Hydropower and PSP Delays: Causes and Consequences

In large-scale infrastructure projects like Hydropower and Pumped Storage Projects (PSP), delays are not uncommon. However, their impacts—be they financial, technical, or operational—become evident sooner or later, creating ripples across the project lifecycle. Despite extensive discussions, reviews, and tireless efforts by all stakeholders, delays continue to occur.

The pressing question isn’t whether delays are inevitable but whether they are genuinely attributable to unavoidable circumstances or exacerbated by consequential effects. Often, delays appear larger than the actual number of days lost due to specific unavoidable conditions. This stems from a vicious cycle of reactive planning and review processes that fail to address root causes.

The Typical Delay Scenario

Delays often become clearly noticeable only during progress reviews when milestones or financial or physical progress targets aren’t met. At this stage, the client or developer pushes to recover lost time. Contracts usually demand that intermediate milestones may adjust slightly, but the overall project completion date remains fixed.

To meet this requirement, contractors prepare "action recovery programs," compressing critical activity durations and recalibrating schedules to align with the original project deadline. However, this often leads to a predictable pattern:

1. Recovery plans are overly optimistic, ignoring practical constraints (resources).
2. Periodic reviews reveal further delays, necessitating another recovery plan.
3. The cycle repeats, compounding the irrecoverable days lost in the early years.

Meanwhile, time extension requests start getting submitted, though they remain unapproved for long periods, leaving the project stuck in a loop of short-term fixes and long-term consequences.

The Golden Question

Are delays truly the summation of all the actual and unavoidable conditions? Or are they compounded by consequential effects—issues that cascade into future activities, amplifying the impact of the original delay?

If the latter is true, we must address the following systemic issues contributing to consequential delays:

Key Issues Behind Consequential Delays

1. Infrequent and High-Level Reviews Reviews conducted on a monthly or quarterly basis often rely on high-level (L2) project schedules agreed upon during contract award. This limits real-time visibility into granular (L4-level) daily activities, delaying the identification of potential future bottlenecks early.
2. Reactive Rescheduling Action recovery schedules are prepared reactively after significant progress reviews, rather than proactively addressing upcoming risks and constraints on a daily basis.
3. Delayed Resource Allocation Resource peaking and mitigation actions are initiated too late, compounding delays already in progress.
4. Lack of Constraint Visualization Projects often lack tools or processes to visualize future constraints and assess their impact comprehensively, leading to a reactive rather than predictive approach. This happens because it is tedious and practically impossible to manually update progress daily and assess the impact (resource peaking) by rescheduling due to the large number of activities in an L4 schedule.
5. Cascading Effects of Consequential Delays Delays in one activity often snowball into future activities, creating a domino effect that is challenging to reverse.

Moving Forward: Addressing the Root Causes

To mitigate delays and their cascading impacts, stakeholders must adopt a more proactive and granular approach:

• Implement Real-Time Monitoring Use L4-level schedules and real-time progress tracking tools to identify delays as they emerge, rather than during periodic reviews.
• Leverage Predictive Analytics Employ advanced visualization tools and predictive models to forecast future constraints (resources) and adjust schedules proactively on a daily basis.
• Enhance Collaboration Foster stronger collaboration among developers, contractors, and vendors to share real-time data and insights for early decision-making.
• Streamline Decision Processes Simplify and expedite resource reallocations on a daily basis to prevent compounding delays.

Conclusion

Delays in hydropower and PSP projects are often inevitable, but their true extent can and should be controlled. By addressing systemic issues, adopting real-time monitoring, and focusing on predictive measures, stakeholders can transform reactive planning cycles into proactive strategies. The key lies in acknowledging the difference between genuine unavoidable delays and those caused by consequential effects—and taking decisive action to bridge that gap.

Let’s reimagine project management to build not just infrastructure, but also resilience against delays.