Independent project assessment that identifies risks, issues, and areas of concern while there’s still time to act — evidence-based, actionable, and delivered in 2–3 weeks.
You know that feeling when a project doesn’t quite feel right, but you can’t point to specific evidence? Stakeholders are asking uncomfortable questions. The PM seems confident in meetings but you catch glimpses of stress. Numbers look okay on paper but your gut says something’s off.
A project health check provides validation. It’s an independent third-party review of your project’s status, governance, risks, and delivery approach — producing a clear, evidence-based picture of project health alongside actionable recommendations.
Think of it like dental check-ups. You go every six months not because your teeth hurt, but to catch cavities when they’re small and easy to fill. If you wait until you’re in pain, you’re looking at root canals. Same principle applies to projects.
Health checks are preventative. You conduct them before crisis hits, when problems are still manageable and fixes are relatively inexpensive. You catch warning signs early — minor scope drift, emerging stakeholder disengagement, optimistic scheduling — and intervene while intervention is straightforward.
Project rescue, by contrast, is reactive emergency intervention when failure is imminent. Much more expensive, much more stressful, and much harder to recover from. The goal of regular health checks is to never need rescue.
They need to understand quickly what they’ve inherited — not just what the documentation says, but what’s actually happening. A health check gives them an honest baseline in two weeks rather than discovering the truth through painful experience over three months.
Milestones are being met but only just, with last-minute heroics every time. Nothing dramatic has gone wrong yet, but you’re getting the sense that luck is holding rather than solid delivery. You need independent eyes to tell you whether your concerns are justified.
Go-live, user acceptance testing, regulatory deadline. You want independent verification that you’re actually ready. Better to discover issues two months before go-live (when you can address them) than two days before (when you can’t).
Major scope revision, budget cut, key team member departure, timeline compression. These shocks often create hidden problems that don’t surface immediately. A health check immediately after major change catches problems while they’re still fresh and fixable.
Leadership wants quarterly independent reviews of strategic projects. Investors or board members require periodic validation that major initiatives are on track. You’re doing it not because something’s wrong, but because professional oversight demands it. This is actually the healthiest use of health checks — preventing problems rather than detecting them.
The primary deliverable is a RAG (Red/Amber/Green) status dashboard assessing project health across all critical dimensions — evidence-based, not gut feel.
This area is performing well. No concerns. Continue current approach. Evidence supports this rating.
This area requires attention. Emerging risks are present. Specific recommendations provided for improvement.
Urgent intervention required. Critical issues identified that will cause project failure if not addressed.
Each RAG rating comes with supporting evidence from documentation review, stakeholder interviews, and independent analysis. When we say something is red, we show you exactly why — concrete evidence, not gut feel.
A comprehensive health check examines eight critical dimensions through deep investigation — reading documentation, interviewing stakeholders, reviewing actual evidence of project health.
Full written report (15–25 pages) with supporting evidence. One-page traffic-light dashboard for executive consumption. Updated risk register including issues identified during assessment. Agreed action plan with owners, timelines, and success criteria.
A comprehensive health check takes 2–3 weeks from engagement to delivered report. We can compress to one intensive week if urgency requires, with slightly less depth of investigation.
We read everything — the business case, project plan, budget tracking, status reports, RAID logs. We build understanding of what you’re trying to achieve and where things actually stand. Then we conduct 5–8 stakeholder interviews (30–60 minutes each): honest conversations where people can say what they really think without it appearing in the next status report. The sponsor explains why they stopped attending meetings. The PM describes what they’ve tried and why it didn’t work. End users explain the gap between what they need and what they’re getting.
With evidence gathered, we analyse everything against project management best practice. Each of the eight dimensions gets a RAG rating based on evidence, not opinion. We develop 5–10 prioritised recommendations — not vague suggestions like “improve communication,” but specific actionable changes with clear rationale, ranked by impact and urgency. High impact, high urgency items need immediate attention. Lower impact items are improvements that won’t cause failure if deferred.
We present findings to your leadership in a 90–120 minute session combining presentation and working discussion. You see the traffic-light dashboard, the evidence behind each rating, and recommendations with rationale. Then we workshop action planning together: which recommendations do you accept, who owns implementation, what’s the timeline, what decisions from leadership are needed? By the end of the session, you have a clear action plan with names and dates attached — not just a report that sits on a shelf.
If your project is fine and you’re overthinking it, we’ll tell you honestly and save you £3,500. This isn’t a sales call disguised as consultation.
Book Free CallFixed fee, scoped before engagement. No surprises. Larger or more complex programmes quoted individually.
Get a QuoteA £3,500 health check that identifies risks early and prevents 10% budget overrun on a £1M project saves £96,500. The scope confusion that takes £5,000 to fix in month three costs £50,000 to fix in month nine — by which point you’re looking at rework, extended timelines, and angry stakeholders.
Health checks catch problems when fixing them is still straightforward. Discovering your testing approach is inadequate two months before go-live? You can add resource, adjust the plan, and still deliver successfully. Discovering it two days before go-live? You’re deploying with fingers crossed. The stress difference is enormous. The cost difference is even larger.
The real question isn’t whether you can afford a health check. It’s whether you can afford not to have one when approaching critical milestones on a strategic initiative.
Time commitment is modest and contained. Each stakeholder interviewed spends 30–60 minutes in conversation. Eight stakeholder interviews means 8 person-hours spread across your team. Someone spends 30 minutes gathering documentation. Leadership spends 90–120 minutes in the findings presentation. Total: roughly 12–15 person-hours across two weeks. This is not disruptive to project delivery. Most of our work happens independently — your team continues delivering while we do the analysis.
That’s precisely the point. Finding problems early is why you commission a health check. The assessment provides clear evidence of what’s wrong, root cause analysis explaining why, and prioritised recommendations for what to do about it. Finding issues early means you have time to fix them before they become crises — infinitely better than discovering problems at go-live when options are limited to: deploy anyway, delay and explain to the board, or emergency intervention under time pressure.
It depends on project risk and value. High-risk, high-value projects (£2M+ budget, strategic importance) benefit from quarterly health checks as standard governance — these are the projects where course correction is expensive if delayed. Medium-risk projects typically warrant health checks at key milestones: post-initiation, mid-delivery, and pre-go-live. For any project running longer than 12 months, conduct health checks every six months at minimum regardless of apparent health. Long-duration projects accumulate problems slowly and imperceptibly.
We can present findings to a limited audience if you prefer — just the sponsor and PMO director rather than the full steering committee. We can tailor the level of detail shared with different stakeholders. Our recommendation is usually: share the traffic-light dashboard widely (everyone benefits from knowing overall project health), share detailed findings with leadership (they need specifics to make informed decisions), and keep root cause analysis confidential where it involves individual performance issues. We work with you to determine appropriate transparency for your culture.
Health check is preventative — you conduct it when things are generally okay but you want assurance, or when you have concerns but the project isn’t yet in crisis. The assessment takes 2–3 weeks and delivers recommendations you implement using your own team. Cost is £2,500–5,000. Project rescue is reactive emergency intervention when the project is significantly behind, over budget, or at risk of failure — requiring urgent hands-on intervention, not just advisory recommendations. Cost is £5,000–50,000. The goal of regular health checks is to never need rescue.
If your project is already in crisis rather than just showing warning signs, you need rescue not health check. Rescue provides active hands-on intervention to stabilise and recover failing projects. £5,000–50,000.
If you want to prevent problems from emerging in the first place, a fractional PM provides ongoing senior oversight. Rather than periodic health checks, you have continuous professional PM keeping projects healthy day-to-day.
If you’re running a portfolio of strategic projects, outsourced PMO provides the governance that catches issues early across all initiatives — health checks become part of standard portfolio governance rather than special interventions.