Sep 08, 2025
Seeing risk clearly is the difference between resilience and collapse. Projects don’t fail because risk exists; they fail because it’s ignored, underestimated, or treated as someone else’s problem. True delivery strength comes from making risk visible, active, and central to decision-making.
Author: Nicholas Grear, Development Director
Every feasibility has a risk register. Every tender has a framework. Every board paper references “mitigations.”
Yet projects still blow out, capital gets burnt, and delivery slows.
Why? Because too much of what’s called “risk management” is performance, not practice. It gives the comfort of documentation without the discipline of action.
I’ve seen registers written once and never updated. Procurement strategies drafted to win a tender but never interrogated again. Risk “allocated” down the chain to contractors without any thought as to whether they can actually absorb it.
Too often, risk management becomes:
That’s not management, it’s theatre. And it leaves projects fragile the moment conditions shift.
Blind risk rarely announces itself with sirens. It creeps in quietly, embedded in assumptions that feel plausible in the boardroom but fall apart in delivery.
Take the feasibility that assumes revenue will escalate while build costs remain flat. On paper, it’s attractive but in practice, it’s reckless. Or the cashflow that shows strong returns but forgets to model the timing of equity injections, setting up the project for liquidity stress.
Procurement structures or design freezes can be equally dangerous. A builder locked into a lump-sum contract without clear scope, or a design team forced into early sign-off to hit approvals, may create rigidity that leaves no room to adjust when markets move.
And then there’s the cultural side. When advisors nod along instead of interrogating assumptions, they create an echo chamber. Small blind spots multiply. The project team convinces itself it’s bulletproof. Resilience erodes long before a single shovel hits the ground.
Resilient projects don’t pretend risk can be eliminated. They recognise it, plan for it, and adapt as conditions shift. That means:
I’ve seen projects transform simply by running proper downside scenarios: slower sales velocity, higher escalation, DA appeals. The conversation shifts from “this looks fine” to “what if we’re wrong, and how do we pivot?” That’s where resilience starts.
Counterintuitively, confronting risk makes projects stronger.
Funders and JV partners trust downside testing more than glossy upside feasos. A financier will often approve a facility faster when they see that the developer has modelled pain points honestly and has contingency strategies ready.
Contractors engage more constructively when risk is shared intelligently. A builder who knows the developer has realistic escalation allowances is far more willing to collaborate on solutions than one handed an unrealistic fixed-price contract.
Even authorities and councils respond better. Transparent acknowledgement of planning risks, paired with mitigation pathways, often builds credibility that speeds approvals.
And internally, teams align faster when they can see the risks mapped clearly. It turns conversations from defensive debates into collaborative problem-solving.
In the end, stakeholders don’t fear risk itself. They fear surprise. Transparency is the antidote.
Most projects don’t fail because of black swan events. They fail because visible risks were ignored or downplayed to push a feasbilities through or win a mandate.
As an industry, we need to raise the bar. That requires:
1. Moving beyond risk registers as paperwork.
2. Refusing to rely on single-path models that mask uncertainty.
3. Valuing advisors who interrogate as much as those who endorse.
Volatility is now the baseline. Inflation, fragile supply chains, shifting policy and geopolitical shocks are permanent fixtures of the environment we operate in. The differentiator will not be who avoids them, but who sees them clearly enough, early enough, to adapt.
Risk will never leave project delivery. Success comes from recognising it early, planning for it intelligently, and adapting when conditions shift. The projects that thrive will be those that bake resilience into their systems: live feasibilities, flexible structures, transparent registers, and advisors empowered to challenge.
The real challenge for our industry is not to hide risk but to face it. To stop treating it as the silent killer of projects and start using it as a competitive edge.
By shifting from avoidance to intelligence, we create stronger projects, greater investor confidence, more durable partnerships, and delivery systems capable of withstanding volatility.
That’s not just risk management. That’s good development.
If you’re navigating complex delivery challenges and want to embed smarter risk practices into your projects, get in touch with Pomeroy. We’d welcome a conversation about turning uncertainty into resilience.