.png)
PROJECT DELIVERY· INTEGRATED EXECUTION
THE HANDOFF PROBLEM: WHY PROJECTS BREAK AT THE BOUNDARIES
By David Swank, CEO, i3 Power & Energy
Nearly every failed energy infrastructure project fails at a boundary. Not in the middle of a well-scoped phase. At the boundary where responsibility transfers from one party to another. Developer to EPC contractor. EPC to commissioning team. Commissioning to operator. Operator to utility. Utility to system operator. Each of those boundaries is a point where information gets summarized, assumptions get frozen, and the party receiving the handoff has to reconstruct context that the party making the handoff already had. The boundaries are where the value leaks out.
This is not a controversial observation among people who have actually operated infrastructure. It is broadly acknowledged in every operator conversation I have had over the past decade. What is less acknowledged is that the traditional project delivery model treats these boundaries as necessary features rather than solvable problems. Rethinking that assumption is one of the highest-leverage things the industry can do to improve project outcomes.
WHY HANDSOFFS ARE THE REAL FAILURE MODE
Inside a given phase of a project, the party responsible usually performs well. Developers develop. EPCs build. Commissioning teams commission. Operators operate. The competence inside each phase is generally not the problem. The problem originates at the translation between phases, where decisions made in one phase get compressed into deliverables that the next phase has to accept as given.
The receiving party inherits assumptions they did not make, choices they did not weigh, and constraints they did not shape. When those inherited elements do not match the operating reality the receiving party understands, the project starts absorbing costs, delays, and workarounds that no one in the earlier phase anticipated. These are not execution failures. They are structural features of a delivery model that treats coordination as optional.
WHAT TRADITIONAL DELIVERY LOOKS LIKE
The default model is sequential. Contracts are structured phase by phase, with each party optimizing their own scope inside their own contractual boundary. The developer optimizes for the deal that closes construction financing. The EPC optimizes for the build that hits budget and schedule. The commissioning team optimizes for the tests that transfer risk to the operator. The operator optimizes for the performance they can actually deliver given what they were handed. No party is responsible for the through-line.
The result is projects that are individually competent inside each phase and systemically flawed in the transition between them. Every party can point to their own performance and defend it. The performance of the project as a whole is nobody's job.
“A project that changes hands three times has three opportunities to lose the operational context that made the original design make sense.”
.png)
WHAT CONTINOUS COORDINATION LOOKS LIKE
The alternative is not a new phase in the project. It is a different structure of participation across the existing phases. The operator participates during design, before their formal scope begins. The utility participates during operator selection. The system operator participates during interconnection design, not just during interconnection approval. Community stakeholders participate during siting, not just during permitting.
This is not adding people to meetings. It is adding the right people to the meetings that were going to happen anyway, at the phase when their input still shapes the outcome. Handoffs are replaced by continuous participation. The through-line is somebody's job, from day one, because the parties who own the through-line are in the room from day one.
.png)
WHY THIS PRODUCES BLANKABLE PRJECTS
Projects developed this way accumulate fewer surprises. Fewer change orders. Fewer performance shortfalls. Fewer disputes at the seam between one party's scope and the next. Lenders can see the coordination in the structure of the project documents and in the composition of the teams. They price the risk accordingly.
This is not a marketing claim. It is a structural feature that shows up in operating performance, in dispute frequency, and in the terms available in the debt and equity markets. Bankable projects are not just projects that get financed. They are projects whose operating story has been de-risked by the coordination discipline that
produced them.
SOLVING THAT PROBLEM REQUIRES NO NEW TOOLS
The handoff problem is one of the most solvable structural failures in energy infrastructure development. It requires no new technology, no new financing instruments, no new regulatory framework. It requires a different theory of how parties should participate in a project.
At i3, that theory is straightforward. Bring every party who will operate the system, connect it, regulate it, and finance it into the room during the phase where their input actually shapes the outcome. Then keep them there. The projects that result do not break at the boundaries because the boundaries have been designed out. That is what integrated execution actually means.
.png)