WE KNOW WHY PROJECTS FAIL. DO WE KNOW WHY THEY SUCCEED?

There is a question that rarely gets asked in industrial project management, but perhaps should be asked more often. When an energy operations project is completed successfully — on time, safely, and within budget — what exactly made the difference? Most post-project reviews focus on what went wrong. Very few organisations in the energy sector spend meaningful time studying what went right.

This is a curious habit. We have entire systems built around failure analysis. Root cause investigation. Incident reporting. Lessons learned databases filled almost exclusively with things to avoid. And all of that is necessary. But it creates a blind spot. We become deeply knowledgeable about our mistakes and remarkably inarticulate about our successes.

Think about the last project you were involved in that went well. Not just adequately, but well. Can you point to the specific decisions, behaviours, or conditions that made it work? Or does it simply get filed away as a job done, while the team moves on to the next mobilisation?

In our experience working across heavy industrial and energy operations, the difference between a good project and a great one is rarely a single dramatic moment. It is a collection of small, unglamorous things done consistently. The pre-shift briefing actually invited questions instead of rushing through a checklist. The supervisor who noticed a team member was unusually quiet and took five minutes to check in. The planning session where someone said, "We tried that approach two years ago and here is what we did not expect," and the room actually listened.

These moments do not make it into reports. They are not captured by any system. And because they are not captured, they are not repeated deliberately. They happen by chance when the right people are in the room, and they disappear when those people move on.

The organisations that will lead in the next decade of global energy will not just be the ones with the best technology or the most competitive pricing. They will be the ones who develop a discipline around understanding their own success with the same rigour they apply to understanding their failures. They treat what works not as luck, but as something worth decoding, documenting, and deliberately building into the way they operate.

It requires a shift in thinking. Failure teaches us what to stop doing. But only studying success teaches us what to keep doing and why.

If you could point to one underrated factor behind the best project you have ever been part of, what would it be?