When a project is red-rated, repeatedly late or missing a clear owner, the problem is rarely the one being reported. Norcadia Advisory provides independent project recovery and delivery assurance for organisations in London and across the UK — finding the real constraint, stabilising delivery, and rebuilding reporting that leadership can trust.
The trigger is almost always a loss of confidence in what the project is telling you — not a single missed date.
The RAG status has been amber or red for months and nobody can explain what would change it.
Delivery dates keep moving by a few weeks at a time, with a different reason each cycle.
The same risks and issues reappear in every report without ever being resolved or owned.
A project manager or delivery lead has left mid-flight and the project has drifted since.
A regulatory or contractual deadline is now genuinely at risk and the escalation came late.
Suppliers, internal teams and stakeholders each hold a different version of the plan.
Recovery work is sequenced deliberately: establish the true position first, stop the bleeding second, fix the underlying cause third. Skipping to the fix is why most turnaround attempts fail twice.
An independent read across scope, schedule, budget, risks and dependencies — establishing what is actually true rather than what has been reported.
Clarification of who owns each workstream, decision and issue, and where decision-making authority actually sits versus where the governance says it sits.
A short-term action plan that stops further slippage, sequenced so the highest-consequence constraints are cleared first.
Rebuilt status reporting, escalation routes and governance touchpoints so problems surface early enough to be acted on.
Continued independent review through to controlled delivery, at a cadence that reduces as confidence returns.
Documented ways of working left with the team, so control does not depend on us staying engaged.
The same four stages we apply across every engagement, framed for a project already in difficulty.
One to two weeks establishing the real position through documentation review and direct conversations with the people doing the work. We look for the constraint that is actually binding, which is frequently not the one on the risk register.
Immediate visibility and control. Every open issue gets a named owner and a date. Leadership gets a single, honest view of where the project stands — usually the first time in months that the reported position and the real position match.
Governance, reporting and decision routes redesigned so the cause is addressed rather than the symptom. A project that slipped because decisions took six weeks does not recover by adding another status report.
The reporting, cadences and ownership model are handed to the team with documentation, so control persists after the engagement ends. The measure of a successful recovery is that it does not need repeating.
Took ownership of multiple red-rated technical and digital projects, restored delivery discipline, improved reporting and moved projects back towards controlled delivery.
Anonymised to protect client confidentiality.
Project recovery is the structured process of stabilising a project that is late, over budget, red-rated or has lost clear ownership. It combines an independent assessment of the true position, a prioritised plan to stop further slippage, and the governance changes needed to keep the project under control once it is back on track.
The usual trigger is a loss of confidence in what the project is reporting. If the RAG status has not changed for months, if nobody can explain why dates keep moving, or if the same risks reappear each cycle without being resolved, an independent recovery review will usually find the real constraint faster than the delivery team can — because the team is inside the problem.
A typical project recovery engagement runs 4 to 12 weeks depending on complexity and how far the project has drifted. Most engagements start with a short diagnostic of one to two weeks, so the scale of the problem is understood before a longer commitment is made on either side.
Project recovery is reactive — it addresses a project that is already in trouble. Delivery assurance is preventative — independent review of a project that is running, to surface risks before they become slippage. Recovery engagements normally transition into a lighter assurance cadence once the project is stable.
Either, depending on what the situation needs. In most cases we work alongside the existing project manager and team, providing the independent view and structure they are missing. Where there is no clear owner, we can take interim delivery ownership until a permanent arrangement is in place.
Governance, dashboards and RAID processes that expose the truth early.
Read more →Practical PMO processes and reporting cadences teams will actually use.
Read more →Automate manual reporting and approval workflows that drain team time.
Read more →Tell us what is happening and we will tell you honestly whether a recovery engagement is the right answer — or whether something smaller would fix it.