In the first part, we identified the core problem: construction management tends to focus on the execution phase, even though the most critical decisions are made much earlier.
This raises a natural question: what actually happens before a project reaches the construction site?
Based on public information, projects often appear to begin the moment they are announced — the route is defined, deadlines are presented, organizational steps are launched. A recent example is the new LRT project in Almaty. Authorities announced the timeline, published the route and identified the land plots subject to acquisition. On the surface, it looks like a fully formed and structured initiative.
In reality, however, the project may already have lost part of its stability by that stage.
Residents affected by land acquisition, or simply those living near the future construction zone, immediately began to worry. Quiet frustration emerged over how the process would unfold and how long people would have to live with disruption. Over time, that quiet frustration will likely become louder, creating the impression that residents fundamentally oppose the project itself. But the issue is often not the project. The issue is how the project enters reality.
This is exactly where the key gaps emerge — during initiation and pre-project development.
The first major gap in the GAP analysis lies in the very nature of decision-making. A project appears ready for implementation even though many critical decisions have either not been made at all or were approved only in a conditional, largely formal sense.
Once the pre-project phase is viewed not as a procedural formality but as a decision-making stage, a deeper problem becomes visible: the system is not merely leaving things unfinished. It is systematically substituting substance with appearance.
Everything begins with the most basic question: Can this project actually be delivered?
In a healthy governance model, this stage examines not only the economic rationale but also the constraints — technical, legal and infrastructure-related. In practice, however, the analysis often shifts toward a different question entirely: Can the project be pushed through? Is there political backing? Are resources available? Can financing be secured?
The distinction matters. In the first approach, the project is either validated or rejected. In the second, the decision has already been made, and the analysis is adjusted to support it. The focus moves toward proving the project’s attractiveness rather than testing its feasibility.
As a result, the feasibility study — which should function as an instrument of selection — gradually turns into an instrument of persuasion. Its role is no longer to answer whether the project should proceed, but to demonstrate why it supposedly makes sense.
And while a “stable” project is being assembled on paper, its actual parameters remain uncertain. From that point forward, uncertainty begins to accumulate.
Baseline documentation is prepared in parallel with decision-making. Land issues remain unresolved. Restrictions are identified along the way. Certain requirements are postponed “until later.” Technical specifications, which should form the foundation for design work, often arrive only after design has already started.
That is when the real problems surface: utility capacity is insufficient, connection points are too remote, and the cost of supporting infrastructure fundamentally changes the economics of the project.
At that moment, an important but often invisible shift takes place. The project stops developing sequentially. It begins chasing itself. A concept that is supposed to establish stable requirements for the asset cannot remain consistent in such an environment. Project requirements and target outcomes are described broadly, often verbally, while stakeholder expectations remain unsynchronized.
As a result, design work no longer becomes the execution of a defined vision. It turns into a continuous process of clarification. Every new restriction and every revised condition pushes the project backward. This is where the foundation for future change orders is laid.
When this is combined with the absence of a coherent contract strategy — one with a clear delivery model, procurement criteria and risk allocation — the project gradually becomes dependent on contractors themselves. Control weakens long before construction even begins.
Formally, everything may still appear correct at this stage. There is a feasibility study. There is at least part of the permitting documentation. There is a general, though still unapproved, concept. Responsible parties have been assigned.
In reality, however, the project has not been tested for deliverability. Baseline data remain unstable because not all issues are coordinated. Requirements are poorly formalized and often undocumented. Management operates largely on intuition.
This is the central gap. The project is not actually prepared, but it looks prepared.
That illusion becomes the point after which mistakes begin adding cost to the project. It is the point of no return — the moment when the process shifts into a phase where decisions are no longer debated, but implemented within the constraints of problems the system created itself. And contradictions identified at this stage do not disappear. They move into design as revisions, and then from design into construction as rework.
Any significant change that reaches the construction phase leads to exponential cost escalation. What could have been corrected at the concept stage turns into additional work, schedule delays and conflict on site.
Attempts to “save time” during the pre-project phase ultimately produce the opposite result: the project becomes slower, more expensive and far less manageable. Construction, therefore, is not the beginning of a project. It is the beginning of its cost escalation.
The construction phase merely reveals the quality of the decisions made earlier. In the next part, we will examine what happens when a project that has already lost stability is then forced into “control mode” during construction itself.
Svetlana Nurtazina, civil engineer, PhD, certified project manager, specifically for www.economyKZ.org
