Strategic Advisory
Clear, independent strategic advice that enables clients to navigate complexity with confidence — from early-stage feasibility through to programme recovery and commercial strategy.
Overview
Independent counsel when the decision matters
The most expensive decisions on a construction project are rarely the technical ones. They are the strategic ones — whether to proceed, how to structure the deal, which procurement route to take, and what to do when a programme has already slipped beyond recovery.
October Project’s strategic advisory consultancy exists for exactly those moments. We provide clear, independent counsel to boards, funders, public bodies and development teams — cutting through competing agendas to give you a straight answer and a defensible course of action.
We are appointed both at the very start, to test whether a scheme stands up before capital is committed, and mid-flight, when a project is in difficulty and needs an experienced, dispassionate view. In either case our role is the same: to give you the clarity to act with confidence.
Scope of Services
What we do
Our strategic advisory service is engagement-led rather than stage-led — scoped to the decision in front of you, whether that is a first appraisal or a recovery plan.
Feasibility & Options Appraisal
Testing whether a scheme stands up before capital is committed — appraising deliverability, cost, programme and risk across options, and setting out the case for each in terms a board can act on.
Commercial Strategy
Structuring the commercial position from the outset — contract selection, risk allocation, incentive structures and payment mechanisms that align the delivery team with the outcome you actually want.
Procurement & Contract Strategy
Selecting and structuring the right route — traditional, design and build, two-stage or framework — and drafting the strategy that gets the market to bid competitively on terms you can hold.
Programme & Project Recovery
Stabilising schemes that have gone off track. We establish the true position, identify the root causes rather than the symptoms, and produce a costed, sequenced recovery plan with clear ownership.
Independent Project Review
Objective assurance for funders, boards and public bodies — gateway reviews, health checks and red-team challenge that confirm whether a project is genuinely where it is reported to be.
Risk & Dispute Advisory
Early, pragmatic support where positions are hardening — assessing entitlement, quantifying exposure and advising on the commercial route through, so matters settle rather than escalate.
Our Approach
How we take an advisory engagement from question to answer
Establish the Real Position
Before advising, we establish the facts. We interrogate the programme, the cost position, the contract and the reporting — separating what is genuinely known from what has been assumed. On troubled projects this stage alone frequently changes the client’s understanding of the problem.
Frame the Options
We set out the genuinely available courses of action — not a single recommendation presented as inevitable. Each option is appraised on cost, programme, risk and deliverability, with the trade-offs made explicit so the decision sits properly with the client.
Recommend & Evidence
We give a clear recommendation and show our working. Advice is documented to a standard that stands up to a board, a funder, an auditor or, where it comes to it, a tribunal — with assumptions stated and sensitivities tested.
Support Implementation
Advice that stops at the report rarely lands. We stay engaged through implementation — supporting negotiations, mobilising the revised strategy and holding the delivery team to the plan until the change is genuinely embedded.
Review & Hand Back
We review outcomes against what was forecast, capture the lessons and hand control back to the client team with the governance and reporting needed to hold the position without us.
Why October Projects
What sets our strategic advisory consultancy apart
Genuinely independent
We have no delivery position to protect and no downstream fee to win. That independence is the whole value of the advice — we tell clients what they need to hear, including when the honest answer is that a scheme should not proceed.
Advice from people who have delivered
Our advisory work is led by practitioners who have run the programmes and held the commercial position themselves. Strategy written by people who have never had to implement it tends not to survive contact with a live project.
Senior attention, start to finish
Advisory engagements are short, high-stakes and unforgiving of a learning curve. The senior people you appoint are the people who do the work — no handover to a junior team once the engagement is signed.
Start a Conversation
Tell us
about your scheme.
Whether you need a scheme testing before you commit or a project bringing back under control, we will give you a straight answer. Get in touch to discuss it.