WHAT WE DO

We provide customized consulting and management advisory services to ensure that major construction projects around the world are completed on time and on budget. When projects encounter difficulties, we assist legal counsel in the process of alternative dispute resolution.

 

The main services provided by Pegasus-Global experts fall under the following categories:

  • Arbitration & Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
  • Performance & Prudence Auditing & Assessment
  • Independent Monitoring
  • Regulatory Support
  • Risk Review
  • Strategic Consulting

This is not a comprehensive list, and you may use different terminology to describe your needs. To discuss which services might be appropriate for your situation, please contact us by phone (+1-509-857-2235) or email (info@Pegasus-Global.com). You can also email one of our executive management team members to discuss your particular situation.

Below, you’ll find a brief description of what each type of service might entail—plus a fictional client scenario. In many cases, we provide multiple services over the course of a complex, long-term megaproject. Please visit our Global Projects page to see examples of actual projects and services.

Arbitration & Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

Construction disputes are a fact of life on megaprojects. They cost time and money while diverting resources from the project itself. When disputes arise, they need to be managed the same way a project would be managed—with a strategy, budget, schedule, and milestones to track progress against estimated cost and schedule. Pegasus-Global has key personnel who have been actively involved in arbitration and mediation for more than 40 years, having previously served as testifying expert witnesses in international arbitrations regarding construction disputes on some of the world’s largest projects. Our Testing Expert EvidenceSM service provides litigators with an objective review of their expert’s reports and testimony before being submitted in court. We can also assist counsel in identifying and assisting in the selection of outside counsel, arbitrators, and expert witnesses that are best equipped to handle your specific needs.

Situation: The developer of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline project has discovered numerous quality problems with materials provided by a key supplier. Knowing that the material integrity problems could lead to future ruptures, environmental damage, and lawsuits, the company confronts management of the supplier firm. They deny there are any quality problems.

Service: Pegasus-Global reviews all available documentation about the dispute, provides guidance on strengths and weaknesses of the issues at hand, and recommends alternative dispute resolution. Our consultants then develop strategies for managing that ADR process.

Results: The dispute is resolved in three weeks, rather than anywhere from three months to three years, had the parties taken a more litigious path. A timeframe for the supply of new materials is agreed upon, and construction is able to resume much sooner. Cost savings are commensurate with the time savings.

Performance & Prudence Auditing & Assessment

Performance and prudence audits and assessments are essential to the successful execution of large, complex construction projects because they support accountability; they also may be required by finance or regulatory stakeholders. Without audits and assessments, major project participants can be effectively working in the dark. Ideally, such evaluations should be both prospective—to minimize potential schedule and financial impacts—and retrospective. Performance and prudence audits and assessments may assess corporate policies, procedures, and/or processes. They may be limited to a single project management function or may be applied to the full spectrum of project management functions. 

Situation: A regulated utility is in year two of what was expected to be a three-year construction project for a large power plant. A number of unexpected developments have led to cost overruns and schedule impacts. The client requires an assessment of project controls, reviewing what has happened and why, as well as a prudence audit of decisions to date to enable more reliable forward planning and a successful regulatory prudence evaluation.

Service: Pegasus-Global determines that a project controls assessment of cost, schedule, and risk management is needed. We assemble those project controls standards that are most applicable to the organization’s profile of capital projects to set the generally accepted standards for project controls procedures, processes, and practices to determine whether the organization’s project controls functions meet those comparative standards. The evaluation then extends to a prudence review of the decisions made on the project, including the decision-making process and structure to determine if such decisions were reasonable and prudent based on what was known at the time to support good project governance.

Results: Pegasus-Global identifies potential gaps in how project controls were implemented on the project. We then provide the client with recommendations for improvement, including an understanding of the strengths and potential weaknesses of all project controls, for example where and why cost overruns or schedule delays occurred as well as more realistic projections for remaining project costs. This can be presented as an internal report, outlining findings and recommendations, including an implementation plan, or it can take the form of testimony in support of a regulatory proceeding. The end result places the client in a position for successful project execution.

Regulatory Support

Regulatory bodies often provide final approval before execution of megaprojects. They also may determine how much of the project costs the owner can recover. Pegasus-Global consultants have decades of varied experience with regulatory proceedings in multiple jurisdictions. They leverage that experience to help clients take a proactive approach to their regulatory strategy. In addition, Pegasus-Global has experience in the role of an independent monitor, providing an objective assessment of ongoing projects and reporting its findings to the owner, regulatory body, and other key stakeholders such as rate counsel and commission staff.

Situation: A regulated utility has determined that it needs to build a 1,100-plus-megawatt nuclear plant to replace several older coal-fired plants that are being retired. In evaluating management decisions during the course of a megaproject like this, and the cost implications of those decisions, regulators must consider the conditions and circumstances that were known, or reasonably should have been known, when the decision was made in order to determine the prudency of such decisions.

Service: Pegasus-Global is engaged to provide a management performance and prudence review in support of the utility’s case before the public utilities commission. Such a review evaluates potential issues surrounding the project’s development and execution, such as circumstances leading to a schedule delay and management’s response to that delay. It includes a readiness review opining on whether or not the right people, processes, and procedures are in place for execution.

Results: With a readiness review, the utility is able to make a strong case for being in a position to execute its new capital project successfully. The prudence review looks at the actual decisions, the processes behind such decisions, and their corresponding results to provide the client with an independent assessment of its prudency in managing and executing the project.

Risk Review

Not surprisingly, risk management is a major component of megaprojects. Pegasus-Global founder, the late Dr. Kris R. Nielsen, was a pioneer in changing how the construction industry looked at risk and received ASCE’s highest award, the Outstanding Project and Leaders (OPAL) Award, for his contributions to risk management. This award recognized decades of work in assessing cost and performance through sophisticated computer modeling that drove to the essence of whether risk was justified and was being appropriately managed in terms of eventual cost. This concept of risk management expanded to include top-down risk assessments that spanned a project lifetime and were capable of changing with the progress of a project.

Today, we continue to help clients improve their ability to manage risks by helping them recognize potential gaps, risks, interpretations, and expectations of their engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts. When it comes to project execution, the contract too often becomes an afterthought—management and the EPC contractor may gradually develop different interpretations of the contract. Then, when a dispute arises, the parties may find themselves caught flatfooted. To resolve such situations, we use our global expertise and experience on other projects of a similar nature, plus knowledge of other contractual provisions on industry EPC contracts, to assist clients in establishing the framework to improve form contracts and monitor already executed contracts.

Situation: An owner is preparing to hire an EPC contractor to complete a natural gas combined cycle facility. The winning bidder in the RFP process is a contractor that has not previously done work for this owner. The owner’s executive management team has requested that the terms and conditions of the contract be fully reviewed and understood in order to limit the owner’s risk exposure to the extent possible.

Service: Pegasus-Global uses its decades of experience in reviewing and assessing EPC contracts to examine whether this EPC contract includes appropriate provisions typically seen in similar contracts. In addition to identifying potential risk exposure to the client, Pegasus-Global identifies standard provisions that either are non-existent in the current contract or are vague and open to misinterpretation. We also make recommendations to modify future contracts and suggest appropriate methods to manage identified risks in existing contracts.

Results: The client has a functional form contract that puts it in the best position to execute projects by minimizing potential risk exposure and recognizing potential risks. This allows management to actively monitor risks throughout execution of the contract.

Strategic Consulting

Because they are inherently complex and require long timeframes, constant change is a key attribute of megaprojects. Consequently, management and control approaches, processes, procedures, and systems all must be flexible and adaptable. Management must be able to refocus repeatedly. Pegasus-Global provides clients with management tools that enable that necessary flexibility while ensuring final project success.

Situation: A public transportation authority has begun construction on a large multi-use bridge that must be completed in three years to meet a government mandate for funding agreements. Though this organization has overseen numerous road improvement projects before, none were bridges of this size and complexity. As project milestones slip and relations with contractors fray, management realizes that past project management strategies are not working for this megaproject.

Service: Our decades of experience in construction and operations have proven that customized solutions are the only effective ones for megaprojects, which must be executed in a dynamic environment. In this case, after assessing the project scope and participants—as well as the social, cultural, and political context—we provide management with a detailed set of findings and recommendations designed to improve planning and execution, get the project back on track, and rebuild frayed relationships with the contractor.

Results: When faced with inevitable changes to everything from available skilled labor, to weather delays, to supplier bankruptcy, management has a strategy that enables everyone to pivot in the same direction and adapt to changing project conditions.