How Awe Maze Works
we don’t prescribe solutions
we create the conditions to define them
Awe Maze curates experts who bring direct exposure to the types of challenges being addressed — informed by having navigated similar conditions, constraints, and outcomes across real project and operational environments. Our experts understand not only how issues are resolved, but how and why they emerge, having worked within the systems, decisions, and trade-offs that shape them. This perspective is grounded in applied experience and informed by industry best practices, enabling us to bring relevant judgment, credible context, and practical insight to each engagement
A few things our experts have done…
-
Why This Matters
Projects and assets generate vast amounts of information, but without clarity on what is required at each phase, teams either overproduce information or discover critical gaps too late.What Happens Without It
Engineering, construction, commissioning, and operations teams work with misaligned expectations, leading to late-stage remediation, rework, and uncertainty at handover.What Changed
By defining lifecycle-based information requirements, organizations established clarity on what information was needed, when it was needed, and how it would be used — improving readiness, reducing downstream remediation, and enabling smoother transitions from project delivery into operations. -
Why This Matters
Asset tags are the backbone of how equipment, documents, data, and systems connect across the facility lifecycle.What Happens Without It
Without a single authoritative master tag register, assets appear under multiple identifiers across systems, creating confusion, manual reconciliation, loss of trust in data, and increased operational risk.What Changed
By consolidating asset identifiers into a governed master tag register, organizations restored consistency across engineering, maintenance, and operations systems — improving data reliability, reducing rework, and enabling confident decision-making. -
Why This Matters
When requirements are not clearly defined, technology solutions shape how work is done — rather than supporting how work should be done.What Happens Without It
Organizations invest in systems that meet feature checklists but fall short of operational needs, resulting in customization, workarounds, and underutilized platforms.What Changed
By defining clear, tool-agnostic minimum technical and functional requirements, organizations were able to evaluate solutions objectively, align technology to real needs, and make informed decisions about whether existing tools were fit for purpose. -
Why This Matters
Modern projects rely on concurrent engineering to maintain schedules, but parallel work increases coordination and information risk if not properly aligned.What Happens Without It
Misaligned assumptions surface late, driving rework, schedule pressure, and gaps that affect construction, commissioning, and handover.What Changed
By aligning information expectations across disciplines and phases, teams were able to work concurrently without sacrificing quality — improving coordination, reducing late-stage surprises, and supporting downstream readiness. -
Why This Matters
Information, digital, and technology initiatives often cut across engineering, IT, operations, and external partners — requiring coordination beyond traditional project structures.What Happens Without It
Decisions stall, ownership becomes unclear, and initiatives drift toward tools or tasks rather than outcomes.What Changed
Through focused project and technology advisory, organizations gained clarity on priorities, sequencing, and ownership — enabling informed execution while keeping attention on outcomes rather than activity.
What We Can Do For You
-
We help isolate the actual problem from the solutions that may already be circulating within the organization. This ensures the issue is defined based on evidence and impact, not urgency or past precedent. By separating what is wrong from how it might be fixed, teams gain a shared understanding of the problem before committing time, budget, or resources to a particular approach.
-
When information gaps exist, our working sessions help teams understand what is missing, why it matters, and what addressing it would realistically involve. The focus is on framing a practical remediation path — aligned to project, commissioning, or operational needs — without immediately jumping to execution or tooling.
-
We support organizations in clarifying information expectations for vendors and aligning those expectations early. Through facilitated sessions, teams establish shared understanding around what “good” looks like, reducing rework, confusion, and downstream remediation while improving vendor readiness and outcomes.
-
We help organizations connect their technical, operational, and information realities to how they support customers and stakeholders. These labs ensure customer success efforts are grounded in real experience, credible content, and practical understanding — creating programs that resonate because they are informed by how work is actually done.
-
Teams often arrive with a proposed solution already in mind, driven by urgency, pressure, or past experience, without fully understanding the root cause, the true level of risk, or whether the issue is as severe as it appears. Without a well-defined problem statement, decisions are made on assumptions, scope grows unchecked, and effort is spent reacting rather than resolving. The result is momentum without direction — activity that feels productive but delivers little real value.
The cost of poorly defined problems is significant. Studies consistently show that unclear requirements and problem definition are among the leading causes of project rework, cost overruns, and schedule delays, with rework alone accounting for up to 30 percent of total project cost in complex projects. Industry research also indicates that organizations can waste millions of dollars per year addressing symptoms rather than root causes, often committing to solutions that exceed the actual risk or need. When the problem is not clearly understood, organizations pay for it twice — once in unnecessary execution and again in course correction.
from Awe Maze Principal Consultant
-
One of the most persistent and costly challenges in information management handovers isn’t a missing spreadsheet or an incomplete PDF — it’s the inability to assess readiness and tell the story of that readiness clearly and confidently. In complex projects, stakeholders often don’t know what “good” really looks like at each stage. They struggle to communicate when things are not going according to plan and even more importantly, what that divergence means for risks, costs, and outcomes.
This communication gap — not technology or tools — is where the greatest opportunity for improvement exists. Knowing when information should be shared, who needs to receive it, and how it should be communicated are all part of a strategic communication framework that turns handover from a reactive scramble into a proactive transition. When done well, this isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a significant cost-saver.ption
Awe Maze Perspectives in Practice
Next Steps - Let’s have a conversation for free - because having a conversation shouldn’t require a purchase order
… guiding teams through the maze to the light