The Distressed Project Playbook
A practitioner's field manual for rescuing, recovering, and preventing capital project failure.
If you've ever sat in a steering committee meeting where the schedule slip is described as "a temporary resource constraint" and the cost overrun as "an acceleration of expenditure" — and you've watched everyone in the room nod along while knowing better — this book is for you.
The Distressed Project Playbook is what thirty years of work on capital projects in distress has taught me about why projects fail, how the failure builds, and what to do when you're inside one.
Not a textbook. Not a methodology document. A practitioner's field manual.
Seven chapters, ~22,000 words, 74 pages.
Chapter 1 — Distress, Not Failure. Why the language we use about projects in trouble determines whether they recover.
Chapter 2 — Gradually, Then Suddenly. The decision debt that builds invisibly until it becomes a crisis.
Chapter 3 — Practice Rigorous Authenticity. Three principles, borrowed from an unlikely source, that make recovery possible.
Chapter 4 — Win First, Then Go to War. Why senior management acknowledgement must come before recovery action.
Chapter 5 — The Price of Preparation. The single highest-return investment in the project lifecycle, and why it's the one most consistently cut.
Chapter 6 — Battling the Biases. The behavioural mechanisms that prevent project teams from self-correcting, and what to do about them.
Chapter 7 — Think Slow, Act Fast. Four pillars for organisations that want to deliver differently.
Plus: a Toolkit Reference Directory consolidating 18 tools and frameworks (CII PDRI, Reference Class Forecasting, AACE forensic schedule analysis, Earned Value Management, and others). Full bibliography.
Format: PDF, optimised for screen reading and printing.
Delivery: instant download after purchase.
Licence: single-user.
About the author: Schalk Prinsloo is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Mechanika (Pty) Ltd, a specialist project advisory consultancy. Over thirty years across mining, power, nuclear, petrochemical, defence, and heavy industrial infrastructure on four continents.
For organisations and teams: bulk licensing available for groups of 10 or more. Contact sp@mechanika.co.za