Your commercial manager on the new Geelong hospital expansion reviews the monthly risk report from each of the six main packages. Every log shows contingency drawdown under control and no red flags at the interfaces.
The mechanical package team logs a potential clash with structural steel penetrations as low probability. The structural team records the same area as already resolved by their shop drawings. Neither entry travels to the other package owner.
Commissioning starts and the first chilled-water risers hit steel beams that were never coordinated. The fix requires weekend work, temporary bypasses, and a six-week delay to the overall program.
Your PMO system cannot surface the problem earlier because it only ingests each contractor’s own risk register. There is no shared interface register and no rule that forces joint sign-off on conflicting assumptions.
The result is that the owner’s remaining contingency is spent on rework that no single package contract ever captured. The six contractors all report they met their individual milestones.
Next time the same commercial manager will demand a single live interface risk model that every package must update before their next claim is paid. The model will be owned by the program, not the packages.
Until that change happens, every new capital program will keep discovering its biggest cost overruns in the final three months of commissioning rather than in the first three months of design coordination.