Every major capital project starts with a plan. Scope, budget, schedule, milestones. The flight plan is clear.

What is consistently absent: the criteria for when to stop, pause, or fundamentally change course.

And that absence costs owners significantly, not just money, but years of organizational energy spent on projects that should have been redirected at month six instead of year two.

In flight vs. on course

There’s a distinction worth making: being in flight and being on course are not the same thing.

A project that is consuming budget and advancing through phases is in flight. Whether it’s actually heading toward the outcome you need is a different question. The momentum of a construction project (contracts signed, teams mobilized, materials ordered) creates enormous pressure to keep going even when the fundamentals have shifted.

Markets change. Business requirements change. The building you designed eighteen months ago may not serve the organization you are today. The budget you approved may reflect a cost environment that no longer exists.

But projects keep going. Because stopping is harder than continuing. Because calling the abort is organizationally costly for whoever does it. Because the sunk cost feels like it justifies the future cost.

What you should define before you start

Before any major project commits serious capital, two questions should have clear, documented answers.

First: what would have to be true for this project to be the wrong thing to do? Not “what risks exist”, every risk register covers that. What change in your business, your market, your cost environment, or your competitive position would make this project a mistake?

Second: at what points in the project are you able to make that call, and at what cost?

The cost of stopping a project in planning is almost nothing. The cost of stopping at design development is modest. The cost of stopping at 30 percent construction completion is substantial but recoverable. At 70 percent, you’re almost always better off finishing, but you should have asked the first question long before you got there.

Projects that define these checkpoints before mobilization are projects where decisions stay rational. Projects that don’t define them are projects where momentum replaces judgment.

The 10-year question

Here’s a question that gets too little airtime in project planning: what does this building need to look like in ten years?

Not the building itself, necessarily. The organization it serves. The technology infrastructure it needs to support. The workforce density assumptions it was designed around. The energy costs it was optimized for.

Buildings are 30-year assets built on 18-month assumptions. The organizations that build well are the ones who stress-test those assumptions before they’re baked into concrete, and who build in the flexibility to adapt when the assumptions prove wrong.

Flexible floor plates cost a small amount more upfront. Building systems designed for upgrade rather than replacement carry a modest premium. Infrastructure sized for tomorrow’s technology load rather than today’s is a rounding error in a major capital project.

These are not extravagances. They’re insurance against the gap between what you know today and what will be true when you’re operating the building in year twelve.

The practical ask

At your next project kickoff, add two things to the agenda.

One: define the conditions that would cause you to pause or stop the project. Write them down. Assign a time for a formal checkpoint where those conditions get evaluated honestly.

Two: identify the top three assumptions about your business that this project is built on. Ask what happens to the project if any of them change significantly in the next five years.

It’s a one-hour conversation that might save you years.