Project Controls is the backbone of successful project delivery, ensuring that your projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the desired quality standards. At Critical Path International, a global project controls consultancy, we specialise in helping organisations plan, monitor, and control their projects efficiently.
Our team brings together international experts to implement robust processes that keep your projects on track and mitigate risks before they escalate. We understand that effective project controls combine proactive planning with continuous oversight, giving you confidence that every aspect of your project’s time, cost, and quality is under control.
Overview of Project Controls
On-Time & On-Budget Delivery: Strong project controls provide early indicators of delays or budget overruns. By closely tracking progress and expenditures, you can make timely adjustments to prevent schedule slippage and cost overruns. This proactive approach not only saves money but also builds stakeholder confidence as projects consistently meet their deadlines and budgets.
Predictability and Risk Reduction: Effective project controls integrate global best practices in scheduling, cost management, and quality assurance. They enable data-driven decision making by highlighting potential issues (such as resource conflicts or scope changes) early. With this insight, your team can address risks and changes before they impact the project, ensuring more predictable outcomes and fewer surprises or disputes down the line.
Are you facing any of these challenges?
We help organisations globally to implement the right controls to deliver successful projects, even in complex and changing environments. Let us assist you in resolving issues, optimising your project performance, and achieving reliable results for your projects.
Lack of real-time visibility into project progress and performance
Difficulty managing scope changes and their impact on timelines and costs
Inadequate processes for tracking project costs, resources, or quality metrics
Uncertainty in decision-making due to fragmented or unclear project data
Our Project Controls Consultancy Services
Whether you’re seeking to establish a robust project controls framework or refine your existing processes, Critical Path delivers specialist consultancy tailored to your needs. Our consultants will review your processes, suggest practical improvements and guide you every step of the way. Discover our Project Controls consultancy services below.
Project Execution Planning
We develop and implement a comprehensive Project Execution Plan (PEP) and all supporting control documents to establish governance structures, define scope boundaries and set roles and responsibilities. Your PEP becomes the project’s roadmap, integrating schedule baselines, cost parameters and quality requirements. Throughout this process, we embed risk management strategies and communication protocols to ensure proactive decision-making and stakeholder alignment.
Our team develops a multi-layered programme that links high-level milestones with detailed tasks and deliverables for seamless timeline management. Employing techniques such as the Critical Path Method and resource levelling in industry-standard scheduling software, we produce a realistic, optimised schedule. We establish a clear baseline and update subordinate schedules to reflect approved changes, ensuring your programme remains accurate and actionable.
We craft and maintain detailed schedules that map every activity, dependency and resource requirement, collaborating closely with your team to incorporate stakeholder inputs. Proven methodologies ensure critical paths, float analysis, and milestone tracking are in place, while regular schedule audits identify potential delays or conflicts early. By setting and monitoring baselines, we provide you with the insights needed to take timely corrective action and keep your project on course.
From initial cost estimation through to final cost-to-completion, we implement rigorous budgeting and forecasting processes. Detailed cost breakdown structures, real-time spend tracking and earned value analysis (EVA) measure performance against planned work. By analysing variances and updating forecasts regularly, we give you clear visibility into financial trends and highlight opportunities for optimisation before they impact your bottom line.
We establish a formal change control framework to assess scope, design and schedule modifications in a structured manner. Every change request is logged, evaluated for time-cost-quality impacts and moved through defined approval workflows. Approved changes are integrated into the baseline plan, and risk-based mitigation measures are applied to prevent scope creep and uncontrolled cost escalations while preserving project integrity.
Our specialists define key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Schedule Performance Index, Cost Performance Index and productivity metrics to track project health. We deliver real-time dashboards, progress reports and forecast updates tailored to your audience—from on-site teams to executive stakeholders. This transparent reporting uncovers trends and early warning signals, empowering data-driven decisions and fostering accountability across your project.
We conduct a comprehensive review of your project’s objectives, scope and existing controls. This helps us understand your goals, challenges and data requirements before designing a tailored controls framework.
Framework Design & Strategy
Our experts develop a fit-for-purpose project controls plan, defining governance, reporting protocols and tool requirements. We align methodology with your risk appetite and organisational practices.
Baseline Development
We establish your project’s time, cost and resource baselines, building detailed schedules and budget forecasts. This creates the reference point against which all future performance is measured.
Deployment & Integration
We implement the controls framework within your systems and train your team on procedures, dashboards and change-control workflows, ensuring seamless adoption and consistent data capture.
Monitoring
Through real-time tracking of key performance indicators—schedule, cost, risk—we generate transparent reports and early warning alerts, enabling swift corrective actions.
Review
At regular intervals, we audit outcomes, refine assumptions and update your controls processes. This continuous improvement cycle keeps your controls sharp, efficient and aligned with project objectives.
Our Information review and implementation process contains six steps.
Step 1: Initial Assessment
Critical Path can help kickstart your ISO 9001 journey with our expert initial assessment. Our consultants will conduct a thorough evaluation of your organisation's current quality management practices and perform a comprehensive gap analysis to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Step 2: Planning & Strategy Development
Our experts will work with your team to develop a tailored plan and strategy for achieving ISO 9001 certification. We'll set clear objectives, define roles and responsibilities, and establish a roadmap for implementation, ensuring alignment with your organisation's goals.
Step 3: Documentation Development
Critical Path will assist you in developing the necessary documentation required for ISO 9001 certification. Our consultants will work closely with your organisation to create a suite of documents, including a quality manual, procedures, work instructions, forms, and records, all customised to meet your specific needs.
Step 4: Implementation & Training
We will guide you through the implementation of ISO 9001 requirements, providing comprehensive training and support to your team. Our consultants will educate staff on ISO 9001 principles, conduct internal audits, and ensure everyone is well-prepared to maintain compliance.
Step 5: Mock Audit
Critical Path offers mock audit services to help you prepare for the ISO 9001 certification audit. Our experts will conduct a thorough review of your quality management system, identifying any areas for improvement and providing valuable feedback to enhance your readiness for the official assessment.
Step 6: Verification Audit
While Critical Path does not conduct the verification audit, we provide ongoing support to ensure your readiness. We'll guide you in engaging an independent auditing body for the audit process. Our consultants remain available to address concerns and optimise your preparedness for the assessment, enhancing your chances of ISO 9001 certification.
Who we work with
With over 15 years’ experience in delivering end-to-end project controls consultancy, our team of experts work with organisations to implement robust planning, scheduling, cost management and risk analysis frameworks. We specialise in establishing integrated controls—from critical-path scheduling and earned value analysis to change-control processes and risk-mitigation protocols—ensuring every project is delivered on time, within budget and to the highest quality standards.
Our project controls services span a diverse range of sectors, including manufacturing, engineering, construction, healthcare, oil and gas, aerospace, utilities, rail and transport. Whatever your industry or project scale, we have the expertise and proven methodologies to tailor solutions that drive predictability, transparency and success from inception through to completion.
If you want to get in touch with us regarding any of our services or if you’d like a quote, then please contact us via the below contact information or fill in the form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
