Developers, utilities, or project proponents preparing to secure investment for an infrastructure project should not skip technical due diligence. Investors (especially in infrastructure energy projects like solar farms, BESS, transmission upgrades, etc) don’t just want a good technical design — they also want confidence that the project can be delivered successfully.
That means your infrastructure design and delivery plan must demonstrate that the project is technically feasible, deliverable within realistic timeframes, resilient to supply chain and regulatory risks, and compliant with grid and market rules. Rigorous technical due diligence is a good place to start as it validates the key areas that investors scrutinise before committing capital.
What investors scrutinise in your infrastructure design and delivery plan
Investors carefully assess whether your infrastructure project can be delivered as promised before committing capital. Let’s take a look at the four focus areas that are central to technical due diligence. It’s also the benchmarks investors use to gauge execution risk.
Design maturity and constructability
One of an investor’s critical considerations is design maturity and constructability, asking questions such as: Is the design ready for construction? Can it be built efficiently, safely, and within budget? Developers can answer those questions through technical due diligence as it provides data and insights into both design maturity and constructability.
Why does this matter? Design maturity reflects how complete and detailed your project design really is. It includes sufficient technical documentation, engineering drawings and specifications to proceed confidently into construction.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG) mentioned that there are six elements that influence the design maturity, which are strategy, culture, measurement, methods, tools, governance, people, and training. Collectively, these factors wrap the entire design function from end-to-end and are integrated into the operations and decision-making.
On the other hand, constructability examines whether a design can be built economically and practically, given existing site conditions, materials, labour and safety. According to the National Academy of Construction (NAOC), constructability reviews are a multidisciplinary process that assists in identifying potential issues upfront to minimise requests for information (RFIs), change orders, and delays all while keeping the project on time and on budget.
Procurement and supply chain risk
Investors want to know whether your project can reliably source the materials, equipment and services. It’s difficult to win investor confidence if you can’t demonstrate, with solid data, that your procurement and supply chain plans have been thoroughly assessed and are ready to support project delivery.
This part of due diligence is preventing sudden supply disruptions and regulatory violations. Risks such as long lead times, price volatility, and single-source dependencies can also be mitigated. All of which can derail even the most technically sound projects.
In energy infrastructure, delays in component delivery, manufacturing cycles, or logistics can be really costly and reputationally damaging. That’s why early involvement of procurement teams and robust planning are essential.
Technical due diligence in this area goes beyond simply checking vendor availability. It participates in mapping multi-tier supply chains, assessing financial and operational capacity, and identifying geopolitical and regulatory vulnerabilities.
As Moody’s Analytics highlights, modern supply chain due diligence should create a 360-degree view of supplier risk — combining financial health, compliance status, and sustainability performance. Investors will see that your procurement strategy is resilient, ethical, and ready to support successful project delivery.
Schedule realism
As the saying goes, time is money. This is why the construction project schedule is important to note. When tasks run past their deadline due to issues such as seasonal limitations, permitting and regulatory authority approvals, risk in construction, or market conditions, cost overruns will often follow. This is the kind of bad news that an investor doesn’t want to hear.
This is exactly where technical due diligence becomes a vital guide from the very start. It spots projects and scheduling risks and mitigates them early, so the project stays on track. Through due diligence, investors can validate schedule realism using tools such as critical path analysis, contingency planning, and benchmarking against similar projects, all of which assemble a timeline that reflects real-world conditions, not just best-case scenarios.
A composite scheduling process, which integrates multiple layers of planning (for example, regulatory, procurement, and construction) into a unified timeline, is especially valuable. It helps identify dependencies and bottlenecks early, allowing developers to incorporate buffers and adjust sequencing accordingly.
For investors, a well-structured and risk-aware schedule signals that the project team understands the complexity of delivery and is prepared to manage it. And yes, if the schedule is reasonable and workable, investors will also be more confident in making an investment.
Grid and regulatory compliance
Investors need to understand that the project can actually connect to the grid and comply with all the rules governing energy infrastructure. That means showing you’ve done your homework on grid capacity, connection pathways, environmental and planning approvals and market participation frameworks. Regulatory delays or an unnoticed grid constraint could impact your timelines, add costs or in some cases, stop a project altogether.
Meanwhile, grid and regulatory due diligence could identify hidden risks such as transmission congestion, approvals that are obsolete or policy changes that will delay your project or prevent it from succeeding. The issue is that these risks can be expensive to handle if they are discovered just a bit late.
A reliable delivery plan should include grid modelling, interconnection studies, and a clear path through environmental and planning approvals. It’s also important to show how you are keeping up with evolving regulations, especially in fast-moving energy markets.
Investors would be glad to see these reports in your infrastructure design and delivery plan, and be more convinced that make a good investment next.
How Arche can help you
A great technical design might get attention, but a robust delivery plan is what earns investor trust. It shows you’ve thought through the risks, timelines, approvals, and supply chain realities.
By backing your plan with technical due diligence, you’re not just building infrastructure but building trust. And that’s ultimately what drives a project from a promising one with investment potential.
That’s why having experienced technical due diligence consultants is worth their weight and can make all the difference. Arche Energy brings deep expertise in energy and infrastructure projects to make that happen.
Our team supports clients with design maturity and constructability reviews, procurement and supply chain risk assessments, schedule and delivery analysis, and grid and regulatory compliance checks.