Large-scale capital projects sit at the heart of the oil and gas industry, and across all infrastructure sectors (power, petrochemicals, rail, water, telecoms). These projects require tight coordination of people, equipment, and timelines, often under pressure to deliver quickly and safely. Despite heavy investment in planning tools and scheduling systems, the day-to-day reality remains fragmented, with teams working across disconnected systems and making decisions in isolation. The issue is not a shortage of data, but a lack of connected context. Teams make decisions that work locally, but cannot see the ripple effects across the broader project. When disruptions occur, such as missing materials or shifting priorities, organizations fall back on manual replanning, pulling experts together to work through scenarios. The result is familiar: delays, rework, misalignment, and a persistent focus on reacting to problems rather than anticipating them. A new approach is emerging that focuses on execution intelligence, not just planning. These systems sit across existing tools, capture real-time context, and use AI to recommend next steps while keeping humans in control. Instead of replacing systems like P6, they enhance them, helping teams understand what matters most today and how decisions impact the wider system. This allows experienced staff to apply judgment more effectively, while also enabling less experienced team members to make better decisions faster. In this episode, I am speaking with Cali Collins, Chief Product Officer at Optimality, about how fragmented decision-making slows down capital projects and why execution—not planning—is where projects succeed or fail. We explore how AI can surface hidden dependencies, improve decision quality, and help teams navigate complex trade-offs in real time. 👤 About The Guest Cali Collins is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Optimality, an AI-native decision infrastructure platform redefining how organizations structure, optimize, and scale decision-making in an era of overwhelming data and competing priorities. She is an experienced product leader with a background spanning AI infrastructure, knowledge systems, estimating, enterprise transformation, and large-scale capital project execution. Cali specializes in translating complex operational challenges into scalable product strategies, bridging business, technical architecture, and real-world execution across both startups and Fortune 50 environments. ⚒️ Additional Tools & Resources 🌐 Website: https://optimalitypro.com 💼 LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optimalitypro/ 📧 Email Cali: [email protected] 🎬 Go Backstage https://geoffreycann.com/mystudio/ 🎓 Take My one day course https://www.udemy.com/course/digital-oil-and-gas/?referralCode=0161D4D49AB75735A185 🔗 Connect with Me 🖥️ Blog series: https://digitaloilgas.substack.com/ 🎧 Podcast: https://geoffreycann.com/broadcast/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/advocate-digital-innovation-for-energy/ 🤬 X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/geoffreycann 🎤 Contact Me I speak regularly on these and other topics. Contact me to book a brief call about your upcoming event needs: https://geoffreycann.com/contact/ ⚠️ Disclaimer The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not constitute professional advice.