Advisory

Advisory

Most concept notes that fail do not fail on the idea. They fail on structure: a theory of change that lacks its own logic, a financing rationale that does not survive the additionality question, an accreditation route chosen before anyone tests whether the entity can execute what it proposes to access. These are recoverable problems, and they are much cheaper to find before submission than after.

The same holds one level up, before a project exists. A company that wants to work with international financing institutions usually cannot see which sectors and themes are open, where in the project cycle a decision is still movable, or how far ahead of a pipeline announcement the useful conversations happen. Arriving after those decisions are made is the most common and most expensive mistake, and it is invisible from outside.

Most companies know international financing institutions by name rather than by behavior. The distance between those two is where engagements are won or lost.

The judgment here comes from the reviewer's chair. Concept notes and funding proposals from accredited entities were reviewed on behalf of a climate fund secretariat, for submission to its investment committee and board, across projects in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean. At a multilateral development bank, I did the same work as lead peer reviewer for infrastructure and public-private partnerships. The conviction that follows is simple: this review belongs at the concept stage rather than at approval, because that is the last point at which a proposal can still be fixed cheaply.

Before any of that came fourteen years of delivery-side accountability, and two projects from those years make the point, because they failed for opposite reasons. A water privatization in Almaty, Kazakhstan, assessed for World Bank and EBRD financing, concluded as a service contract because the revenue base could not carry the structure. USD 200 million of solid waste projects in Thailand reached bankable stage and still found no capital, because the market had closed after the 1997 crisis. Neither failed on the idea.

Advisory engagement brings four decades of practice to one specific project, program, or corporate position. That covers positioning a company against the institutions' sectors, themes, and project cycle; structural review of project ideas, concept notes, and funding proposals against what reviewers do rather than what guidance says they do; theory-of-change design for projects at the climate-and-nature integration, where the outcome logic has to hold across two sets of expectations at once; strategic positioning for accreditation candidates and delivery partners; and tactical judgment through preparation and review, where the sequence of decisions matters as much as their content. Asia-Pacific positioning runs as dedicated sessions with senior management.

Engagements usually begin from one of a few recognizable positions:

Engagements are scoped by deliverable rather than by time, on a defined brief agreed in advance. A first conversation establishes whether the problem is the one you think it is, which is often the most valuable half hour in the process.

To discuss an engagement, write to hubert@nbspraxis.com with a short description of the project or the position and where it currently stands.