Digital Transformation ·
Why most EPC digital transformation fails
It is not the tooling. It is that the people designing the transformation have never run a project.
The standard digital transformation programme inside an EPC or operator looks like this. A consultancy is engaged. They run a “current state” workshop. They produce a target-operating-model deck with five swimlanes. They recommend a platform. The platform is procured. A small army of analysts is hired to populate it. Two years later, project teams are still running their actual work in Excel and the platform has become a reporting destination, not a working tool.
This pattern repeats across every operator I have worked with. The reason is not the tooling. The reason is that the people designing the transformation have never run a project.
A project manager looking at their week is solving twelve problems at once: a missing deliverable, a contractor about to demobilise, a client query that will become a non-conformance if not closed by Thursday, a permit that was supposed to land yesterday. The PM does not have an hour to populate a dashboard. They have ninety seconds. If the tool does not earn its place in those ninety seconds, the PM will not use it. They will go back to WhatsApp and Excel — because those tools cost zero seconds to learn and produce a result the PM can act on immediately.
Every digital transformation that has worked in this industry shares one feature: it was led by someone who had run a project recently enough to remember what those ninety seconds feel like. Every one that has failed was led by someone who had not.
The fix is not better software. The fix is to put project people, with current scars, in charge of the transformation. The software follows.