happening on capital projects: climate adaptation is no longer a long-term planning exercise — it’s a short-term delivery problem. Schedules that used to anchor around stable permitting windows, predictable summer outages, and long-established build seasons are now under pressure. What project leaders are starting to see: Wildfire season overlapping with outage workPermitting agencies pulling back windows without warning“Summer” no longer guaranteeing dry or safe conditionsDisasters triggering asset failures that disrupt project sequencingThis episode explores how project teams are: Getting caught off guard by compounding seasonal risksLosing float without realizing itPivoting from long-range climate planning to last-minute climate reactingIf you’re still building your schedule around assumptions that no longer hold — this is the episode that forces a rethink. Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    44 min

  8. 07/17/2025

    Data, Digital, and Uncertainty: Capital Project Professionals Share What's Next at AACE 2025

    Send us a text Albert Brier returns from the AACE conference in Anaheim with insights from 13 industry professionals on the future of capital projects. From the dominance of Excel to the rise of AI-enabled scheduling tools, this episode explores how project controls professionals are navigating digital transformation while facing unprecedented uncertainty. Hear firsthand perspectives on whether California's high-speed rail will ever be built, which software tools dominate the industry, and essential advice for newcomers entering the field. Plus, discover why Oracle might be losing its grip on enterprise scheduling and which companies are positioning themselves as the next generation of project controls solutions.  Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.

    33 min
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About

Our listener survey is live! Have a say in future episodes. Submit your questions today.  https://forms.office.com/r/KFCi9aiENH  Capital projects waste billions annually on predictable delays, but there's a proven way to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget. Join Albert Brier, Director, Project Controls and Nate Habermeyer, Director, Marketing at Dokainish & Company, as they discuss how current events and trends are reshaping project controls and mega-projects across industries. This podcast is designed for project managers, project controls professionals, IT leaders, and executives. Our listeners grapple with high-stakes decisions, tight deadlines, and inefficient project delivery systems. They face overruns, inconsistent reporting, technology misalignment, and integration struggles, leaving projects vulnerable to delays and cost overages. We'll dissect the biggest industry pain points, including: Meeting critical milestones despite limited capacity and complex project scopes.Lack of standardized processes, forcing teams to consolidate data manually.Technology and system integration failures - where IT projects derail instead of accelerating progress.The failure of risk management practices, leaving organizations blind to their biggest threats.Why change initiatives fail, and how organizations can build a culture that embraces project controls​. Whether you're leading a megaproject or struggling to get executives to buy into project controls, this podcast will give you the tools and insights to take control of your capital projects - instead of letting them control you. Special thanks to our good friend Thompson Egbo-Egbo for the music. Find his original music at www.egbomusic.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Albert & Nate w/Dokainish & Company
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Risky Planner™
  • Show Website
    The Risky Planner™