The data room problem
A well-prepared seller hands you a data room full of audited financials, product-mix data, maintenance logs, and capex registers. It is useful, and it is insufficient. The data room tells you what the plant said it was. The floor tells you what it is.
What we do differently
For buy-side and growth-equity clients, we run operational diligence in parallel to financial diligence. Three inputs decide the engagement:
- Floor walk. 2–3 days on site, covering all shifts where possible. The plant director sees what the evening shift does not know to hide.
- Crew conversations. Twenty-minute one-on-ones with shift leaders, maintenance team leaders, quality leads. What they are worried about matters more than what they are proud of.
- Maintenance log read. The unvarnished history of a plant is in the maintenance log. We read three years.
What we usually find
Without committing to confidentiality, the recurring finds across recent engagements have included:
- Deferred refractory maintenance masked by short-term yield numbers. Campaign life in the back quartile, rebuild capex not in the forward plan.
- Single-person dependencies — one team leader whose retirement or departure would expose the plant. Usually not disclosed in diligence.
- Environmental compliance tail-risks — local permits close to limits, infrequent inspection regimes.
- Cultural brittleness — a plant where the OpEx wall is full of slogans but the crew huddles have not happened in six months.
What we report
Board-ready, with three sections:
- Go/no-go view with conditions. Plain English.
- Key operational risks with mitigation and post-close 100-day plan.
- Upside opportunities with indicative value ranges, for bidding and synergy modelling.
Post-close
Most clients engage us through the first 100 days post-close. The diligence report becomes the 100-day plan with very little rework — that is the point. Recommendations that do not survive into execution were not recommendations, they were decoration.
Independence, plainly
We do not take OEM commissions. We do not have EPC partnerships. If we have worked with any party to the deal in the last three years, we disclose it before we quote. The value of operational diligence is compromised the moment independence is compromised.