Pov

Equal hurdle rates can produce unequal decisions

Applying one financial threshold across businesses with different risks, horizons and strategic roles can create the appearance of discipline while misallocating capital.

2026 1 min read Author: KeynesMoore

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Articles

How infrastructure capacity, asset lifecycle choices and delivery ecosystems increasingly shape growth, resilience and competitive advantage.

Why major projects need portfolio-level prioritization, stronger economics and more adaptive governance as cost, demand and risk shift.

Focus

Headline returns reveal little about whether project value depends on resilient fundamentals or a narrow set of favourable assumptions.

Capital commitments that appear diversified by project or business can remain exposed to the same economic, technological or market assumptions.

Strategic challenges

Schedule, design, contractors and commercial exposure can interact in ways that conventional risk-by-risk assessment misses.

Scope, capacity, technology and timing decisions can lock in economics and risk long before execution performance becomes visible.

POV

Performance intelligence should challenge the expected outcome before management consensus finally accepts that it has changed.

Capital discipline requires the organisation to revisit original assumptions and withdraw support when new evidence weakens the investment logic.

Strategic impact

Integrated decisions reveal where local optimisation would otherwise undermine milestones, interfaces or the overall program outcome.

Phased capacity and explicit triggers can support future requirements without committing prematurely to one demand trajectory.

What we observe

We frequently see new proposals face demanding approval criteria while large inherited commitments continue without equivalent challenge.

We frequently see new schedules and budgets imposed without resolving scope instability, weak governance or unrealistic forecasts.