What would you stop funding if your base case disappeared?

What Would You Stop Funding If Your Base Case Disappeared?

A capital plan shows its priorities when revenue falls, costs rise or financing tightens. If every project remains essential after the assumptions supporting it disappear, the plan contains advocacy rather than choice. Downside governance should decide in advance which commitments protect the core and which depend on favourable conditions.

Define funding tiers before stress: legal and safety obligations, continuity and asset integrity, high-confidence productivity, committed strategic options and discretionary growth. For each project, identify avoidable remaining cost, termination liability, value preserved by continuing and the latest point at which it can pause without destroying the option.

Run coherent scenarios across the full portfolio. Recalculate demand, cash, covenant headroom, contractor capacity and benefit timing; do not cut every budget by the same percentage. Projects that release little near-term cash may not solve the constraint, while stopping a small enabling project can strand several larger investments.

Apply forward value and strategic necessity, ignoring sunk cost. Consider re-scope, slow, stage, partner or sell before binary cancellation. Make consequences explicit: service, risk, customers, workforce and future restart cost. The 2026 Green Book uses business as usual, do minimum and alternative ambition levels precisely to preserve real choices when conditions change.

Approve contingency actions with owners and observable triggers, then revisit them when evidence moves. Publish which objectives are protected and which are sacrificed so local teams cannot quietly reverse the portfolio choice. Resilience is not keeping every plan alive; it is reallocating early enough that scarce liquidity still supports the outcomes that matter most.