Ambition is returning, but certainty remains scarce
2026 has brought the highest volume of enquiries for new project development that I have seen this decade. Across upstream and midstream hydrocarbons, chemicals, mining, industrial decarbonisation and the wider energy transition that we serve, the ambition to develop is unmistakable. At io consulting, we are fortunate that the established breadth of sectors and segments we cover, and services we provide, has presented us with the largest pipeline in our eleven-year history.
Ambition, though, is not the same as momentum. A great deal of that intent is taking far longer to convert than it once did. Geopolitical uncertainty, tensions in the Middle East, and the volatility in energy prices that seems to follow every disruption have all made owners more cautious about when and how quickly to commit. When they do commit, they want to do so with more certainty.
Certainty is created at the front end
The front end of project development, where io specialises, is where this certainty is created. Front-end project development isn’t simply another engineering package to procure. We often find ourselves competing against organisations that are excellent at detailed design and execution. Given a robust basis of design, they’ll deliver it well. However, creating that basis, challenging it, optimising it and ensuring it represents the best investment decision is a different discipline altogether. A good EPC contractor can only build the project they’ve been given. Even excellent execution cannot fully compensate for a flawed project basis.
Decisions, not deliverables, determine outcomes
Engineering is fundamental, but the true measure of front-end loading is the quality of the decisions it enables. By the end of each Front End Loading (FEL) stage, the project should have created more value than simply a set of engineering deliverables. It should have challenged assumptions, tested alternatives, integrated the whole system and improved confidence in the chosen development. Only then does the focus shift from creating value to protecting it as technical definition matures towards Final Investment Decision (FID) and ultimately execution. Put simply, the front end is where a project’s future is shaped. Every major decision that follows is built on the quality of the decisions made there. Get those decisions right and execution becomes about delivering the plan. Get them wrong, and even the best engineering and project execution will spend years trying to recover value that was never created in the first place.
The evidence is already clear
None of this is new, and I make no claim to have invented it. If anything, decades of collective experience taking projects from a blank sheet of paper through to FID have simply led us to the same place the evidence already sits. In “How Big Things Get Done”, Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner show that successful megaprojects are not won through optimism or heroic delivery, but by thinking slowly at the outset so that you can move quickly later: understanding the problem before reaching for a solution, learning from what has been built before rather than treating every project as unique, and forecasting from real precedent rather than hope.
In “Leading Complex Projects”, Edward Merrow and Neeraj Nandurdikar reach a harder-edged version of the same conclusion. Projects fail long before construction begins. They fail at the front end, with weak bases, poor alignment, thin business cases, and decisions taken without the governance to challenge them.
“by thinking slowly at the outset so that you can move quickly later”
Creating value is only the beginning
Where I think io has taken this a step further is in what we do once value has been created. Merrow describes what good front-end loading looks like. We have built our whole operating model around not only creating value early but also protecting it all the way to sanction, because value created at the front end is fragile. You cannot protect value that was never created, and you cannot assume that value, once created, will survive contact with a maturing design unless someone is deliberately guarding it. The alternative is something the industry has watched play out time and again. The consequences are familiar. The gaps only reveal themselves at the end of FEED, or when EPC bids are returned, and the economics no longer stack up. By then, schedules are tight, options are limited, and projects find themselves recycling back through the front end. That is an expensive lesson. It costs time and money, delays FID, puts the investment case at risk and can leave lasting reputational damage for everyone involved.
The disciplines of effective front-end loading
If I had to describe the discipline behind io’s approach, it comes down to a few habits. We start with the end in mind, asking not what engineering needs to be done, but what investment or stage-gate decision the project must support, and then letting that question determine every activity that follows. We create value before we set about protecting it, rather than defending a basis of design long before anyone has asked whether it is the right basis at all. And the right basis is not fixed. It evolves as the design matures, so it has to be watched and adjusted with a degree of agility, keeping the development optimal for the project actually in front of us. That, in the end, is the whole objective of FEL. It is also why we think in systems rather than disciplines, which, in practice, means being honest about trade-offs. Every good decision requires one. The skill is not in pretending they can be avoided, but in understanding exactly what each one is: knowing what a change in one discipline does to another, understanding the lifecycle cost of that change, and having the judgement to make the call at the right moment so that value is protected rather than quietly eroded.
Developing the right level of certainty
The last of those habits is the one I feel most strongly about, and perhaps the one most often overlooked. It concerns certainty, and specifically how much of it a project actually needs. The instinct on many projects is to keep driving towards greater certainty before making a decision, generating levels of detail and definition well beyond what the decision in front of you actually requires. That is slow and expensive. The better approach is to develop only the level of certainty needed to make the next decision with confidence, then continue maturing the project in step with the subsequent decisions. Done well, this is what allows projects to move quickly without being reckless, and carefully without becoming paralysed by analysis. At io, we describe this as precise simplicity: enough detail so as to yield insight but not so much as to obscure the intent of the decision being made.
The value of seeing the whole picture
This is where I think we, and the industry, undersell what real front-end work is. The value we bring to a client is rarely that we can size a pump better than the next firm. It is that we bring the whole picture together: the technology, the economics, the execution strategy, the commercial and stakeholder realities, the uncertainty and the governance, and hold all of it in view for long enough to reach a sound decision. That is a far scarcer capability than engineering hours alone, and it is precisely the capability a lowest-price tender is least able to see. It is also the capability that turns a competent design into a project that gets built and goes on to deliver across its life.
The economics of this are easy to overlook. True front-end loading, where technical, commercial and strategic insights are balanced and tested until the development is the best fit for its value drivers and objectives, with sufficient certainty, is precisely the work that moves the numbers the most. The difference between doing that well and doing it merely adequately can be tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars over the life of an asset. Engineering will always matter because it is the foundation on which everything else is built.
However, it is the decisions that engineering enables, made well and made at the right time, that decide whether a project is worth developing at all. That is where value is created, and I believe it is where our industry, at its best, still has the most to gain.
