What 15 years in project controls teaches you
Watch the episode on YouTube right here!
There’s a kind of quiet chaos in the construction industry. Not the noisy kind with jackhammers and rebar, but the hidden kind, buried in emails, ignored in meeting notes, and overlooked in the schedule. It’s called change. And we’re still not managing it properly.
In our latest podcast episode, “What 15 years in project controls teaches you”, we sat down with João Dias, a civil engineer with 15 years of global experience in project controls. From West Africa to the Caribbean, Denmark to London, João has seen it all: the same mistakes, the same blind spots, repeated again and again.
This isn’t a problem of innovation. It’s a problem of discipline. And if you think digital tools are going to fix it for you, well, we’ve got a billion-euro variation order you might want to look at.
In the following article, we’ll discuss:
- Change will happen. The question is: are you tracking it?
- FIDIC vs NEC: the contractual fork in the road
- The madness must stop
Change will happen. The question is: are you tracking it?
“Change will happen, no matter where you are or how well your contract is designed,” João says.
And yet, many of the biggest construction projects in Europe are still flying blind when it comes to change management.
Too often, change is reactive. A variation pops up. A claim appears. Deadlines slide. And no one can quite remember when, why, or where the change came from.
The core problem? According to João: “You are late, you are delayed, but no one knows why.”
It’s not just the external changes that hurt. Internal ones matter too: strategic shifts, mitigation decisions, re-sequencing, redesign. If you’re not documenting these, you’re losing the narrative.
“I need to track change,” João says. “No matter if it’s converted into a variation or not.”
FIDIC vs NEC: the contractual fork in the road
Here’s where things get interesting. João has worked extensively with both FIDIC and NEC contracts. And while FIDIC is widely used, he doesn’t mince words: it’s a retrospective document.
“With FIDIC, you execute, and three to six months later you prepare your claim,” he says.
NEC, on the other hand, demands real-time thinking: early warnings, compensation events, updated schedules.
NEC forces discipline. FIDIC tolerates drift.
Yet across the EU, FIDIC is still the go-to. Why? Because we like our chaos seasoned with optimism. Because it’s easier to keep doing what we know. Because if the contract doesn’t require robust project controls, why pay for them?
FIDIC might be the obvious pick compared to the different local types of contracts out there, but NEC requires a lot more work from the perspective of project controls. That will in many cases lead to more control during the project. Which is a good thing. At least it’s better than getting to the end of the project and saying, “what the hell happened?”
The madness must stop
João’s exact quote: “We must stop the madness.”
Public capital works projects across the EU are riddled with cost and time overruns. And it’s not due to malice or incompetence. It’s structural. We’re hiring the wrong people or not hiring them at all.
We’re outsourcing contract planning to legal teams who don’t understand commercial and project realities. We’re still managing billion-euro projects in Excel.
And then we’re shocked when things fall apart.
If you could save just 10% on the €42 billion construction industry in Denmark, think what that would mean for schools, hospitals and infrastructure. Multiply that across Europe. Now tell us project controls don’t matter.
This isn’t about buying more tech. It’s about building better habits. Start tracking change.
Start building project teams with specialist companies that understand both change management and the commercial impact associated with that change. Stop always creating new teams of completely new hires that brings no current standards or processes with them.
Use international standards instead of inventing new local ones. And for the love of concrete, stop assuming this new project will be different.
Because it won’t be. Unless you make it.