Meet our CEO Steven J. Keays, B.Eng., M.A.Sc., P.Eng.
“I’ve worked in the world of capital projects since the 1980’s. I’ve had budgets in the five to ten zero range from the aerospace, automative, defense, energy heavy equipment, industrial, infrastructure, manufacturing, mining, oil & gas, real estate, transportation, and venture sectors. I’ve done locations in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Southeast Asia. To the question ‘what is a project’, I avoid the answer from traditional project management circles – under which a pregnancy meets their definition perfectly. The answer is this: A project is an investment to develop a profitably performing asset. A project only makes sense when it is certain to make money for its owners throughout its economic life. In the world of projects, as in the world of business, everything begins and ends with money, which begins and ends with certainty. Money will always flow where capital grows. No prospect? No dinero.
The world needs visionaries to imagine it. Visionaries need capital to build it. Capital needs certainty to fund it. While we live in a world awash with capital in search of viable investment opportunities, for which capital projects are ideal targets, the latter too often fail to attract financing because they lack certainty. It makes no difference whether they are in the US, Germany, Mexico, Tanzania, or Vietnam. Uncertainty is a beggar’s empty hands.
This is where KPO comes in: After decades spent in the trenches of project delivery, we know what works, what doesn’t, and how certainty is engineered.”