Transformation Recovery
Rescuing programmes that have gone off track.
By the time a programme is formally red, the people inside it have usually known for months. Recovery is less about discovering new problems than about being willing to name the ones everybody already suspects — and then rebuilding a plan that is credible rather than comfortable. We are brought in when a programme is slipping, over budget, or has lost the confidence of its sponsors.
Week one to three: diagnosis
We start with a rapid, structured diagnostic. We read the artefacts — business case, plan, RAID log, board packs, contracts — and then we talk to the people doing the work, not only the people reporting on it. Those two pictures rarely match, and the gap between them is usually where the recovery starts.
The output is a single honest assessment: what is genuinely complete, what is claimed but not evidenced, what the real critical path is, what the remaining cost to complete looks like, and which of the original benefits are still achievable. We share it with the sponsor before we share it with the board.
Week three to eight: stabilisation
Stabilisation is about stopping the bleeding. Typically that means pausing low-value workstreams to concentrate scarce specialist capacity, re-establishing basic controls where they have degraded, resolving the two or three decisions that have been stuck for months, and giving the delivery teams enough air cover to work.
We also reset the relationship with suppliers. Recovery situations often carry a legacy of adversarial contract management on both sides; the fastest route forward is usually a jointly agreed, evidenced re-plan with clear consequences rather than a dispute.
Beyond: re-baselining and hand-back
A recovered programme needs a plan its own team believes. We re-baseline bottom-up with the people accountable for each deliverable, re-forecast cost to complete, revisit the benefits case, and take the revised position through governance with the evidence behind it.
We then lead delivery for as long as needed and hand back to permanent leadership with the controls, cadence and reporting still intact.
Capabilities
What we bring
Rapid diagnostic
An evidenced, honest picture of true status in two to three weeks.
Stabilisation
Unblocking decisions, refocusing capacity and restoring basic controls.
Re-baselining
Bottom-up replanning and cost-to-complete forecasting that holds.
Supplier reset
Moving from dispute to an evidenced, jointly owned recovery plan.
Board confidence
Reporting sponsors can defend, with no surprises between reviews.
Controlled hand-back
Permanent leadership takes over a programme that keeps performing.
Questions
Frequently asked
- How quickly can you start?
- Recovery engagements are usually mobilised within one to two weeks. The initial diagnostic runs for two to three weeks and produces a written assessment and recommended recovery plan.
- Will you tell us things we don't want to hear?
- Yes — that is the value of an independent recovery partner. We share findings with the sponsor first, with evidence, and we do not soften a status that the facts do not support.
- What if the right answer is to stop the programme?
- Sometimes it is. Where the remaining cost to complete outweighs the achievable benefits, we will say so and help you close down or descope in a controlled way that protects value already delivered.
Talk to us about a programme in trouble
Early conversations are confidential and carry no obligation. The sooner a recovery starts, the more of the original benefits case survives.