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Hey Subscriber First Name,

If you've ever watched a Marvel film, or any film where the story plays out across different worlds, you'll know that every universe has its own rules. In one universe, a character can fly. In another, they can't. The laws of physics bend differently depending on which world you're in. The characters don't get to choose the rules. They just have to figure out how to operate within them.

Projects work the same way.

Every project you walk into has its own universe. Its own set of rules you didn't write. The political landscape. The procurement model. The governance structure. The client's appetite for risk. The supply chain you inherited. The budget that was set before you arrived, by people who may or may not have understood what they were committing to. You don't get to choose these things. But you do have to navigate them. And the difference between a good PM and one who burns out comes down to understanding which rules you can bend and which ones are fixed.

This is what I was thinking about when I saw the latest HS2 update land in Parliament a few weeks ago.

For anyone outside the UK, HS2 is a high-speed rail line connecting London to Birmingham, originally planned to extend further north. It was first announced with an estimated cost of around thirty-three billion pounds. The latest government figures now put that somewhere between eighty-eight and a hundred and three billion. The first trains were supposed to be running by the mid-2020s. The current estimate is 2036 at the earliest, with the full scheme not completing until the 2040s.

Parliament's response was predictable. Exasperation. Blame. Two select committees launched fresh scrutiny sessions, pressing HS2's CEO and the Rail Minister for answers. And the pattern was exactly what you'd expect from a mega project in trouble: the current government blaming the previous one for poor decisions, HS2 Ltd pointing to underperforming suppliers and contracts that didn't drive the right behaviours, and everyone agreeing that starting construction before the designs were finished was a mistake, while carefully avoiding the question of who authorised that in the first place.

The official breakdown is worth reading. Two-thirds of the cost increase is attributed to scope that was missed from the original plan, underestimation, and delivery challenges. The remaining third is inflation. What struck me is that inflation wasn't fully priced in from the start, which is standard practice on multi-decade programmes. There will be reasons for that, and I'm sure the people involved were doing their best within the constraints they were operating under. That's the point. On a programme of this scale, with this many stakeholders, this much political complexity, and timelines spanning multiple governments, the universe itself shapes the decisions that get made. The rules of the environment influence the outcomes as much as the people within it.

Now here's where I want to be careful, because it would be easy to read this and think "what a mess, how could they let this happen?" But if you've ever worked on a large programme, you know the answer. It happens because mega projects operate in a universe that makes it almost inevitable.

The political pressure to announce an ambitious budget and timeline before the analysis supports it. The procurement structures that lock you into contracts years before you fully understand the scope. The governance layers that make it almost impossible to course-correct quickly. The number of stakeholders, each with their own priorities, timelines, and definitions of success. The sheer duration of these programmes, spanning multiple governments, multiple leadership teams, and multiple economic cycles. No single PM, no single decision, no single supplier caused HS2's overrun. The universe it operates in made overrun the most likely outcome from the start.

Research consistently shows that nine out of ten mega infrastructure projects experience cost overruns, with rail projects overrunning by an average of forty-five percent. This is a structural pattern, not a UK problem. The Sydney Opera House. The Channel Tunnel. Boston's Big Dig. Berlin Brandenburg Airport. The pattern repeats across countries, decades, and industries. The universe of mega projects has a rule written into it: complexity compounds, and optimism at the start rarely survives contact with reality.

So what does this mean for you?

You're probably not running a hundred-billion-pound railway. But you are operating in a universe with its own set of rules. Maybe your organisation has a governance process that adds three weeks to every decision. Maybe your client changes their mind every quarter and calls it "agile." Maybe your supply chain is unreliable and everyone knows it but nobody wants to renegotiate the contract. Maybe the budget was set politically before anyone did the real analysis, and now you're expected to deliver within it.

You didn't create these rules. But you have to work within them.

The skill is learning to see the universe clearly. To understand which constraints are real and which ones are just how things have always been done. To push where you can and accept where you can't. To make the best calls possible with the hand you've been dealt, even when the hand isn't great.

Sometimes that's enough. You navigate the politics, manage the constraints, make smart trade-offs, and the project lands well. Other times, it isn't. The universe is too stacked, the rules too rigid, the starting position too compromised, and despite doing everything right, the outcome still falls short. That's the reality of this job. All you can do is operate with honesty, make the best judgement calls you can, and know that your value isn't determined by whether the universe cooperated.

The PMs I respect most aren't the ones who had perfect projects. They're the ones who walked into difficult universes, understood the rules quickly, did the right thing within them, and built their judgement through the experience. That's what making things happen actually looks like. Not controlling the universe. Navigating it.

MAKING IT HAPPEN: Your Weekly Strategy

Take ten minutes this week to map your project's universe. Write down the rules you're operating under, the ones you didn't choose. The governance process, the budget constraints, the stakeholder dynamics, the supply chain realities. Now circle the ones you can influence and cross out the ones you can't. Focus your energy on the circles. Accept the crosses. You'll feel lighter for knowing the difference, and your decisions will be sharper because of it.

CAN AI MAP THE UNIVERSE FOR YOU?

There's an interesting development happening in this space. Digital twins, AI-powered simulations of real-world projects, are moving from design tools into live decision systems. Siemens, NVIDIA, and others are building platforms that can simulate entire infrastructure programmes before a single day of work begins. PepsiCo is already using digital twins to optimise manufacturing and supply chain operations, testing configurations virtually before committing resources in the real world.

For mega projects, the potential is obvious. If you can simulate a programme's constraints, dependencies, and risks before you start, you can see the universe more clearly before you commit to operating in it. But the same lesson applies here as everywhere else. The simulation can show you the rules. It can model the scenarios. It can surface the risks you might miss. What it can't do is make the judgement call about which rules to challenge, which constraints to accept, and when to push back. That part is still yours. And honestly, that's the part worth protecting.

A QUICK NOTE

This newsletter was inspired by a conversation I had with Paul Simms a few weeks ago about navigating complexity on large programmes. The kind of conversation that makes you think differently for days afterwards. Thanks, Paul.

CHEAT SHEETS

The free cheat sheet library is here. I'll keep adding to it. Save the link and grab whatever helps.

If this one landed, forward it to a PM who's beating themselves up over a project that was stacked against them from the start. Sometimes the best you can do is exactly that, your best.

bilaljamil.com | Newsletter archive | Hit reply and tell me about the universe your current project operates in. I read every one.

Take care and speak soon, 

Bilal