Owners who build in programs know the pattern. The first data hall, substation or school is where the learning happens. The second should be easier. Often it is not, at least for project controls, because the new project gets a new team that starts from a blank schedule and builds everything again.
What gets rebuilt for no reason
- A work breakdown structure that mirrors the last one almost exactly.
- A logic library for the same sequence of foundations, structure, MEP, commissioning and turnover.
- Cost codes, risk registers and contingency models that already exist.
- Report templates and dashboards the owner's leadership already knows how to read.
- The lessons learned, which too often live in the heads of people who are no longer on the project.
How Program Rates work
When a client brings us a repeat or similar project, the same team returns and starts from what was already built and proven. Because the setup work is largely done, we price that project at a highly discounted Program Rate. The owner pays for the setup once and gets a better schedule the second time, because the logic has been tested against a real outcome.
Where we are seeing it now
On a powered shell and data hall fit-out program of six buildings and 240 MW, still in progress, every building starts from the same WBS, logic library and reporting set. The aim is simple: each data hall comes online faster than the one before it, because the schedule for the next one already knows what the last one taught us.
The benefit nobody prices
Continuity is worth more than the discount. A team that controlled the first project knows which subcontractor runs late on submittals, which inspection always takes a week longer and which assumption in the original baseline turned out to be wrong. That knowledge goes straight into the second baseline. It is the cheapest risk reduction an owner can buy.
Clients should not pay twice for something we already built for them. Program Rates are how we keep that promise.
Luka Onoriode, CEO
Read how Program Rates work, or ask for one on your next similar project.
