Rescuing a stalled network consolidation

A logistics operator was fourteen months into a network consolidation that reported green and shipped nothing. Fourteen workstreams, three steering committees, a programme office of twenty — and a depot network that still ran exactly as it had on day one. The integrator’s dashboard showed 71% complete. The operation showed no change a customer or a cost line could detect.

The board did not ask Markham to run the programme. It asked for the truth about it, and then for a way to keep whatever value was still alive.

Six weeks of forensic baseline work established what 71% complete meant: 71% of activities started, 9% of outcomes delivered. The original value case had never been baselined — benefits were claimed against a forecast that moved quarterly. Of the fourteen workstreams, four carried 90% of the recoverable value; the other ten existed because stopping them had no owner.

The recoverable case was re-priced honestly at 84% of the original — less than the promise, more than the board feared, and for the first time a number with evidence under it.

The rescue was a re-sequencing, not a restart. Ten workstreams stopped in one board decision; the four that mattered were re-drawn as a single phase with frozen baselines, named owners and a weekly outcome cadence. HolisticAutomation took over the systems integration under a re-cut contract with outcome milestones; Markham held oversight, contracted to the board.

Delivery ran twelve months from arrival. Verification at month 26 — against the original case, not the re-forecast — confirmed 84% recovered. The remaining 16% was written off in public, in the board minutes, which is where write-offs belong.

All readings verified against the original month-0 case under MKM-F-003 — not against any re-forecast.