Project development advisory.

What development involves

Development is the work between an idea and a financed project. Land, consents, grid connection, offtake, procurement, technical studies and the financing itself all have to arrive in a usable state at roughly the same moment, and most of them depend on someone outside the project team. Sequencing them is the job.

Projects rarely fail because a single item proved impossible. They fail because items were run in the wrong order, so that money was spent on studies that a later consent made irrelevant, or a financing window closed while land title was still being resolved.

We work as an extension of the sponsor’s team rather than from the outside. That means holding the plan, chasing the consents, sitting in the negotiations and doing the work, not reviewing it after someone else has.

Development plan and critical path

We build a plan that identifies what genuinely sits on the critical path and what only appears to. Consent timetables, grid connection queues and offtaker approval cycles are usually controlled by third parties and move slowly, so they set the schedule. Work that the project team controls is easier to plan and rarely the constraint.

Land, consents and connection

Land tenure, access rights, generation and environmental licences, and grid connection each carry their own process, authority and timetable. These are established with local counsel in-country, on the basis of how the framework has been applied recently rather than how it reads. A consent obtained in twelve months on the last comparable project will not take six on this one because the schedule requires it.

Procurement

Selecting and appointing specialist advisers, EPC contractors and O&M or long-term service providers, and negotiating the agreements that follow. Procurement strategy and the financing structure interact directly, since what a lender will accept in the construction contract determines what can be tendered. Procurement advisory covers this in detail.

Development budget and funding

Development spend runs at risk until close, and it is the money sponsors most often underestimate. We budget it against the plan, identify who funds each tranche, and set the decision points where further spend is authorised or the project is stopped. A stage gate that nobody is willing to fail is not a stage gate.

Risk register and stage gates

The register records what could stop the project, who owns each item, what would resolve it and by when. It is reviewed against the plan rather than maintained as a separate document, because a register nobody reads alongside the schedule stops reflecting the project within a month.

Specialist technical advisers

Resource assessment, geotechnical investigation, hydrology, marine survey, traffic and demand forecasting and process engineering are delivered by appointed specialists chosen for the asset class and the jurisdiction. We scope their work to the development plan, run the selection, manage the interfaces and ensure outputs arrive in the form the financial model and the lenders will need.

Financing and close

Development runs toward a financing, and the plan is built backwards from what lenders will require at credit approval. We carry the project through due diligence, documentation and conditions precedent to financial close, holding the structure the development was built on.

Project development: common questions

How long does development take?

Large-scale developments typically run two to three years from a defined concept to financial close. Smaller projects can reach close in as little as twelve months. The range is set by consent, connection and offtake timetables rather than by the technical work, so scale matters less than how many third-party processes sit on the critical path. Any schedule that assumes those processes will move faster than their own recent precedent will slip.

How do you work with a sponsor’s own team?

As part of it. We hold the development plan, chase the consents, prepare the materials, sit in the negotiations and carry the workstreams ourselves. On several mandates we act as development manager with day-to-day responsibility for delivery. Where the sponsor has capacity in-house we fill the gaps rather than duplicate them, and the split is agreed at the outset so nobody is waiting on someone else.

Do you take development positions?

We act as adviser or development manager rather than as equity developer on most assignments. Where a co-development arrangement applies, the terms are agreed at the outset so the basis of our involvement is clear to lenders and shareholders.

What is the most common cause of delay?

Land and grid connection, in that order, followed by offtaker approval cycles. All three are third-party processes, which is why the development plan is built around them rather than around internal milestones.

Can you join a project already in development?

Yes, and that is common. The first task is usually establishing what has actually been secured against what has been assumed, since the two diverge on most projects that have run for a while without a maintained plan.

Related expertise

• Project structuring
• Feasibility studies
• Procurement advisory
• Project finance advisory
• Development programme and milestones