The Risky Planner™
Capital projects waste billions annually on predictable delays, but there's a proven way to deliver ahead of schedule and under budget.
Join Albert Brier, Director, Project Controls and Nate Habermeyer, Director, Marketing at Dokainish & Company, as they discuss how current events and trends are reshaping project controls and mega-projects across industries.
This podcast is designed for project managers, project controls professionals, IT leaders, and executives. Our listeners grapple with high-stakes decisions, tight deadlines, and inefficient project delivery systems. They face overruns, inconsistent reporting, technology misalignment, and integration struggles, leaving projects vulnerable to delays and cost overages.
We'll dissect the biggest industry pain points, including:
- Meeting critical milestones despite limited capacity and complex project scopes.
- Lack of standardized processes, forcing teams to consolidate data manually.
- Technology and system integration failures - where IT projects derail instead of accelerating progress.
- The failure of risk management practices, leaving organizations blind to their biggest threats.
- Why change initiatives fail, and how organizations can build a culture that embraces project controls.
Whether you're leading a megaproject or struggling to get executives to buy into project controls, this podcast will give you the tools and insights to take control of your capital projects - instead of letting them control you.
Special thanks to our good friend Thompson Egbo-Egbo for the music. Find his original music at www.egbomusic.com.
The Risky Planner™
Season 1 Finale: What You Missed and Why 2026 Changes Everything
Hosts Nate Habermeyer and Albert Brier recorded this finale in person — a first for the show — to reflect on what shaped the world of capital projects in 2025, which episodes hit hardest, and where they're headed in 2026.
Season 1 covered ground: AI tools and their real-world limits in project controls. SMs, BIM, climate risk. Tariffs and political uncertainty rippling through supply chains. The most downloaded episode featured live interviews from the AACE conference floor, where Albert spoke with practitioners like Dr. David Hewlett about what's changing in the field.
Albert shares a preview of an upcoming AACE paper on program risk management — co-authored with Roger Bradfield and Rachel Fleming. The core problem: most mega-projects are actually programs made up of hundreds of smaller, interrelated projects. Each brings its own risk setup. No consolidated framework exists. Nuclear waste management projects illustrate this perfectly — individually small, collectively worth hundreds of billions, and loaded with scope uncertainty until work begins.
The hosts also pull back the curtain on their production setup (a lot of help from Perplexity) and tease plans for 2026: audience polls, feedback loops, and deeper engagement with listeners.
This episode is for project controls professionals, schedulers, risk analysts, and anyone tracking where the industry is headed. If you followed Season 1, this wraps the themes together. If you're new, it's a roadmap to what we covered and why it matters.
Subscribe now for Season 2. Visit riskyplanner.com to explore every episode. Connect with us on LinkedIn — we want to hear what topics you want covered next.
Presented by Dokainish & Company www.dokainish.com
The Risky Planner podcast delivers expert insights on project controls, capital project management, and strategic planning for today's complex business environment. Subscribe for regular episodes featuring industry leaders and practical advice.
Hello listeners. This is the risky planner podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Hey Albert, hey Nate. 2025 Yeah. In a review, like we launched the podcast, recorded 15 episodes. But before we start, I just want to note Welcome. Welcome to my humble abode. Oh, thank you, Nate. We're in the same Albert and I are in the same room.
Albert Brier:We're using new mixing technology to put two mics into one channel.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Yeah, we have audacity. That's like recording. We have Voice Meter banana. We have Voice Meter banana. Yeah, that's recording. And perplexity has basically told me how to set all this
Albert Brier:up, yeah, which is interesting. Yeah, thank you, perplexity. Yeah, I certainly couldn't do it like I usually edit the show, and we, we have a lot of, let's just say, ad hoc solutions to audio problems, so we're going to talk a little bit more,
Nate Habermeyer, APR:but that's okay, because we focus on the content. Content. Focus on giving stuff that matters exactly the the best insights and stories that we can come up with. That's right, yeah. So 2025, was pretty big, like we started off in Las Vegas, mine Expo. That was super cool. It was really cool. We should upload some of the pictures from that episode to website. We also our most downloaded episode was when you recorded on the AAC conference. That was pretty exciting. That was
Albert Brier:a really fun time too, because a lot of the people that I met, they were really excited to talk to you, to talk to me. So I think we're gonna do more of that. I think we should. How did
Nate Habermeyer, APR:you get people to talk to you on the floor, like we were excited? Like, what was it?
Albert Brier:Two things, right? Like that show always has good energy. Like the AAC E conference is a bunch of nerds getting together talking about nerd stuff, right? Anytime you can claim a conference or get together to be nerds talking about nerd stuff, there's gonna be a good energy there. So that's what this is. That's one reason. The other reason is, I'm just one of those people that that people talk to, like, if you know, in the line at the bank or whatever, you know, the person in front of you just talk to, just turn around and start talking about their day. I'm like, I don't know why you're talking to me about this, but all right, you just look like a friendly guy. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I've really got everybody fooled. I went to Dubai, Nate, I know
Nate Habermeyer, APR:I you, we recorded while you were in Dubai with like, 11am 11pm
Albert Brier:it was, it was a fun time zone difference wide. It was a wide, wide gap, yeah, but that, that project is really fascinating, and still in the early stand up stages. So there may be more to say about that. Can we
Nate Habermeyer, APR:describe the project a little bit like without giving it away, but it is quite interesting. The detail it is, yeah, it's a summary, so for our listeners.
Albert Brier:So it's a mixed use luxury development that's a partnership between some private investment firms and a couple of the public investment companies in the Emirates, yep. So it's a lot of money intended to build some like, seven star hotel space kind of under selves, yeah, it's like ultra premium luxury. You know, the smallest one bedroom apartment in that thing goes for like, $7 million
Nate Habermeyer, APR:and actually, related to that, we talked about BIM, we talked about digital twins, we talked about AI and tool. AI tools and their impact on Project controls.
Albert Brier:We spent a lot of budget talking about AI because it was really the theme of the year, right?
Nate Habermeyer, APR:And mainly, and we know what we're talking about, because I use like, Claude, chat, GP, Gemini, I have use cases, like, you're testing all kinds of different models, and I have to build an agents.
Albert Brier:I have to be really selective about what I use them for, though, because unlike you, like you as our marketing director, you don't really deal as much with with, like, client specific information that is protected, you know, like confidential, I all of
Nate Habermeyer, APR:the stuff Microsoft and copilot. You're actually working in a inside the Azure flow garden, yeah, protection.
Albert Brier:So, like, Claude works for that, you know, copilot works for that. Those are the two I can really use. The rest of them are, like, you know, Nate's playground type stuff, exactly. Tariffs are still a thing, huh?
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Tariffs are still a thing, but we're starting to see some cracks, right the cracks, I think, I think we're gonna see even more softening happening in 2026 Yeah, I think so there's gonna be like, Trump is gonna back down. China's gonna, China's gonna get everything. That's gonna
Albert Brier:be a crazy year, politically, I believe so. So it's gonna be an, it interesting to see. You know, obviously, we're not a politics podcast, so we're not gonna talk too much about that directly. But there's always knock on effects to projects when, when political winds are shifting, and political winds are most definitely shifting in the US, and not just there,
Nate Habermeyer, APR:like I can see us getting back into you. You know, the cop summits, maybe not during the Trump administration, but we the US like we because we're both American, we are the US. Skipped the last cop Summit, right? And that's explain what that is, brother. Yeah, that's the the summit, the UN summit on climate change, yeah, yeah. And yeah, we talked about climate change and its impact,
Albert Brier:yeah, climate adaptation, right? How big an industry climate adaptation is going to turn into. So we do get a little political occasionally, but you know, it's always in the context of how it affects projects and people working on projects.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:The Climate episode was, I think, one of my favorites, but I did actually, going back to the ACE episode I did, like hearing all of the interviews that you did with like Dr David Hewlett and some other folks on the floor, because it was really interesting getting some of their opinions. One of the things that's on my mind is we should think about doing an audience poll next year so that we can get to know our audience a little bit more, maybe some of the things that they want to talk about, and then we can start collecting feedback. Like, I think it'll be interesting to start a bit of a conversation with our audience, 100% so I'd like to do that. We also talked about SMRs. We talked about nuclear. We're doing a lot of work in nuclear. Yeah, the SMR was, it was an interesting episode, and we're starting to see some of those projects get Are we starting to see some of them get approved?
Albert Brier:Well, like, by approved, right decision. There's, there's regulatory jail of different kinds for different projects, and some of the projects are still in it, like there's, there's a lot of approvals still to go before we start seeing SMRs actually generate electricity. So that, that, of course, is one of the many things we talked about this year that was kind of pointed towards 2030 we're thinking very, very hard about what the next five years look like, because that's our job, right? Like it's our industry, we have to be thinking about that. But you know, sharing that insights with you guys has been a fun highlight for me, but what's really going to be interesting is to see how and when some of those predictions that we've made and observations that we've made come to pass or or don't.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:So you said it's fun for you, like, what, what in particular is fun for you, with regard to the SMR, that conversation,
Albert Brier:well, nuclear has been kind of dead in the water for a long time. I don't that's not really a great way to put it. It's more. It's more than it's been stagnating. There's been a lot
Nate Habermeyer, APR:after the Tokyo kind of disaster. Really took a even before that,
Albert Brier:like, you know, you could argue that since the Carter administration and the which, by the way, that Eric takes a lot of flack for having killed nuclear in the crib, some some of that flack is deserved, and some of it really isn't. Because if you look at the way that the nuclear industry was managed in the decades leading up to that. It was a bit of a wild west situation. You know, there was an awful lot of radioactive release in the 1950s and 60s. There was
Nate Habermeyer, APR:also, like, weird, dangerous technology that was being used, right? Like, schnarrable had an accident. It was kind of a Chernobyl
Albert Brier:was in the 80s too. Like that was, that's always later. But, I mean, it
Nate Habermeyer, APR:was just not the technology was not stable.
Albert Brier:There were a lot of learnings to be garnered. And, like, nuclear still remains one of the safest ways to generate power, right, you know, and in terms of, like, risk adjusted time, phased impact on lifespans, right? For the people who live near reactors, like living near a coal plant will shorten your life by way, way more than living near a nuclear plant.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Yeah, you might grow another arm if living near No you really want No. But it's true though. It's like, you know, driving versus flying in a plane, but it's like,
Albert Brier:one feels more because, like, if it goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:So which episode was
Albert Brier:your favorite? Well, I have to say it was the ACE episode, because I was there, right? I got to talk to some really interesting people about some really interesting topics. You know, one of those conversations actually turned into, we've been accepted, alongside our friends at MVP to write a new paper for for the coming ace com, you're presenting that paper out there? Yes. So we still have to write it and get it all through the as we sit here talking, it's the middle of December, so by the time we get the paper actually written, you know, it'll be
Nate Habermeyer, APR:like a glimpse of what the paper is, yeah.
Albert Brier:So we're gonna talk about, think that would be a cool pretty sure. Yeah, we're gonna talk about program risk management. So right now, there is no framework, well, at least there's no recommended practice with the A, C, E, and there's very few consolidated frameworks for doing program level risk analysis. So most projects above a certain scale, like most mega projects, for example, are actually programs. They're large groups of smaller, interrelated projects that often in mega project space, do get managed independently from the overall program. But you know, this requires each project to kind of bring their own knowledge and learnings to how they're going to set up their risk environment, how they're going to set up their project management environment. So. Program management is a pretty mature discipline, but risk in that space really isn't
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Can you give us a example of, like, walk me through how we've done that, how you might have done that with some of the nuclear clients, sure, infrastructure clients. So maybe the Dubai client, I don't know.
Albert Brier:Well, the Dubai client isn't quite at the space where they would need to do a whole lot of risk stuff yet. I mean, they need to start thinking about us. Or one of the framework documents I wrote for them was a risk document, okay? But you know, the new our nuclear clearance are actually a great example, because, you know, you their listener at home may be thinking that nuclear project equals build big reactor, right? Well, sometimes, but most of the time, a nuclear project is cleanup, right?
Nate Habermeyer, APR:If you talk like a caveman, you will say that, yes.
Albert Brier:Yeah, right. Big reactor, yeah, a cave in who is aware of nuclear reactors might say that, but yes, a the average nuclear project is actually a nuclear waste management project, sure. So there's a lot of waste handling, there's a lot of waste management, digging up dirt that might be irradiated. You know, things have to be sequestered and characterized and then stored safely and properly. And every single time you do that, it's a small project, right? These are not big projects, but there are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of waste to categorize and store. It is absolutely not a solved problem yet, right? So all of these little tiny projects get grouped together by where they are geographically or what kind of waste it is they're picking up. So those little tiny projects are actually parts of programs. So in addition to not having, you know, enough oomph on their own to warrant quantitative risk analyzes and like heavy duty project management, there's also really, like abiding uncertainty in the scope. The scope of each one of those cleanups is really uncertain until you actually get in there and start digging or tearing down the building or whatever it is you're doing, you don't know for sure what you're going to find or how spicy it is so trying to plan for those projects and trying to have a risk based mindset, because, like, on the one hand, they are so, so small individually that no one would ever throw a Monte Carlo simulation hundreds, but there's hundreds and 1000s and so they add up.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Yep, so and they're not repeatable either. I mean, really parts of them are, but it's really parts
Albert Brier:of them are, and like a lot of the big nuclear operators, are doing a lot of really good work to try to figure out how they can kind of apply some regularity to that process, frag nets. Perhaps, perhaps we, we do have one client who loves to talk about frag nets.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Nate fragnes was my, my first, yeah, jargon is 2025, word of the year. No, that was 2023 I think that was my 2023 word of the year, but it is still my word. No, well, yeah, it'll be the word of every year. Cut that out. Okay, no, just keep that.
Albert Brier:Well, good. I can't, I can't, I can't. I
Nate Habermeyer, APR:heart frag nuts, yeah, but it's, we are really excited to see the paper and the presentation for you. And who's your partner? Writing it again?
Albert Brier:So there's, there's three authors. It's myself, Roger Bradfield, also from do, kanish, and Rachel Fleming from MVP, excellent. So shout out to Rachel. Rachel, absolutely. And Roger, of course. Hey, Roger, how you doing? Man?
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Then shout out to my neighbor, Dave, who is a constant source of positive feedback,
Albert Brier:right? Okay, while we're doing shout outs, hey dad.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:Well, let's wrap up, man, yeah, yeah. So it's been a great year. 15 episodes, yeah, yeah. 12 months, starting from scratch. Starting from scratch. I think I had a pretty bad mic,
Albert Brier:but your mic is much better now it is. I
Nate Habermeyer, APR:have a fuzzy you do? Yeah, it look legit. It's very cute.
Albert Brier:Yes, is very it's an adorable microphone. Anyway, it's a squishmallow microphone, okay, yeah, I don't know what that means well, but you're the routine daughter.
Nate Habermeyer, APR:That's why let's close off with that one piece of advice that you like to give our listeners. Albert, over to you,
Albert Brier:yeah, thanks. So this is going to be a little self serving, but my piece of advice is, please stay tuned for 2026 our we have we're already working through some episode content. So tell your friends to listen to the risky planner podcast. That's my advice to you, because it's going to get it's gonna get it's gonna
Nate Habermeyer, APR:get fun, and we're gonna have some like ways to provide feedback and engage with us. So really looking forward to 2026, absolutely.
Albert Brier:So my advice to you is, is get connected to us, because we're about to get
Nate Habermeyer, APR:connected to you. And Like and Share, Like, Share, planner.com, yep. Okay, thanks, Albert, thanks Nate. All right, see you all next year.
Albert Brier:Hey folks, it's Albert back in my home studio to say thank you for a really fun 25 I hope you're looking forward to next year as much as I am. As Nate mentioned, we're going to be engaging with you guys a lot more in 2026 but right now you can go to riskyplanner.com Check out every single episode. We post them all on LinkedIn, and we would love to hear ideas. Like, if you have a great idea for what kind of episode you'd like to hear, hit me up on LinkedIn. Let's talk about it before I let you go. Thanks again to Thompson Igbo. Igbo for the use of our theme music. You can find his stuff@igbomusic.com that's E, G, B, O, music.com, until we meet again. Happy holidays. Happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2026 you.
