Seawater Injection or Waterflood Commissioning is not your typical oilfield commissioning.

While oil production process follow well-established separation and processing techniques that many operators are familiar with, waterflood systems introduce novel equipment, unfamiliar chemistry, and strict water quality requirements—making their commissioning uniquely challenging.

In today’s capital-intensive industries, delivering value without sacrificing function, quality, or reliability is paramount. Enter Value Engineering (VE), a structured, proven methodology that has been quietly transforming projects, products, and processes for over 75 years.

If you’ve been involved in capital project planning, you’ve likely seen it happen—despite detailed estimates, careful risk assessments, and robust controls, cost overruns and schedule delays remain persistent challenges.

The truth is, that most cost overruns are not caused by unexpected project-specific risks but by systemic risks—deeply embedded, structural uncertainties that traditional estimation methods fail to capture.

In the energy sector, we do not have the luxury of certainty. Whether selecting a project concept, defining a contracting strategy, or navigating a final investment decision, we are often making high-consequence choices under conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity, and competing priorities.

At GATE Energy, we have committed to transforming the way decisions are made in capital projects. We have built a structured methodology, rooted in formal decision theory, utility modeling, and risk quantification, that integrates seamlessly with front-end planning, owner’s engineering, and project execution.

This is not management by intuition. It is management by design.

In the world of capital projects, energy systems, and mission-critical operations, technology gets the spotlight. But behind every successful launch, safe startup, and flawless turnaround is a less visible force: human performance.

In this article, we look at the integrated CM-Cx service model alternative—where both functions are managed by a single entity with a unified team and goal—designed to maximize project value, minimize risk, and enhance execution efficiency.

In high-stakes industries like energy, aerospace, and healthcare, human performance is the linchpin of success. From major capital projects to real-time operations, even small misjudgments can cause delays, cost overruns, or catastrophic failures.

Past articles have explored how human bias subtly undermines quality decision-making and how resilient systems provide the adaptability needed to navigate uncertainty. Now, let’s bring these ideas together—because at their core, human performance, cognitive biases, and system resilience are deeply interconnected.

Game theory provides a framework to analyze strategic interactions between owners and contractors, who often have interdependent outcomes. Each party can choose to act competitively or cooperatively. A well-known model, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, illustrates how rational players acting in self-interest can end up worse off than if they had cooperated.

Every project professional has witnessed it—optimistic timelines that crumble, budgets that balloon, and risks that get underestimated. The culprit? More often than not, it’s human nature itself.

Behavioral science has identified over 200 cognitive and political biases that shape decision-making. In project management, ten of these biases stand out as the most impactful, silently influencing decisions, forecasts, and strategies.

In today’s fast-paced and complex world, resilience is not just about withstanding challenges- it’s about adapting and thriving in the face of them. Many systems, whether technological, organizational, or human, are designed with robustness in mind, engineered to perform within known parameters. However, when unexpected disruptions occur, these systems either extend their adaptive capacity or break down.

So your pipe burst, your pump shaft snapped, or your welded joint split, and you need to figure out why and how to fix it. The next steps you take can make the difference between finding answers and leaving the mystery unsolved until the next failure.

We have many options for conducting root cause analyses (RCA) including TapRooT™ and CAST/STPA. The method described here is the method developed by GATE to simplify the analysis while maintaining adequate rigor.

Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) is a systems approach to hazard analysis. It is based on the premise that accidents happen when we lose control. They are a control problem, not a failure problem.

The GATE approach to risk ranking makes risk assessment easier, more accurate and more repeatable by incorporating LOPA insights into the risk matrix approach.

HAZOP is the most commonly applied process hazard analysis (PHA) methodology in the processing industries. It is also the most flawed!

This article discusses high-level technical considerations when refitting an existing offshore infrastructure for CCUS applications.

Energy is changing. Because of the increasing threat of the consequences of a warming planet, new sources of energy are being developed that are expected to slow this planet-wide change. Some of these are well-known, such as nuclear, wind and solar, while others require more work, such as hydrogen, 3rd generation concentrated solar and fusion.

The overall aim of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is to store carbon dioxide (CO2) in geological formations in order to reduce the amount in the environment and lower the risk of catastrophic climate change. The rate of CO2 emission and the amount of it in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early part of the 19th century.

There are several developments in the area of electrolysis which seek to reduce the cost, increase the yield, or even change the source of transportable hydrogen.

Making Risk Assessment Better, Less Ambiguous and Repeatable - And more Actionable