CAP·AR · Capital Project Assurance Review
Sanction is granted on a definition picture built by the same team that owns the outcome. CAP·AR gives you an independent, evidence-based read at every gate, so the gaps that move the cost and the in-service date surface while there is still time to act.
The guide who has sat in the seat, on both sides of the table.
The problem
Most sanction packages get approved because they look complete, not because anyone tested the definition underneath. A Class 4 number on a Class 3 slide, a tie-in list nobody reconciled against the turnaround’s scope freeze, a schedule whose critical path dead-ends in a level-of-effort bar. The gap you cannot see is the one that surfaces once the field is mobilized, and by then the cheapest levers are gone.
By the time trouble is obvious in the field, the money is committed and the window is booked.
Self-assessed readiness has no independent check, so optimism and blind spots pass straight through the sponsor.
Contingency set as a percentage covers the risks nobody wrote down, right up until it does not.
Your guide
CAP Intelligence is an independent assurance practice built from the owner’s side, across refining, petrochemicals, industrial gas, LNG, and power, as the owner accountable for the capital outcome and as the consultant brought in to protect it. It is the capital-projects practice of STO Intelligence LLC, and shares one spine with its turnaround practice.
Our methods stay at public-framework level, AACE, CII front-end planning practice, PMI, DCMA, and GAO, so every finding is defensible and nothing is a black box. You own the standard, not a proprietary score you cannot see inside.
Why CAP Intelligence
Empathy for the seat you are in, sanctioning a project on a package you cannot see inside. Authority to check it: a scored definition element set, the estimate ladder, a real CPM engine, and owner-side experience across the full capital lifecycle.
The plan
CAP·AR runs as an arc across the front-end gates and closes the loop after startup. Each review de-risks the next funding decision, and each hands the team specific, prioritized actions, not a grade. It is an input to the gate, never the decision: your gatekeeper still decides, with four outcomes on the record.
Is the premise sound and owned?
Business case, alternatives honestly killed, portfolio fit, a Class 5 estimate and a milestone schedule that hang together.
Is the scope defined enough to fund FEED?
Basis of design, the scored scope package, estimate class against the gate, execution strategy and contracting plan.
Is the project ready to sanction and execute?
Definition completeness, the control estimate and its contingency basis, a resource-loaded baseline stress-tested by CAP·SAR, the team aligned.
What happened, and what carries forward?
Cost and schedule outcome against sanction, CAP·SPR on the as-built, lessons converted to owned actions, the benchmark record filed.
We work the integrated schedule in full: engineering and procurement logic, gate milestones as anchors, float, critical-path resilience, the tie-in window. Deep analysis in, a prioritized correction plan out, handed to the scheduler before the baseline locks at sanction.
We join the sanction baseline to the as-built: where time was won and lost between sanction and handover, by phase and by package, with the plan-versus-actual critical path traced. The closeout that feeds the next project, not a binder that gets filed.
Tiers scale the arc: Major and Standard carry all four reviews · Small carries a desk review ahead of sanction · Replacement-in-kind carries one combined gate and no independent review, by design
How it is measured
A single readiness number is one person’s opinion. CAP·AR triangulates the definition, the money, the schedule, and the people. The gap between what the sponsor believes and what the package shows is itself a finding.
Definition completeness, scored
The scope package scored against a public-framework element set, gate by gate: what a package must contain at G2 and at G3, and how complete this one is. A thin package is named as thin, element by element.
Class, basis, and contingency
The estimate class tested against what the gate requires, the basis of estimate read for what it assumes and excludes, and contingency traced to a risk analysis rather than a percentage.
Consultant-led, gate-relative
Category to element to check, measured against what this specific gate demands, with the evidence and the confidence behind every score made explicit.
Structural integrity of the plan
The integrated schedule’s logic, float, and critical path graded against public standards, DCMA and GAO, with the project extension: procurement logic, gate anchors, and the tie-in window.
The sponsor’s own view of readiness, set beside the project manager’s, beside the construction manager’s, beside the consultant’s read and the schedule’s structural score. The lenses score what the interviews gathered from every seat, so convergence is confidence and divergence is your next conversation.
How the review runs · standard on every CAP·AR
We still interview every seat. What is gone is the week everyone had to be in the building for. Each person takes their own interview by voice or text when it suits them, led by an AI interviewer working from that seat’s own question line for that gate, and the consultant reads the transcript and decides what counts.
You give us the roster once. Each person takes theirs by voice or text, whenever it suits them, from their own phone.
Sponsor, project manager, controls, project and process engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, the operations owner, HSE, finance, and the turnaround manager on a coupled project. Nobody is dropped because the calendar was full.
It keeps probing where an answer is vague, rather than moving on to keep a room on schedule. A group session buries disagreement; a one-on-one surfaces it.
What one discipline raises is put, anonymously, to the seats not yet interviewed, so the gap between the sponsor and the construction manager becomes a finding instead of a footnote.
Each finding carries the argument against itself, and reaches your report only when the consultant accepts it. A finding whose evidence cannot be found in the transcript is never presented as a finding at all.
The platform
No paper forms, no email survey that sits unread. In the session, everyone scans a code and responds from their own phone. The facilitator drives from a single screen, results reveal live, and the honest signal, including the quiet dissenter, shows up in the moment it can still change the package.
Anyone who cannot attend takes the same poll before or after. It all merges into one scored result, bound to the gate row on the project’s own plan in CAP·PATH.
Screens are illustrative of the CAP Intelligence platform
What changes
Where this goes
The gates de-risk this project, and the arc compounds: CAP·SPR proves at closeout what the sanction review predicted, the closeout’s lessons become owned actions on the next project’s plan, and the discipline that closes the findings lives on in CAP·PATH + CAP·CORE, the standard you own, run live.
Start with a short readiness conversation. We will show you where CAP·AR fits your gate calendar, and what an independent read would reveal on the project you are defining now.