This intensive one-day bootcamp is designed for professionals seeking to strengthen their practical understanding of delay, disruption, loss of productivity claims, and dispute avoidance in construction and infrastructure projects. Through a structured and comprehensive programme, participants will explore how claims arise, how they can be analysed and managed, and how better project, contractual, and commercial practices can reduce the likelihood of escalation into formal disputes. Attendees will examine the realities of project delivery in a real-world context, using practical examples, interactive discussion, and case-based exercises to build stronger awareness of the issues that most commonly affect time, cost, productivity, and contractual outcomes. By the end of the bootcamp, participants will understand how to: Recognise the common project, commercial, and contractual conditions that give rise to claims and disputes. Understand the core principles of forensic delay analysis, including methodology selection, concurrency, pacing delay, and extension of time considerations. Assess disruption and loss of productivity issues using clear, reasoned, and credible approaches supported by appropriate records and evidence. Distinguish mitigation from acceleration, and understand the contractual, practical, and commercial issues that arise when parties seek earlier completion. Apply better contract awareness across JCT, NEC4, and FIDIC to support stronger administration, improved compliance, and dispute avoidance. Identify recommended practices across the project life cycle that can help prevent, manage, and mitigate claims more effectively.

The rail industry is at a pivotal moment, with significant transformation underway through the creation of Great British Railways (GBR). This presentation will explore how technology and innovation are driving project controls to new heights in this sector. We'll discuss the opportunities and challenges that GBR presents for project professionals. The session will begin with an overview of the current state of project controls in the rail industry, discussing common challenges such as managing large-scale infrastructure projects, dealing with multiple stakeholders, and ensuring compliance with regulations. We will then delve into the role technology plays in mitigating these challenges by showcasing modern solutions that enhance collaboration, improve data management, and provide real-time insights for better decision making. We finally discuss the importance of change management and colleague engagement throughout this transformative process, balancing the needs for a smooth transition with long-term success. We will conclude by outlining future trends and potential innovations within project controls for the rail industry.

PMOs are traditionally designed to provide governance, reporting, and assurance. While these functions remain important, organisations increasingly expect PMOs to play a far more strategic role—enabling better decisions, improving delivery outcomes, and driving measurable value across portfolios. However, transforming a PMO into a truly value-adding function is rarely achieved through new tools, frameworks, or processes alone. It requires developing the capability, mindset, and confidence of the PMO team itself. This presentation explores the role of coaching as a powerful approach for enabling this shift. By focusing on people rather than just processes, coaching can help PMO professionals build stronger relationships with delivery teams, influence decision-making, and move from compliance-focused activities toward proactive value creation. Drawing on practical experience and real-world examples, the session will highlight how coaching techniques can empower PMO teams to think strategically, challenge constructively, and foster a culture of ownership and continuous improvement. It will also explore how PMO leaders can create the conditions for teams to evolve into adaptive, future-ready functions that support both project delivery and organisational strategy. Attendees will leave with practical insights into how coaching can unlock the full potential of their PMO teams and help position them as a trusted partner.

This presentation sets out the core building blocks required to establish a strong, dependable project controls environment on major projects. It explains how effective project controls provide clarity, confidence, and early warning, supporting informed decisionmaking across the full project lifecycle. The session focuses on the practical foundations that allow cost, schedule, risk, change, and performance information to work together as a single, trusted picture. The presentation explores how clear governance, defined roles, consistent processes, and quality data underpin successful controls. It highlights the importance of early set up, integration between commercial and planning functions, and creating the right behaviours so that controls are used to support delivery rather than simply report it. Attendees will gain an understanding of what “good” looks like, common pitfalls to avoid, and how a wellembedded controls environment enables transparency, accountability, and confidence on complex major projects

Malaysia’s aspiration to achieve and sustain 2,000 kboe/d production is increasingly challenged by declining base production and a growing number of non-viable development projects within the national portfolio. In response, Development Resource Integration & Value Enhancement (DRIVE) was established as a structured initiative to systematically assess the viability of development projects and to identify targeted interventions that enhance project economics and delivery certainty. Since its establishment, DRIVE has reviewed 201 development projects initially classified as non-viable or having negative contractor value. Through integrated evaluation and optimization efforts, 66 projects have been reclassified as viable, unlocking approximately 1,485 MMBoe of reserves and supporting production targets for 2026–2028. However, 135 projects remain unresolved, representing significant unrealised value and posing a risk to long-term production sustainability. To address this, DRIVE advocates the institutionalization of Integrated Resource Planning and Optimisation, encompassing standardised designs, long-term sequencing of drilling, floaters and T&I activities, early procurement strategies, and cross-project integration. These measures aim to accelerate project delivery, reduce development costs, and improve overall portfolio resilience. The paper outlines DRIVE’s findings, value creation potential through reduction in projects development schedule and cost as well as the path forward to safeguard long-term production targets.

We are entering the most transformative era of program and project management in history. For decades, success was measured by time, cost, and scope. Today, those measures are no longer enough. Artificial Intelligence accelerates transformation at a speed no methodology ever imagined, forcing leaders to rethink not what they deliver, but how and why they lead. The lesson is clear: technology alone does not transform organizations—leaders do. AI may automate execution and predict risks, but only leaders can embed ethics, inspire trust, and guide humanity through change that truly matters. This session will reveal the next step: how program and project management can evolve from tracking progress to shaping transformation itself. The future will not belong to those who deliver faster, it will belong to those who lead responsibly, with vision, courage, and humanity.

Project controls has long been defined by retrospective reporting — variance analysis after the fact, earned value snapshots that confirm what teams already suspected, and dashboards that inform but rarely transform decisions. AI is changing this fundamentally. This presentation draws on real-world implementation experience at Gleeds, a 100-year-old global consultancy, where a bespoke AI language model trained on decades of historical project data and machine learning tools for cost, schedule, and performance forecasting have moved projects from reactive reporting to predictive, decision-enabling intelligence. The session covers practical lessons from deploying AI across a 2,000-person organisation: what worked, what failed, how to build data literacy at scale through structured academies, and how AI-augmented project controls changes the conversations happening in boardrooms and on site. Drawing on insights from 100+ episodes of the Project Flux podcast — featuring project leaders, technologists, and clients navigating AI adoption — this talk provides an honest, practitioner-led perspective on where AI genuinely adds value in project controls today, where hype outpaces reality, and what the profession must do now to remain relevant in an AI-augmented delivery landscape.