Reshaping skylines, powering nations, and pushing the limits of what’s possible. Behind every megaproject are the people who plan, measure, and keep it all on track. Orion takes us behind the curtain with interviews of the leaders making it possible, managing billions in scope, risk, and ambition.
Orion MatthewsHost · Founder, Queryon
Bruno CaldasEighteen years of turning project and financial data into decisions, from mining megaprojects like Simandou and S11D to portfolio PMOs. Why the intelligent PMO starts with data strategy, not AI strategy, and how to build it. Plus a 17-minute bonus mini-episode on career moves, data, and getting into the room.
Omer IqbalMoving from project-level delivery to portfolio-level strategy: decision frameworks, accountability, and what changes when the number has a “B” in it. Plus a bonus mini-episode on what actually advances a career in major projects.
Long-form conversations with the people running the world’s largest capital projects, plus short bonus cuts on careers and craft.
Why your AI strategy is only as good as your data strategy: 18 years of mining megaprojects, portfolio PMOs, and building the intelligent PMO.
Career moves, data, and getting into the room: how curiosity moves a project-controls career forward.
From project-level delivery to portfolio-level strategic thinking, and the decision-making frameworks that scale.
Recognition, organizational dynamics, and the habits that move project-controls careers forward.
Why organizational capability gaps sink projects despite formal governance, from a decision-gate expert.
Critical thinking in the AI era: what emerging project leaders should build now.
Risk workshops that work, Monte Carlo in practice, and building risk culture across contractor teams.
It isn’t a skills gap: it’s structure and culture. What has to change to keep the pipeline alive.
Vertical, horizontal and cross-functional integration failures, and why they get misdiagnosed as personality conflicts.
Bow waves, the vital four, and forecasting from the pace the field is actually achieving: 25 owner-side years of execution realism, and the $200M call it enabled.
A live panel on making the jump from technical expert to industry leader.
Staffing multi-billion-dollar programs in a brutal talent market, the three shapes of a modern PMO, and why career growth beats compensation.
Risk from first principles: the four responses, a culture that can talk about obstacles, and the RAID log as delivery's run tool.
4D/5D BIM in practice: crane placement, war rooms, federated models and the integrated data that turns simulations into decisions.
Why mega projects fail before FID: three truths, five fundamentals in order, and the decisions that shape destiny.
FEL stages, stage gates, PDRI scoring and execution bias: why billion-dollar projects are won or lost before ground breaks.
Constraint-free work packages, the 70-megaproject audit data behind a 22% productivity lever, and why on-time delivery is a choice.
Contracts as alignment tools, risk triggers with owners, and quarterly owner-side audits that surface true delays, from a $20B greenfield.
Document control as a technical discipline: single sources of truth, the ready-fire-aim trap, listening for "noise," and what AI actually changes about the craft.
Scaling energy megaprojects beyond the stage gate: solar math, geothermal, modular builds, and leading the teams that deliver them.
Planting 7.5 million trees across a capital city: P6-to-GIS integration, boardroom candor, and the project-controls basics that hold a $10B program together.
How refineries spend $500M in 45 days: culture as cadence, a mercenary workforce, the $80M resource-plan mismatch, and well-guided AI untangling 64,000 documents.
Every book, essay, newsletter, podcast and community recommended on the show: who said it, why in their own words, and the episode it came from.
Every quotable line from the show, browsable by project domain.
Every major project discussed on the show, by type and region.
Orion is an award-winning programmer, entrepreneur and technology executive who has spent the last decade in the engine room of major capital projects. He founded Queryon in 2015 with a focus on data analytics and software for the construction industry, starting with bellwether client BP, whose project-controls solutions his team deployed globally, from the North Sea to Azerbaijan to Houston.
Today he builds the reporting and analytics that billion-dollar portfolios run on, for owners and delivery partners including BP, Santos, Balfour Beatty and Turner & Townsend, and speaks regularly at major industry conferences on the practical application of AI and data analytics in capital projects.
“These are the conversations that don’t happen except in the hallways of conferences. That was the goal, actually talking about this stuff.”Orion, on why the show exists
