The Risky Planner™
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Capital projects waste billions annually on predictable delays, but there's a proven way to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget.
Join Albert Brier, Director, Project Controls and Nate Habermeyer, Director, Marketing at Dokainish & Company, as they discuss how current events and trends are reshaping project controls and mega-projects across industries.
This podcast is designed for project managers, project controls professionals, IT leaders, and executives. Our listeners grapple with high-stakes decisions, tight deadlines, and inefficient project delivery systems. They face overruns, inconsistent reporting, technology misalignment, and integration struggles, leaving projects vulnerable to delays and cost overages.
We'll dissect the biggest industry pain points, including:
- Meeting critical milestones despite limited capacity and complex project scopes.
- Lack of standardized processes, forcing teams to consolidate data manually.
- Technology and system integration failures - where IT projects derail instead of accelerating progress.
- The failure of risk management practices, leaving organizations blind to their biggest threats.
- Why change initiatives fail, and how organizations can build a culture that embraces project controls.
Whether you're leading a megaproject or struggling to get executives to buy into project controls, this podcast will give you the tools and insights to take control of your capital projects - instead of letting them control you.
Special thanks to our good friend Thompson Egbo-Egbo for the music. Find his original music at www.egbomusic.com.
Episodes
20 episodes
Canada Builds: The $2 Trillion Gap Nobody Is Accounting For
Canada has committed a trillion dollars in capital investments across nuclear, mining, infrastructure, and LNG. Research on 16,000+ projects says 91.5% of megaprojects exceed budget, schedule, or both — and the overrun pattern in nuclear routin...
The Iran War, Oil Shocks, and What Capital Project Sponsors Should Do Right Now
The Strait of Hormuz lost 95% of its traffic in a single week. Oil prices hit $120. Aluminium, urea, LNG, and petrochemical feedstocks are all disrupted simultaneously. Force majeure declarations are cascading from Gulf producers.Nate an...
Prediction Scorecard: Capital Project Forecasts vs. 2026 Reality | The Risky Planner S2E18
A year ago on The Risky Planner, Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer made a series of predictions about where capital projects were headed.Mining electrification. AI adoption in project controls. Autonomous equipment risk. Data center energ...
Capital Project Time Machine: Why Megaprojects Fail
HELP PICK FUTURE TOPICS, TAKE OUR SURVEY.Most capital projects do not fail during execution.They fail when early approvals accept uncertainty that later becomes unmanagea...
Season 1 Finale: What You Missed and Why 2026 Changes Everything
Hosts Nate Habermeyer and Albert Brier recorded this finale in person — a first for the show — to reflect on what shaped the world of capital projects in 2025, which episodes hit hardest, and where they're headed in 2026.Season 1 covered...
The Skills Gap Is a Crisis: Why You Cannot Buy Project Controls Experience
Your next billion-dollar capital project faces a single point of failure: the people required to plan and execute it just do not exist.The industry faces a severe labor deficit. Data confirms that 94% of construction contractors canno...
Offshoring & Capital Projects
Offshoring project management works for software development. It fails for capital construction. The difference: the feedback loop between physical site conditions and project control decisions.Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer examine wh...
Why Annualized Capital Budgets Fail (And How to Fix Them)
Your portfolio hits 98% of its spending target. Leadership celebrates. But individual projects tell a different story: delayed scope, panic Q4 purchases, work pushed to next year.Albert Brier and Nate Habermeyer dissect why annualized ca...
AACE Conference 2024: Project Controls Experts on AI & Risk
Hear extended interviews from the AACE conference floor with 13 project controls professionals from Hess Corporation, Pattern Energy, and more, and software companies including Safran, Smart PM Technologies, and TurboChart.Direct insi...
Why “Summer Build Season” No Longer Works: Climate Risk Is Reshaping Project Schedules
Albert and Nate talk through a quiet shift happening on capital projects: climate adaptation is no longer a long-term planning exercise — it’s a short-term delivery problem.Schedules that used to anchor around stable permitting windows, ...
Data, Digital, and Uncertainty: Capital Project Professionals Share What's Next at AACE 2025
Albert Brier returns from the AACE conference in Anaheim with insights from 13 industry professionals on the future of capital projects. From the dominance of Excel to the rise of AI-enabled scheduling tools, this episode explores how project c...
Digital Twins and Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Capital Projects
Learn how digital twins and BIM technology revolutionize capital project management. Discover implementation strategies, cost benefits, and change management tips for project success. Join Albert and Nate as they explore the cutting...
Navigating Capital Project Uncertainty in 2025: Economic Challenges and Strategic Solutions
In this episode of "The Risky Planner" podcast, hosts Nate Habermeyer and Albert Brier tackle the pressing issue of uncertainty in capital investments during 2025's volatile economic climate. The hosts discuss how inflation, interest rates, sup...
How PMOs Drive Real Business Impact in Mega Projects: Lessons from Dubai’s Real Estate Digital Transformation
In this episode of The Risky Planner, Nate Habermeyer talks to Albert Brier, who is live from Dubai, where he's leading the setup of a PMO for one of the most ambitious real estate developments in the world. ThSey explore how digital t...
Navigating Capital Projects in an Uncertain World
In this episode of the Risky Planner Podcast, hosts Nate and Albert reunite after Albert's travels to Dubai to discuss the impact of Trump's recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. They explore how these tariffs affect capital...
AI Impact on Project Management, Data Analytics, and Risk
In this episode of the Risky Planner Podcast, hosts Nate and Albert kick off the new year with reflections on the post-holidays and how AI is reshaping careers in project management and risk analysis.Key Discussion Points:
AI, Data Centers, and the Future of Project Management: Navigating Costs, Risks, and Scale
In this episode of The Risky Planner Podcast, we dive into the explosive growth of data centers, the energy demands of AI, and how project managers can navigate the complexities of cost control, risk mitigation, and scalability. We exp...
Untangling Schedules: The Future of SMRs and the Energy Revolution
In this episode, Albert and Nate dive into the world of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)—what they are, why they matter, and how they could reshape the nuclear energy landscape. They unpack the latest headlines, from Trump's energy polic...
MINExpo - Mining Disneyland - The Future of Automation, Electrification and Risk in Mining
In this episode of The Risky Planner Podcast, Albert and Nate take you inside MINExpo, the largest mining technology expo in the world, where massive, cutting-edge machinery meets the future of electrification and automa...
Introducing The Risky Planner Podcast
We’re excited to launch The Risky Planner, a podcast for people who work in capital projects and know how chaotic and high-stakes it can be.This show is for project managers, project controls professionals, risk leaders, and exe...