The drawing makes the future look settled
An energy-network proposal often arrives with a convincing map. Buildings have positions, roads connect them and the route of a new pipe appears to join a coherent neighbourhood. The drawing is useful for planning. It can also make future demand look more settled than the underlying commercial position. A building may exist in a development concept long before its owner can commit to construction, occupation or the energy service it will require. I have learnt to ask which parts of the picture represent an obligation and which still represent a possibility.
This is not a criticism of development teams. Their job includes forming opportunities before every fact is known. A project would never begin if all uncertainty had to disappear first. The problem arises when the investment case stops distinguishing the different kinds of evidence. An interested customer, an agreed outline and a signed commitment may all be described as part of the pipeline. If that single label then supports an irreversible construction decision, the board may be accepting an exposure it has not been shown clearly.
The timing matters as much as the eventual connection. A network can be viable with a particular set of buildings and still face a difficult cash position if they arrive several years later than expected. Some costs begin before the customer does. Operating arrangements may also need to support a smaller initial load or a different pattern of demand. These are not details to be left entirely to the team receiving the completed asset. They affect the sequence and scale of the commitment the enterprise should make at the outset.
I therefore ask a commercial question before treating a technical capacity figure as a growth measure. Who has committed to use the service, under what conditions and from when? I then ask the technical team what changes if the answer differs from the central assumption. A smaller initial customer group may be manageable, but the consequences need to be described by the people responsible for the system. An executive should not infer operating flexibility simply because a financial model allows the revenue line to move to the right.
Pay for the uncertainty you actually hold
Our proposed precinct extension brought this issue into focus. The original case contemplated seven anchor buildings, but only three had made firm service commitments. The development team believed construction would help secure the remainder. That may sometimes be true: visible progress can influence another party's decision. It is still a risk-bearing choice. The board needed to see the cost of proceeding if the expected response did not occur, rather than receive encouragement as though it were another form of contracted demand.
We separated the connections by their actual status and examined later, smaller and absent demand scenarios. I did not ask the team to assign a reassuring probability to every uncertain building merely to produce a neat weighted forecast. Some uncertainties were too dependent on decisions outside our control. A range of outcomes, with the related funding need, gave directors a more useful discussion. It also exposed which next pieces of evidence would be most valuable and whether they could be obtained before major construction began.
The resulting eighteen-month pause was not free. We spent C$700,000 preserving selected options and site arrangements, and we surrendered the original timetable. I considered that expenditure preferable to the proposed immediate commitment under the circumstances. I did not describe the whole C$42 million construction proposal as a saving. The business had deferred a project, not found a cheaper way to deliver the same completed service. Keeping that distinction clear prevented the pause from becoming a flattering financial result detached from what had actually happened.
There are circumstances in which proceeding before every customer commits is reasonable. An owner may have a clear appetite for development exposure, a strong funding position and a service strategy that justifies early infrastructure. My concern is whether the decision is being made on those terms. The board should know that it is financing an option on future demand, and the executive team should know how much exposure is authorised. A project is not made irresponsible by uncertainty; it becomes poorly governed when uncertainty is concealed inside language that suggests a firmer position.
A pause needs a decision of its own
Waiting can become a habit that avoids accountability just as easily as building can become a habit that avoids doubt. A useful pause needs a purpose, a cost limit and a point at which the enterprise will decide again. I want to know which commitments we are seeking, which assumptions are being tested and what would cause us to abandon or redesign the proposal. Maintaining every opportunity indefinitely can consume money and attention without producing a better decision. The option has value only in relation to a credible next step.
Commercial colleagues also need a clear account they can use with prospective customers. An unexplained delay can damage confidence and make commitments harder to obtain. A frank description of the conditions for proceeding is more useful than repeated changes to an optimistic completion date. That does not require disclosing every confidential element of the investment case. It requires consistency between the enterprise's internal decision and the promise made externally. The project team should not be expected to sell certainty that the board has deliberately chosen not to assume.
I have found that this discipline improves the handover to operations. When the eventual project proceeds, the operating team can see which assumptions became firm and which remain open. They can prepare for the actual connection sequence rather than inherit a map whose original dates have quietly lost meaning. It also makes a later review fairer. Management can compare the outcome with the approved exposure instead of reconstructing which version of the development story directors believed they were accepting at the time.
For me, the central question is not whether the enterprise should be ambitious. It is whether ambition has been translated into a sequence of commitments the enterprise understands. A network will serve buildings long after the launch presentation has been forgotten. Its economics and service obligations will carry the consequences of the assumptions made before the first pipe was laid. The board should therefore ask what the map proves, what it merely illustrates and which further evidence is worth buying before construction makes the answer expensive to change.