Strategic Constraint-Rights Mapping Director

The mandate

Nine proposed hubs each show attractive nameplate potential, but several rely on the same finite desalinated-water allocations, grid queues, port plots, electrolyser delivery windows and anchor offtakers. Project plans treat these as local dependencies and portfolio summaries add capacity that cannot be exercised simultaneously. The defined problem is to identify the legal and practical rights that constrain executable option combinations before the group advances another round of development capital.

The named deliverable is a strategic constraint-rights map: a controlled inventory of scarce rights, their legal strength, physical availability, expiry, exclusivity, transferability, dependency, owner and value-bearing decision. It will include nine hub option graphs, six portfolio combinations, a rights-expiry calendar, preservation-cost ranges, counterparty concentration, decision sequence and capital-committee paper. Engineering design, legal opinions, resource certification, valuation and transaction negotiation are excluded.

Milestone one, at month one, delivers the reconciled project and rights inventory with evidence confidence. Milestone two, at month three, provides hub option graphs and identifies mutually exclusive or correlated claims. Milestone three, at month five, tests six portfolio combinations against expiry, preservation cost and downside. Milestone four, at month six, submits the accepted map, strategic sequence, unresolved opinions and a 120-day rights-protection backlog.

Acceptance requires Strategy, Development, Legal and Finance to trace every binding portfolio constraint to source evidence and distinguish contractual right, application priority, political support and management assumption. Six combinations must show which hubs remain executable together, which rights expire after each choice and what capital merely preserves optionality. The capital committee will accept the work when Legal signs classifications, management owns every expiry action and no headline capacity counts a mutually exclusive right twice.

The client will provide permits, applications, memoranda, concession and port documents, grid studies, water allocations, supplier reservations, offtake discussions, partner terms, project models and data-room access. It will nominate Legal and Development evidence owners, secure four external-interface reviews, and obtain specialist opinions where classification requires counsel or engineering. Management retains investment, negotiation, project, legal, engineering and public-policy decisions.

Why this is external work

Hub teams are incentivised to preserve their own projects and describe conditional access as progress, while central aggregation has no source-level rights model. Legal advisers can opine on individual instruments but are not engaged to compare portfolio combinations. Independent strategy architecture is needed to expose mutually exclusive optionality without becoming promoter or execution adviser for a preferred hub.

What you will own

• Reconcile nine hub options and every claimed water, power, port, equipment, permit, partner and offtake right to source evidence.
• Classify legal strength, physical availability, exclusivity, transferability, expiry and dependency while flagging matters needing specialist opinion.
• Build option graphs that reveal mutually exclusive rights, correlated infrastructure assumptions and double-counted headline capacity.
• Compare six executable portfolio combinations by strategic outcome, expiry sequence, preservation cost, concentration and irreversible commitment.
• Distinguish spend that preserves a real option from development activity that cannot improve control of a binding constraint.
• Frame decision order and trigger dates without supplying legal opinion, engineering certification, valuation or negotiation recommendations.
• Deliver the accepted rights map, option graphs, expiry calendar, capital paper and funded 120-day protection backlog.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed portfolio strategy for hydrogen, power, mining, infrastructure or another rights-constrained development sector.
• Can distinguish a legal entitlement, application priority, political indication, physical resource and commercial assumption.
• Has exposed double-counted capacity where projects relied on the same finite right, delivery window or counterparty.
• Understands water, renewable power, grid, port, equipment, conversion and offtake dependencies at strategic decision level.
• Worked effectively with counsel and engineers while clearly identifying issues that require their formal opinion.
• Delivered option architecture that changed capital sequence without becoming transaction adviser or project promoter.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete four cross-border resource, port or counterparty reviews during the six-month engagement.
• Will remain independent of hub developers, equipment suppliers, infrastructure owners, offtakers and project-finance providers.
• Accepts that legal classification sign-off, investment, engineering, negotiation and public-policy choices remain with the client.
• Brings source-rights portfolio evidence; high-level energy scenario modelling alone is insufficient.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe two attractive projects that could not coexist because they depended on the same scarce right.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish a politically supported allocation from an executable legal and physical entitlement?
3. 49 words maximum. Which preservation cost would you refuse because it no longer protected a real option?