Only 31% of construction projects come in within 10% of budget, according to KPMG’s Global Construction Survey. Over my career, I’ve rarely seen those overruns start with a technical failure. They start with a leadership gap. The answer is in plain sight, and our sector still underuses it: executive interim leadership.
Leadership Gaps, Not Technical Failures, Derail Projects
Projects are getting harder to lead, and many hit a leadership gap at a critical phase. The gap might be a vacant senior role, a programme director leaving mid-delivery, a stretched team, or a critical decision with no clear owner.
Few of these look like a crisis at first. Consider a programme where the design manager leaves a month before design freeze. Nobody else has the authority to close out the outstanding changes, so they stay open. The contractor prices the uncertainty, the freeze slips six weeks, and the cost shows up as a design change.
When an overrun shows, it’s blamed on design changes, ground conditions or inflation. Those causes are real, but a leadership gap often let them escalate. That gap rarely makes the lessons-learned report.
Leadership gaps don’t just slow projects. They derail them.
Why Interim Leaders Can Make the Call
Interim executives bring immediate expertise without lengthy onboarding or permanent overheads. A critical phase won’t wait for a permanent hire. In a crisis or major transition, an interim also keeps the strategy on course while the permanent structure settles.
They also bring a fresh perspective. Internal teams hold back for many reasons. They may lack the mandate to act, the capacity alongside the day job, or specialist experience the organisation doesn’t hold in-house. Politics and legacy thinking make change hard from the inside. None of these is a failing of the team. An interim arrives with a clear brief and no stake in past positions, so they can cut through internal roadblocks and make the call.
Financial services has long treated interim executives as a routine tool. Construction still tends to treat them as a last resort. For a sector carrying this much capital risk, that gap is hard to defend.
How to Deploy Interim Executives With Intent
Engage proactively. Bring in an interim before a gap becomes a crisis: at the start of a critical phase, when a key person resigns, or before design moves into delivery. Arrive after the overrun and the first months go on recovery.
Know when not to. Where the gap is permanent, recruit permanently. Where nobody will give an interim real authority, they become one more voice in the room.
Choose interims who combine technical depth with leadership strength. An interim on a capital programme must read a cost report, challenge a programme and see the risk in a contract strategy.
Be clear about the purpose, because it changes who you hire:
- Stabilise and accelerate. A project is slipping. Look for someone who has recovered a programme before and will make the hard calls in the first fortnight.
- Control and optimise. A large CAPEX programme is drifting on cost. The right interim reads contracts as fluently as people, and tightens governance without stalling delivery.
- Grow and build. You’re entering a new market or scaling a team. Hire someone who measures success by how little you need them when they leave.
Then write the brief before you recruit:
- What two or three decisions must this person make in their first 60 days?
- What authority will they have, and who has signed it off?
- What does done look like, so the engagement has a clear end?
The first question matters most. “Provide senior leadership across the programme” is a job description. “Decide whether to re-tender the M&E package or negotiate with the incumbent before the design freeze” is a brief. If you can’t answer that question yet, start by finding the decision.
Facing a Leadership Gap? Let’s Discuss.
At Blocx Matrix, we provide strategic interim leadership for the built environment, and finding the decision is where we start. If one of your current or upcoming programmes has a leadership gap, I’d be glad to talk it through.