Building Delivery Capability

Delivery capability, measured on evidence.
Built by your team. Kept in-house.

BDC gives infrastructure organisations a clear standard for what delivery actually takes, and a deployable tool to build to it. Form or assess any portfolio, programme or project. Mobilise a contractor on a won contract. Grow your people as capable individuals. Against a standard, tailored to your sector, run and owned by you.

BDC Workbench: risk-weighted capability over time, one line per programme
The goal, made visible. The Workbench tracks risk-weighted capability over time for every programme in your portfolio. Evidence-scored, re-measured, rising.
< 1%of UK infrastructure projects are delivered on time, on budget and with the benefits realised. Experts have assessed it. We can all agree it is less than one percent. Let that sink in.
20 yrsof maturity assessments, and still lingering below that one percent. Same tools. Same result. There has to be a better way.
What we do

We change how infrastructure organisations build the capability to deliver.

In every organisation the same pattern plays out. Good intentions on growing delivery capability. A maturity assessment commissioned. The same verdict on organisational immaturity. And very little tangibly changing for the people on the ground planning and executing the work. Twenty years of maturity assessments, and we are still lingering below a one percent hit rate.

It isn't the people. Capable professionals routinely hold poorly formed programmes together through heroics, and heroics are not a strategy. Programmes fail at the basics: unclear accountability, untrusted schedules, risk recorded but not managed, change arriving uncontrolled. The building blocks that would have prevented it are known and ordinary. They were simply never laid, because there was no standard, no criteria and no consistent way to build them.

BDC exists to change that. A defined standard for what a formed portfolio, programme and project needs. The means to set up correctly, honestly assess what is already running, and fix what is found. And a tool your own team deploys and runs, so capability becomes something you can see, direct and build deliberately, and it stays in-house rather than walking out with a consultant.

01 · CLIENT CAPABILITY

Assess the work

See, on evidence, whether your portfolios, programmes and projects are set up to succeed. A weighted score, a heatmap by theme, and exactly what to fix first.

02 · CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY

Mobilise to deliver

Won a commission or contract? Mobilise the operating model to the standard, in the right order, and prove readiness to the client. Faster to payable outputs.

03 · PEOPLE CAPABILITY

Grow the people

Portfolios, programmes and projects are delivered by people. Measure them against the demand of their role, across three tiers, from more than one angle, over time.

The tool we have

The BDC Workbench. Deployable, sector-specific, owned by you.

A single, evidence-based picture of your delivery capability, measured against a clear standard for what good looks like. Not an opinion. Not a maturity badge from a consultant who leaves with the knowledge. A standard, tailored to your sector, that your own team runs and re-runs whenever you choose.

Form a new portfolio, programme or project the right way from the start, or assess one already running, at any level. See the weakest themes, what inaction risks, and a remediation plan sequenced by dependency, so effort goes where it will actually build capability. Mobilise a contractor on a won commission with a baselined plan that flags its risks. Measure your people against the demand of their role, by self, manager and independent rounds. And track it all over time, from baseline to now, for the board, the regulator and the client.

01 · FORM

Lay the building blocks

To the standard, in dependency order.

02 · ASSESS

Measure on evidence

Scored, weighted, rolled up to one position.

03 · REMEDIATE

Close the gaps

Owned actions, closed to evidence.

04 · RE-MEASURE

Prove it moved

Capability rising, tracked over time.

How we enable your organisation

Every way in builds your own capability. None of them build dependency on ours.

The model is transfer, not retention. Your people learn what good looks like and run the standard themselves, with external involvement reducing to independent calibration. Success looks like you not needing us.

Olaf Ernstsons presenting Building Delivery Capability
Working through the standard with a delivery team
LICENCE

Own the Workbench in-house

The standard and the tool deployed into your organisation. Your teams form, assess and remediate on demand, and keep the capability. Lite and Full editions.

ASSESS & REMEDIATE

Find it, fix it, evidence it

A fixed-price assessment of what is actually in place, a sequenced remediation plan, and a re-assessment to evidence the uplift. Weeks, not months.

FORM & TRANSFORM

Set up right, or turn it round

Stand up a new portfolio, programme, project or delivery vehicle against the standard from day one, or steady one that is drifting and get it back under control.

Strategy assurance review

Your transformation strategy reviewed against the standard. Does it lay the building blocks, or wrap dates around activity? Fixed fee, from your existing documents.

Training and development

Programme and project management training built on the standard, and people capability assessment for your delivery teams. Mentoring, coaching and workshops.

Hands-on delivery

Someone who has actually lived and done this before. Mobilising a new programme, recovering one that is drifting, or a few days a month of senior delivery support.

Olaf Ernstsons, Founder of BDC Method LtdOlaf Ernstsons
Founder

Twenty years leading and enabling infrastructure delivery across rail, high-speed rail, highways, water, wastewater and electricity transmission. Client-side, delivery-focused, rooted in practical application. Formed a clean water mains renewals programme team from a standing start. Rebuilt a wastewater programme team to deliver its regulatory obligations. Established the working arrangements across the interface between HS2 and the live motorway network.

Having seen project and programme professionals perform heroics, and watched them be institutionally and organisationally failed by an inability to build capable organisations that let them succeed, Olaf founded BDC to change that reality.

Contact us

Tell us about your programme.

A structured, evidence-based view of where your delivery capability stands, and what to address first.

We come back to you within two working days.
A short conversation about what is getting in the way.
A demonstration of the Workbench on a scenario like yours.
A clear proposal: licence, assessment, formation, or a service you can commission now.

Or email us directly: contact@bdc-method.co.uk
Or find us on LinkedIn: Building Delivery Capability

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