Most programs don’t fail at execution.

They fail at handover.

Not the physical handover at the end.

The handover in the middle.

The moment when one package finishes and the next one needs to start.

Design to procurement.

Civils to structural.

Structural to mechanical.

Mechanical to commissioning.

Every one of those transitions is a risk event.

And most schedules treat them as a line.

A finish-to-start relationship.

A date.

A milestone.

What they don’t capture is the condition.

Not just when the handover happens.

But what needs to be true for the receiving package to actually start.

Design issued but is it issued for construction or still subject to review comments?

Civils complete but has the area been inspected, accepted, and formally handed over?

Mechanical installed but has pre-commissioning been signed off?

The date can be met and the condition can still be unmet.

And when the receiving package mobilises against a date without the condition being true, you get standing time, rework, and a variation claim that everyone argues about for the next six months.

This is one of the most consistent sources of delay on major programs.

Not bad planning.

Not poor resourcing.

Handover conditions that were never defined and so were never managed.

The fix is straightforward.

For every critical interface in the schedule – define the handover condition.

Not just the date.

The specific, verifiable state that must exist before the next package begins.

Then track the condition, not just the date.

A date can look green while the condition is red.

That’s where programs lose weeks.

Quietly.

At the joins.

We don’t guess, the schedule tells the truth.

But only if you’ve asked it the right questions.

What’s the most common interface failure you’ve seen on a major program?