PMP certified · PMO and delivery

Projects don't fail at the end. They fail at the start.

Gate Zero helps small and mid-sized manufacturing and industrial organisations build the governance, processes, skills and technology needed for predictable project delivery.

Gate Zero Project Delivery Platform Powered by Smartsheet. Guided by Gate Zero.
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Professional track record
40yrsDelivery experience
400+Projects delivered
$600MPortfolio value managed
95%+Delivered on time
85%+Delivered within budget

Figures reflect the professional delivery careers of the Gate Zero team, not the trading history of the firm.

Sectors delivered in
Automotive manufacturing Automotive supply — tier one Tire & rubber manufacturing Pharmaceuticals & life sciences Building technologies Technology distribution Industrial automation distribution Mining & metals Oil & gas Food & beverage Construction
The problem

Your projects may be moving. But are they under control?

Most organisations don't have a project management problem. They have a project system problem.

Project information lives in spreadsheets, emails and disconnected systems.

Every project manager runs projects differently.

Executives don't have a consistent portfolio view.

Risks surface too late to do anything about cheaply.

Status reporting consumes more time than it saves.

Governance depends on meetings rather than a repeatable process.

ERP programmes introduce complexity the delivery model wasn't built for.

Teams know how to execute the work but lack a consistent delivery framework.

Gate Zero turns project management practices into a repeatable delivery system.

The platform

Gate Zero Project Delivery Platform

Powered by Smartsheet. Guided by Gate Zero.

A practical project delivery system that connects methodology, workflows, governance and real-time project, portfolio and executive visibility — without requiring you to build a PMO operating system from scratch.

What the platform brings together

  • Gate Zero delivery methodology and phase gates
  • PM Navigator guidance layer
  • Project workflows, checklists and templates
  • Governance and decision rights
  • Risk, issue and change management
  • Action tracking and accountability
  • Project, portfolio and executive dashboards
  • Computed project health — not self-reported status
  • Repeatable delivery processes your team owns
01Gate Zero MethodologyHow projects are governed, gated and measured
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02PM NavigatorPhase-based guidance for project teams
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03Smartsheet Delivery EngineWorkflows, automation and the system of record
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04Project · Portfolio · Executive ViewsThe right information at the right altitude
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05Predictable Project DeliveryRepeatable, transferable, owned by your team
What we do

Two implementation practices

We build the thing, run it with your team, and train them to keep it running. Every engagement is scoped to end with your people owning it.

Practice 01

PMO Implementation

Standing up the project office, the delivery system and the people to run both.

01

PMO Build & Transformation

Building a project office that works, or rebuilding one that doesn't. Starts with an honest assessment of where delivery actually stands, then implements the governance, intake, reporting and controls the business needs — and trains the people who will run them.

  • Current-state assessment across maturity, value and operating model
  • Target operating model: mandate, structure, decision rights, staffing
  • Governance, stage gates, portfolio intake and reporting built and live
  • PMO staff trained to operate and adapt it without us
02

Delivery Platform Implementation

The Gate Zero Project Delivery Platform, configured for your business and handed over. Project templates, gate checklists, health model, portfolio rollup and executive dashboards — built in Smartsheet, populated with your real projects, run by your team.

  • Methodology configured to how your organisation actually delivers
  • Project, portfolio and executive dashboards live on real data
  • Repeatable project setup, so a new project takes minutes not days
  • Administrator and PM training, plus the documentation to maintain it
03

Fractional PMO

A senior PMO lead, part-time and ongoing, for organisations that need a working project office but not a full-time hire. Runs the governance you built, keeps the portfolio honest, and gives leadership one clear picture every month.

  • A set number of days per month, on a monthly retainer
  • Runs gate reviews, portfolio intake and executive reporting
  • Coaches your PMs and keeps the platform and templates current
  • Scales up, down or out as your team grows or hires in-house
04

PM on Demand

An experienced project manager on a named project, for as long as the project needs one. For when someone resigns mid-delivery, when there are more projects than managers, or when a one-off project doesn't justify a permanent hire.

  • Deployed to a specific project, part-time or full-time, for a defined period
  • Cover for resignation, leave or a surge in the portfolio
  • Runs to your governance where it exists, ours where it doesn't
  • Coaches your team throughout, and hands over cleanly at close
Practice 02

ERP Implementation

Client-side delivery leadership across the ERP lifecycle — from readiness through adoption.

01

ERP Readiness

The work that belongs before a contract is signed. Whether the organisation is ready, what the platform actually needs to do, whether the business case survives contact with reality — and what it will take to close the gaps before they become change orders.

  • Business case, benefits model and total cost of ownership
  • Process baseline and fit-gap against candidate platforms
  • Data quality, organisational readiness and change-capacity assessment
  • Vendor and systems-integrator selection support
02

ERP Delivery Governance

The client-side structure an ERP programme needs to survive multi-year delivery — and the route back when one has gone off the rails. Stage gates, decision rights and the discipline to hold a systems integrator to account.

  • Programme operating model, workstream design and decision rights
  • Client-side PMO stand-up and systems-integrator management
  • Independent gate reviews, re-baselining and troubled-programme recovery
  • Cutover, data migration and go-live readiness assessment
03

ERP Change Management

Most ERP programmes fail on adoption, not configuration. This is the part the systems integrator structurally cannot do well — because they are the change people are resisting. Stakeholder engagement, role-based training and the readiness work that decides whether go-live sticks.

  • Change impact assessment by role, function and site
  • Stakeholder engagement, communications and resistance management
  • Role-based training design, super-user networks and competence checks
  • Adoption measurement through hypercare, not just attendance records

Every engagement ends with handover. We train your project managers, your PMO staff and your system administrators as part of the work — not as an add-on afterwards. The measure of a good engagement is that your team can run it without us — and if you'd rather not hire a full-time PMO lead, Fractional PMO keeps it running.

Practice 03 · The delivery platform

PM Navigator

Powered by Smartsheet. Guided by Gate Zero.

The project delivery system that guides your team from project start to close.

PM Navigator provides phase-based guidance that helps project teams understand what needs to happen, what should be checked, what information needs to be captured and what decisions need to be made throughout the project lifecycle.

  • Phase-based guidance from initiate through close
  • Gate checklists with blocking and advisory questions
  • Deliverables expected at each stage
  • The questions a PM should be asking — and answering
  • Required project information, captured once
  • Governance prompts ahead of each decision point
  • Project health indicators computed from real data
  • Links through to the templates and resources that apply
  • Guidance tailored to how your organisation delivers

A waiver requires a written reason and a named approver. A gate cannot show ready while a blocking question is unanswered. The system enforces the process so the process doesn't depend on who is running the project.

PM Navigator — gate view
PM Navigator gate view: projects by status, phase distribution chart, projects overview table and upcoming milestones
Sample data shown · Click to enlarge
Visibility

One system. Three altitudes.

The same delivery data, surfaced differently for the people who need to act on it. No duplicate entry, no reconciliation, no status decks assembled by hand.

Project managers & teams

Project visibility

What has to happen this week, and what is getting in the way.

  • Schedule and critical path
  • Tasks and deliverables
  • Risks and mitigations
  • Issues and actions
  • Milestones and gates
  • Project health
PMO & delivery leadership

Portfolio visibility

Which projects need intervention, and where the patterns are.

  • Health across all projects
  • Schedule performance
  • Budget and forecast
  • Risk concentration
  • Resource pressure
  • Cross-project issues and trends
Executive & steering

Executive visibility

What is at risk, what it is worth, and what needs a decision.

  • Overall portfolio health
  • Critical and red projects
  • Financial exposure
  • Major risks and schedule exposure
  • Decisions required
  • Strategic project status
Executive dashboard — portfolio health
Executive portfolio dashboard: delivery KPIs, portfolio health, performance trend, health by business unit, top risks and recent projects
Sample data shown · Health computed from delivery data, never self-reported
How we work

A lifecycle that ends with you owning it

The same six stages whether we're standing up a PMO or governing an ERP programme. The last one is the one most consultancies leave out.

01

Assess

Where delivery actually stands, evidenced rather than asserted.

02

Design

The governance model, gates and data structure that fit your business.

03

Configure

Build it in Smartsheet — templates, workflows, dashboards.

04

Deploy

Run real projects through it and fix what the first ones expose.

05

Train

Your PMs and PMO staff operate it without us in the room.

06

Improve

Handover, then refinement owned by your team.

Free diagnostic

Find out where delivery actually stands

Eight dimensions, thirty-two indicators. Rate where your organisation is today and where it needs to be — the gap between those two numbers is where your delivery pain lives. Takes about twenty minutes, and the output is a gap profile you can take straight into a leadership conversation.

Open the assessment
Technology

Technology should make project management easier — not more complicated.

Methodology without a system stays theoretical. A system without methodology just moves the chaos into new software. Gate Zero connects the two.

Gate Zero Methodology
+
Smartsheet
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Microsoft 365 & SharePoint
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ERP Platforms
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Practical Automation
Connected Project Delivery

Where AI actually helps

AI should reduce project administration and help project teams make better-informed decisions. It is not the product, and it does not replace governance.

  • Drafting status summaries from live project data
  • Surfacing risks buried in meeting notes and updates
  • Retrieving the right template or precedent quickly
  • Flagging actions that have quietly gone stale
  • Reducing the administrative load on project managers
Why Gate Zero

Methodology + technology + delivery experience

Most PMO consulting stops at a framework document. Most software vendors sell you a tool and leave. Neither produces predictable delivery on its own.

Methodology

Built around how projects actually work

Phase gates, decision rights and controls designed for organisations running real projects with limited PMO capacity — not a textbook model.

Technology

A connected delivery environment

Project, portfolio and executive visibility from one system of record. Configured for your business, not a generic template.

Experience

Hands-on industrial delivery

Project management and transformation experience across complex manufacturing, industrial and ERP environments.

Transferability

We're designed to leave

We don't just manage projects for you. We help build the system your organisation can use to manage projects better — and then operate without us.

Writing

Notes on delivery

Practical writing on project management, PMO leadership, and building delivery capability that outlasts the person who built it.

PMO Value Ring · 5 min

Your PMO is probably delivering value. Can you prove it?

Most PMO leaders report activities and assume leadership infers the outcome. Leadership never infers it.

Read →
PMO Value Ring · 6 min

The PMO that got cut had excellent numbers

Delivered value and perceived value are two separate quantities. The gap between them is where PMOs quietly die.

Read →
Practice · 4 min

The five questions every project charter must answer

If your charter can't answer these, the project is in trouble before anyone starts work.

Read →
Get in touch

Get your project portfolio health check

A structured look at how your projects are actually running — governance, visibility, reporting and delivery discipline. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right team to help. No charge, usually half an hour.

Email
[email protected]
Phone
+1 437-928-2926
Based in
Toronto, Ontario — working across North America
Typical response
Within one business day

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