The visible problem usually arrives late. A deadline slips, an interface fails, or a new system cannot be commissioned as intended. By then, the project is already paying for decisions made much earlier.
This essay forms part of the Skyline by HC launch collection. The full original article will be migrated here as the website becomes the permanent home of the archive.
The upstream question
Construction performance is often discussed as if productivity begins at the workface. But contractors execute within conditions shaped by development strategy, authority sequencing, design maturity, procurement and the quality of information that reaches them.
Upstream compression does not disappear. It reappears downstream at greater cost.
The practical task is not to assign blame upstream. It is to find the earliest point where a clearer decision, interface or feedback loop could materially change the outcome—and to test whether that intervention is proportionate to its cost.