An EPC leader transforms itself amid intense volatility

A regional EPC leader came to us with a problem the boardroom already knew about. Margin had been drifting for six quarters. Commodity exposure was no longer hedged in a way the CFO could explain. The operating model still belonged to a smaller, simpler company. The brief was direct: hold cash, hold price, and do it without freezing the business.

What we did

• Rebuilt the cost stack from contract level upward, so every line item traced back to a hedgeable exposure.
• Stood up a live margin desk that the COO and CFO read together every Monday — same numbers, same screen, no reconciliation calls.
• Renegotiated the top fifteen supplier contracts against a model the operator could defend in any commercial review.
• Trained the project controllers to run the desk themselves inside ninety days. We left before the second annual planning cycle.

The impact

Across two years of operating the new model, the business retained $300M of cash that would otherwise have leaked through margin and working capital. The share price tracked the operating story: 2.5x across the same window. The CFO closed the engagement with a finance function that no longer needed us in the room.

They did not sell us a transformation. They sold us an operating habit, and they left when the habit stuck.

If your finance function still cannot answer margin questions in the same room as the operator, we should talk.