Sohaib Wasif: Building Project Controls Capability From the Inside Out

Wiki Article

There's a version of project controls consulting that's basically just checking boxes and producing reports that nobody reads. Then there's the version that Sohaib Wasif has practiced across two decades of work on some of North America's most complex capital programs. The difference isn't software. It's not methodology. It's whether the person in the controls seat actually understands what the numbers mean when they change.

From Shell to Rio Tinto: What That Career Arc Teaches

When I trace Sohaib wasif career from early roles at Shell and Teck through positions at Husky Energy and Trans Mountain and Worley all the way to the senior work at Rio Tinto and TC Energy a clear picture emerges. Each step added scale and complexity. Each role built on the structural knowledge of how large organizations plan and track capital spending.

At Shell the work involved upgrades and extensions of facilities. At Teck it was project controls for a mining silo. These aren't flashy descriptions but they represent the foundational work that teaches a controls professional what actually happens at the field level when a project starts executing. You can't understand cost variance without understanding why it happened and you can't understand why it happened without knowing how the work actually gets done.

The Worley Chapter and What Large EPC Experience Adds

Working at Worley as a Project Controls Principal and Manager on a major gas project is a different kind of experience than working on the owner's side. EPC firms run projects differently. The commercial pressures are different. The relationship between schedule and cost and contract terms is more visible because it has direct revenue implications. Sohaib has experience from both sides of that table and that's genuinely rare.

Why Dual-Side Experience Changes How You Think

I think the reason most controls professionals struggle when they move from contractor to owner or vice versa is that they've only ever optimized for one set of objectives. Owners want predictability and capital efficiency. Contractors want margin protection and scope definition. When you've had to deliver results within both frameworks you understand how to structure controls systems that actually serve project success rather than just organizational reporting.

Roughly 65% of major infrastructure projects in North America experience material cost growth according to industry benchmarking from the late 2010s. That statistic didn't surprise anyone who'd been working on the controls side. It surprised the executives who'd been reading green dashboards.

Sohaib Wasif and the Multi-Billion Dollar Program Mindset

Not everyone who works in project controls works on programs at the billion-dollar scale. When you do the entire frame shifts. Risk registers stop being academic exercises and start being actual financial instruments. Schedule float becomes a commercial negotiating point. Contingency management becomes a governance conversation at the board level.

The ExxonMobil work that Sohaib contributed to involved managing a program for a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project. That's the kind of experience that completely recalibrates how you think about controls on any project regardless of size.

What We Bring to Every Engagement

At EMPCON we don't sell controls templates. We don't show up with a generic dashboard and a quarterly reporting cadence. What we bring is the institutional knowledge of what actually drives cost and schedule performance on complex programs and the technical ability to build controls systems that surface that information in time to act on it.

The Coaching Element That Most Firms Miss

A controls system is only as good as the team running it. Part of what we do is build capability inside client organizations not just deliver reports to them. When an engagement ends the client team should understand how to interpret earned value data how to challenge a schedule update that doesn't reflect field reality and how to have a productive conversation with a contractor about cost trends. That transfer of knowledge is what creates lasting value.

FAQ

Has Sohaib Wasif worked on pipeline projects?

Yes. His experience includes project controls work at TC Energy on the Coastal Gas Link pipeline as well as roles at Trans Mountain and Husky Energy involving oil and gas pipeline programs.

What is the difference between a project controls principal and a project controls manager?

The principal role typically involves technical leadership and methodology while the manager role involves team leadership and delivery accountability. Having held both means understanding the work at multiple levels of the organization.

What industries does EMPCON serve?

Energy. Mining. Infrastructure. Any sector where large capital programs require robust controls capability to deliver on cost and schedule commitments.