LIMA, PERU – The transportation and logistics industry is accustomed to measuring virtually everything: times, costs, productivity, equipment availability, service levels, and operational performance. However, this culture of metrics doesn’t always reach the same depth in projects that will determine companies’ future capacity, even when they involve investments of millions of dollars.
This gap becomes relevant as transport companies , logistics operators and infrastructure developers allocate capital to new roads, railways, terminals, distribution centers, automation and technological transformation, projects that can take years to become operational and whose economic environment can change before they begin to generate results.
Américo Pinto, Managing Director of PMO Global Alliance at Project Management Institute (PMI) , warns against transferring to projects the rigor with which these industries traditionally manage their operations .
“Even though there is a tradition, an awareness of the importance of indicators for operations, it is very common that for projects this does not happen in the same way,” he noted in an interview with T21 during the PMI LATAM Conference 2026 , held in Lima, Peru.
This point is particularly sensitive for transportation and logistics . A company may have extensive experience managing its daily operations, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has the same capabilities to execute complex investments.
“The business is based on operations, on processes, not on projects, but projects are very important because they are very high investments. So, your work is not yet project-based, but projects are essential for success,” Pinto explained.
The difference also forces us to separate two concepts that frequently end up getting mixed up: delivering a project and obtaining the expected results from that investment .
A highway can become operational, a terminal can be inaugurated, or a technology platform can be implemented as planned. That’s the delivery. The real result appears later, when it can be determined whether that infrastructure increased capacity, reduced costs, raised productivity, or produced the benefits that originally justified the expenditure.
Therefore, Pinto believes that the results and the way to measure them should be established from the construction of the business case , even when they can only be verified months after the project is completed.
The challenge is even greater in Latin America, where large infrastructure projects often face delays , scope changes, and cost overruns. From the expert’s perspective, three elements are particularly relevant for addressing these complexities: specialized talent, governance, and risk management.
Regarding the first point, he warned that a company’s operational experience does not necessarily translate into the ability to manage projects.
“There’s no doubt that there may be great expertise in terms of operations, but perhaps not in the area of projects. And this is something that comes at a very high price,” he stated.
Added to this gap is the need to establish governance mechanisms capable of keeping investments under review throughout their execution, something especially relevant for logistics projects that can extend over several years.
During that period, governments, regulations, tax conditions, markets, technologies, or geopolitical scenarios can change. An investment that made sense when it was approved may encounter a completely different scenario before it is completed.
For Pinto, managing these risks does not necessarily mean avoiding events that are beyond the control of organizations, but rather developing the capacity to react when they occur.
This can even lead to one of the most difficult decisions within a company: stopping a project that technically meets its schedule and budget because the conditions that justified the investment have disappeared.
Due to “a major change in rules, for example, tax rules, you can now assess that this project no longer makes sense, but it is on time, it is on budget, technically perfect, but no, it no longer makes sense, let’s stop it,” he exemplified.
The problem is that organizations often resist abandoning investments after having already committed resources to them. The so-called sunk cost can lead to continued capital expenditures simply because too much has already been invested to accept halting the project.
Pinto sums it up with an analogy: “You don’t need to keep digging to discover you’re in a hole. Basically, I’m in the hole, I have no way out of here, so why would I keep digging deeper?”
The decision also has an organizational dimension . Canceling an investment can be interpreted as admitting a mistake by those who approved it, when proper governance should distinguish between a bad decision and a scenario that changed during implementation.
For supply chains, this capacity becomes even more critical in an environment marked by regulatory changes , trade tensions, geopolitical conflicts, and technological transformations. Projects need to be monitored not only in terms of their physical and financial progress, but also against the business case that originally justified them.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to be incorporated into this equation.
Pinto believes that its greatest potential in capital-intensive projects could be found less in automating administrative tasks and more in using large amounts of historical information to improve decisions and anticipate scenarios.
For this to happen, there is one condition: organizations need structured processes, governance, and, above all, reliable and transparent information about their projects.
“Data is essential to enable future predictions with a much greater capacity than we have today,” he explained.
This opens up the possibility of using AI to identify patterns associated with delays, cost overruns, deviations, and risks before they materialize, but also to provide information that allows us to determine whether an investment continues to be worthwhile.
“If you allow a wrong decision to go unmade, that can mean millions of dollars,” Pinto said.
In an industry where increasing capacity requires investments that can take years to mature, the discussion goes beyond project management methodologies. For transportation, logistics, and supply chains, professionalizing their execution also means developing the capacity to measure whether they are truly generating the promised results, adapting them when the environment changes, and, when necessary, recognizing in time when continuing to invest may be more costly than stopping.
Comment and follow us on LinkedIn: @Enrique Duarte Rionda / @GrupoT21
