Technical skill gets you into project controls. Leadership skill determines how far you actually go in this field. Sohaib Wasif Calgary has managed controls teams ranging from small, focused two-or-three-person functions on single project assignments to larger program controls teams covering multiple simultaneous workstreams across complex programs. The technical challenges are real and they don’t get easier at scale. But the leadership challenges are consistently harder — and consistently more consequential for the quality of the work produced.
Building a Controls Team That Leadership Trusts
The controls team’s credibility within a project organization is everything. If project leadership doesn’t genuinely trust the numbers the team produces, the reports become wallpaper. They get glanced at in the review meeting and filed. Nobody uses them to make actual decisions. Nobody acts on the signals they’re surfacing. And the entire controls function ceases to fulfill its real purpose regardless of how technically excellent the underlying analysis might be.
Building that credibility takes time. It takes consistency in methodology so that period-over-period comparisons mean something. It takes the willingness to deliver uncomfortable findings accurately and clearly rather than softening them to avoid difficult conversations. And it takes being right often enough in forecasts that leadership develops genuine confidence in the team’s ability to see what’s coming. Sohaib Wasif from Calgary has built that kind of credibility repeatedly across different programs and organizations.
Developing Controls Professionals in a High-Stakes Environment
Calgary entrepreneur Sohaib Wasif cares deeply about developing the professionals on his team — not just as a management responsibility, but because the experience gap in this field is real and growing. Senior project controls professionals with deep capital program experience are moving toward the later stages of their careers, and the pipeline of people truly ready to step into those senior roles isn’t as robust as the industry needs it to be.
Bringing younger controls professionals along and giving them real responsibility on complex programs is how that gap gets closed. The professionals who develop fastest are the ones who get exposed to the full controls cycle early rather than spending years mastering only one technical slice of it.
The Communication Challenge at Senior Levels
This is the one that consistently surprises professionals making the transition into senior controls roles. They’re not just technical professionals anymore. They’re communicators. They’re presenting integrated cost and schedule findings to project directors and vice presidents who have limited time and need the most important things surfaced clearly within the first five minutes of the conversation.
All of that requires clear and confident communication in both written and verbal forms — and it’s a skill that requires deliberate development. It doesn’t come automatically with technical expertise. Sohaib Wasif from Calgary has invested significantly in developing this capacity across the teams he’s led.
The Integrity Question
The single most important quality in a project controls professional at any level is the commitment to reporting what’s true even when the truth is not what stakeholders want to hear. Full stop. The pressure to soften findings, to present a slightly optimistic forecast because the project is struggling and leadership is under pressure — that pressure is real on large capital programs. Maintaining integrity in those situations is what separates controls professionals who are genuinely valuable from those who are just technically competent.
Sohaib Wasif Calgary has never wavered from that standard — and he holds the teams he leads to the same expectation.
FAQ
Q: What qualities are most important for a project controls leader at the program level?
A: Technical depth is the foundation but it’s table stakes at this level. Beyond that, genuine credibility with both technical project teams and executive leadership is required — which demands very different communication styles and content. Intellectual integrity to report accurately under pressure. And organizational awareness to navigate the political dynamics of a large and complex program environment without compromising the independence and accuracy of the controls function.
Q: How do you maintain controls team performance and morale on a project that’s in trouble?
A: Be honest with the team about the challenges the project is facing. Recognize strong work specifically and directly rather than generically. Make sure every team member understands how their specific contribution connects to the program outcomes. And shield the team where possible from the organizational stress that tends to flow down from leadership when a project is struggling. A controls team managing their own anxiety can’t produce their best analytical work.
Q: What’s the most important thing to look for when building a project controls team?
A: Intellectual honesty first. Methodology can be taught and technical skills can be developed in people who are willing to learn. What can’t be installed in someone is the commitment to accuracy and the personal integrity to report reality honestly when the pressure to do otherwise is real and present. That quality has to already be there — and it shows up clearly in how people describe the projects they’ve worked on and the difficult situations they’ve navigated.
