October 1962. A room in Washington. A few men in suits. Coffee. Cigarettes. Maps of Cuba. What can go wrong? Welcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the permission of any meeting between Trump with his advisors, the most dangerous meeting in modern history. The problem? The Soviets had possibly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. 13 days to decide. Simple, right? Destroy the sites. Show strength. Win. That’s what half the room wanted. The other half? “Let’s not start World War III on a Tuesday...
1 day ago • 2 min read
You must speak up. Not in theory. Not on LinkedIn. In the room. Because there’s a lie many professionals tell themselves: “If they valued me… they would know what I think.” Wrong. “They should figure out” Again, wrong. That’s not intuition. That’s resentment… in disguise. Assume ignorance before malevolence. Read that again. People are not ignoring you. They simply don’t know what’s in your head. And you’re not helping. We live in a culture that avoids friction. People stay quiet. Nod. Let...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Sometimes I’ve walked into meetings where you could smell the blood from miles away. In one of those meetings, the SPV chair looked like he had just fallen off a tree that same morning. Stuttering like crazy. Like a guy from my hometown we used to call “The Stutterer”… el Tartas de mi pueblo. Impossible to take seriously. Looking at his papers. Looking at the screen. Searching for inspiration in the PowerPoint he put together the night before. He already started badly… talking about the...
3 days ago • 1 min read
A PPP somewhere in Canada. Mid 2010s. Saturday night. Concrete poring of a key structure in the critical path of the project. Everything looked perfect on paper. Full closure approved Concrete plant booked Pumps lined up Crew ready Weather… “acceptable” 22:00 : Go time First trucks arrive. Pumps start. Concrete flowing. Then… rain. Not heavy. Not dramatic. Just enough to start messing with the surface. The kind of rain that kills quality slowly. The dangerous one. 23:30: First tension Quality...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Unless you want a horror story. Or an “insĂpida” story that says nothing. You don’t put on the market an unconnected series of projects. That’s not a vision. It’s election time in New Zealand. And every time I’m invited to a forum, I repeat the same message. Infrastructure needs a long-term story. A real one. What do we want to become in 30 years? Because it cannot change every time the government changes. That’s not strategy. That’s improvisation. Or shooting yourself in your foot. If a...
5 days ago • 1 min read
There is always another offer. You have to approach real estate investment with that mindset. It’s a trick many agents use. “There is another offer.” Aka: urgency. Bring your top price if you want it. Not sure if it’s legal or illegal… but it’s everywhere. Now. If the property is good. If the price is good. People should be bidding. That’s a good sign. Be careful with properties that look great… but nobody wants. Are you missing something? So, when an agent calls me and says there’s another...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Parkinson’s Law: Work fills the space you give it. “If you give yourself three years to complete something, completion will take three years.” Now replace “three” with whatever number… like eight. That’s what I keep seeing in infrastructure. Projects designed to take 8… 10… 12 years. Not because they need it. Because nobody in the room knows how fast it can actually be done. Some clients hire advisors who have never delivered a project at scale. Or with no direct experience in the type of...
7 days ago • 1 min read
There is a project that I follow even if I live now at the other side of the Pacific. It is… or it was… or it will be one day, one of the most ambitious (and game changer) infrastructure projects in the world. It was also meant to be a PPP. California High-Speed Rail The idea sounded great: Connect major cities. Reduce emissions. Transform mobility. On paper, it had everything. In reality… it had a problem. The scope was never stable… and still it’s not. Routes changed. Stations moved....
8 days ago • 1 min read
Not corruption. Not politics. Just… incompetence. A real project. $800M. In LatAm… No more details, as in this distribution list, there are too many people living in that country… Here you are the 4 red flags that would have helped you to smell blood miles away. First red flag: They didn’t understand their own project. I’m not exaggerating. They launched the RFP with: Misaligned traffic studies Outdated geotech data A design that didn’t match the environmental permits Second: They outsourced...
9 days ago • 1 min read