Speaker Interview: Andre Luiz Siqueira Marques, Director, Alvarez & Marsal

What is the biggest challenge faced by planning & scheduling professionals currently?

Scheduling still gets pulled in too late. Scope, sequencing, and contracting decisions get locked in during proposal and early engineering, often before there's a credible integrated schedule to pressure-test them. By the time planning has real visibility, the risk is already baked into the program. That's a governance problem before it's a technical one.

What are you personally speaking about at this year’s conference, and why does it matter right now?

My session is "Establishing Early Alignment on Mega Schedules to Manage Change, Improve Visibility & Keep Complex Projects Moving." The point I want people to walk away with: schedule risk on mega projects is a governance issue, not a scheduling one. It starts with misalignment between engineering, procurement, construction, and ownership, before the schedule is even baselined. It matters right now because owners have less patience for surprises that trace back to decisions made months before mobilization, and programs don't have the float they used to for absorbing that kind of misalignment.

What are you most looking forward to discussing or learning from at this year’s conference?

I want to hear how other organizations are actually building scheduling into governance, not just buying better software. Given the Strategic Scheduling Leadership track, I'm expecting good cross-sector comparisons — I'm curious how teams outside power and transportation are handling the same early-alignment problem.