The answer lives in this podcast

Answer extracted from the Beyond The Plan podcast — listen to the full episode below.

🎧 Listen to the episode on Listenly

When Complexity Emerges Mid-Project, What Should Teams Actually Do?

6 September 2026 Beyond The Plan · Brett Ackroyd

← See the Beyond The Plan fiche

When unexpected complexity surfaces during project execution—contaminated ground discovered during excavation, corroded equipment, new technical obstacles—the team's response should be predictable and collaborative, with members taking ownership of problems as a shared responsibility rather than assigning blame or filing contractual claims. The paperwork and formal change orders follow after the problem is already solved.

This principle flips the traditional project playbook. Most teams operate in reactive mode, waiting for formal processes before acting. Under collaborative working, the opposite happens: the team acts first to protect the overall project outcome, and the administrative machinery catches up later.

As Brett Ackroyd explains in the Beyond The Plan podcast, this isn't about heroic individual sacrifice—it's about designing predictable team behaviour. When one party knows the other will act to resolve an issue even if it costs them short-term resources, both parties can move faster and with less friction.

The psychology of predictable action

Collaborative response to emergent complexity requires a shift in how teams think about responsibility. Instead of asking "whose contract fault is this?" or "can we claim variation costs?", the first question becomes "what's the fastest way to fix this and keep the project moving?"

This works only when team members trust that others will reciprocate the same behaviour. If one party consistently acts in good faith to solve problems, the other party is more likely to do the same when the shoe is on the other foot. That reciprocal safety creates psychological permission to take intelligent risks.

The contrast with claims-focused culture is stark. In defensive environments, people document everything, raise variations immediately, and protect their contractual position first—even when they know how to solve the problem. As discussed in this episode of Beyond The Plan, Australia spends more of the project budget on claims than any other Western nation, a direct symptom of this fragmented approach.

"You will know a collaborative culture exists when one party will take it on themselves to actually act to their detriment for the other party, because that allows for the achievement of the overall outcome."

When paperwork follows, not leads

In traditional project governance, formal change control comes before resolution: identify the issue, lodge a claim, negotiate the terms, approve the variation, then execute the fix. This sequence creates delay, friction, and often results in problems staying unsolved while parties argue over cost allocation.

Collaborative teams invert this. The team fixes the problem immediately using available resources, then documents what happened and what it cost. The paperwork becomes a record of a decision already made to protect the project, not a gatekeeper preventing action.

This doesn't mean ignoring contracts or accountability. It means understanding that paperwork is a tool for managing relationships after delivery, not a tool for preventing intelligent response during execution. More detail on how this transforms productivity can be found in the Beyond The Plan episode on Scottish Water's collaborative results.

See also