The capital portfolio

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The five-year plan,
as a model you can question.

Most capital plans are a spreadsheet with a row per project and a column per year, maintained by one person, defended once a year. That is enough to total the budget and nowhere near enough to run the portfolio. This is the same plan built as a model: every project gate to gate, the windows it depends on, the cash by month, the standing obligations on a calendar, and a pipeline of candidates that earned their place.

Walk your own forecast through it See the rest of the platform→

Why it matters here

The decisions with the longest reach get the least analysis.

By the time a project has a scope package, most of what it will cost is already determined. The year it landed in set it. The decision to run it inside a turnaround window, or to keep it out of one, set it. Whether it was a replacement in kind on a light track or a small project made to climb the full ladder set it.

Those calls get made in a budget meeting, usually against a sheet that holds every project at a single number in a single year and therefore cannot answer the questions worth asking: what does this year actually carry, which of these ride the same window, and what happens to the plan when that window moves?

A plan that can answer those changes which projects you run, not just when you run them.

What it does

Four questions the plan can finally answer.

The whole estate

Every project, every site, gate to gate

One row per site and unit, every project on its own line. The hatched bar is the front end, then execution from the start of field work. A deployed project shows its progress and opens its board; a bar turns red when a gate is overdue and shows the next gate it is heading for. A project riding a turnaround window is marked, and drawn attached to it.

Filter by kind, tier, funding source, and site
Planned projects without a work process sit on the same timeline as deployed ones
Turnaround and outage windows drawn as the fixed things they are, with the projects that ride them
Your existing capital forecast imported as it stands: one row per project, its category, timing, risk ranking, and planned spend by year, with section headings and fill colors read as the stage

The money

Cost by year, and cash by month

Project cost with the grant and internal split, turnaround window cost beside it, the total and the actual to date, year by year. That answers what the plan costs. Finance also needs to know when the money leaves, and a project manager needs to say what it will cost to finish. Both come off the same plan.

Every project owes a monthly forecast: estimate at completion and a note on what moved, with a due day, a reminder, and an escalation the company sets
Cash by month entered on the project, or imported for every active project from your finance system's export, matched row by row in a preview before anything commits
A project that knows only its total gets a sensible phasing from a spend profile; a project that phases by hand keeps its own numbers
Actuals land from the closeout, so planned, original budget, and actual sit side by side per year across projects and turnarounds together

The rhythm

The standing obligations, on a calendar

A capital portfolio has a heartbeat that is not any one project's: the monthly governance body and its report, the plan refresh, the quarterly reviews, the annual cycle, and a Terms of Reference due for every planned project by a lead time that depends on its tier. The calendar tab seeds all of it from your own work process.

Terms of Reference lead times by tier: roughly two years before field start for a major project, months for a replacement in kind
The portfolio governance body opened as a monthly series with the portfolio report on its agenda
Next gate per project and coupled windows, beside what the standing obligations demand
Coming up and standing obligations as two tables, so nothing recurring is discovered by surprise

The pipeline

Candidates that earned the right to be candidates

A new project normally enters through a scoping request, not a hallway ask. The planning tab shows the scoped requests awaiting a portfolio decision and the deferred ones with their revisit date. Accepting one creates its project on the plan with its stage, class, budget year, sponsor, and project manager already set.

Every candidate arrived through the disciplines' review sections, so the deciders read a scoped item rather than a title
Deferred is a state with a date, not a polite no
Preparation-window overlaps named before they collide: projects preparing at the same time and the people they share
The turnaround windows your projects ride, and the projects riding each

The idea worth the picture

The year carries the turnaround and the projects together.

A capital plan that stops at project cost misses the biggest number in most years. A turnaround is capital too, from the plant’s point of view: the window it opens is when the tie-ins get made, and its cost lands in the same year the projects riding it do.

Stack them and the shape changes. The turnaround year is the peak, the projects riding it are pinned to it, and the funding split shows which part of the peak the grant covers. Move the window and the peak moves, with the pinned projects on it. The plan says so rather than leaving you to remember which rows were coupled.

Cost by year, stacked

Projects, internalProjects, grant fundedTurnaround window

Listed as project rows only, year three looks like the others. Stacked with the window and its pinned projects, it is the year the plan has to be built around.

Illustrative, not actual client data

How the numbers are built

Every assumption is visible and yours to change.

A planning number nobody can interrogate is worth very little in a room where someone has to defend it. Each input below is stated on the surface that uses it.

The class and the stage

Every project carries an estimate class on the AACE ladder and a portfolio stage from idea to complete. A Class 5 number is never displayed as if it were a budget, and a deferred project says when it comes back.

The phasing

Explicit cash rows win when you have them. When you do not, a spend profile keyed to the tier spreads the total, and the plan says which it used for each project.

The window

A project that executes in a turnaround window is pinned to it and re-lays when it moves. A project that must stay out of one says so and is checked against the calendar.

The gaps

Where a figure is missing, the plan flags the assumption it made rather than filling it in silently. A project with no cost is reported as a project with no cost.

What comes out of it

Four things you can take into the room.

The plan

Every project across every site on one timeline, gate to gate, with the windows they ride and the cost each one carries.

The number

Cost by year, planned against original budget against actual, per site and across the portfolio, with the funding split stated.

The decision record

Every portfolio decision, every gate decision, and every plan revision: what changed, when, who decided it, and in which forum.

The report

The monthly portfolio report on the governance body's agenda, frozen on schedule, generated from the plan rather than rebuilt by hand each cycle.

Where it sits

One project record

The capital portfolio is one capability of CAP·PATH, the platform your capital program runs on. The projects on this plan are the same projects your teams deploy a work process on, raise risks against, forecast cash for, and learn from. When the plan changes, the projects change with it, because they were never two systems in the first place. The turnaround economics themselves, levelized cost and interval strategy, live with the sister platform, on the same record.

The rest of the platform→The portfolio challenge engagement→

Plan the portfolio

What is your plan really carrying next year?

Bring your capital forecast as it stands. We will import it with you and show you the year, the windows, and the candidates the way the plan sees them.

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The five-year plan,as a model you can question.