AsadHatimi.
Industrial project management and CAPEX governance leader with 21+ years steering capital-intensive programmes across cement, steel, power and EPC. Available for project advisory and recovery mandates, independent board stewardship, and expert consulting through GLG and Guidepoint.
A practitioner of predictable delivery, offering the board what capital projects demand: clarity, cadence, courage.
Over two decades I have led planning and controls for integrated cement plants, steel manufacturing, power generation and waste-heat-recovery programs — from front-end loading through commissioning and statutory close-out. My work sits at the intersection of finance, engineering and governance.
I now offer that discipline to listed boards — as an Independent Director attentive to CAPEX stewardship, risk, HSE, statutory readiness and the quiet arithmetic that separates a project that delivers from one that drifts. Enquiries welcome across all sectors.
four industrial groups
Why boards
should
select me.
Six placards. Six reasons. Written for the chair, the audit committee and the shareholder who wants project realism at the board table — not project optimism.
Governance beyond compliance
Two decades of stage-gate discipline, KPI-based reporting and monthly board MIS — I read the numbers before they read me.
CAPEX with a fiduciary lens
Direct oversight of programs valued ₹1,800 – ₹2,300 Cr each; cumulative CAPEX exposure exceeding ₹3,200 Cr governed to plan.
Risk, resolved on the plan
Critical-chain and constraint-management practice that has recovered 26- and 36-day schedule delays without margin erosion.
An independent voice
No promoter overhang. No vendor overhang. A career built in four industrial groups — I ask the questions the room forgets to.
HSE, QA/QC & statutory readiness
PSSR, RTO and commissioning-readiness are habits, not exceptions. The board should never be surprised at handover.
A fluency in both futures
Traditional heavy industry and emerging categories — EV design (IIT Roorkee), Cybersecurity (ISC2), and Generative AI (Oracle).
Board-Ready Competencies
- CAPEX Governance & Capital Planning01
- Stage-Gate & Front-End Loading (FFL)02
- Enterprise Risk & Constraint Management03
- Statutory / HSE / QA-QC Oversight04
- Stakeholder & Promoter Alignment05
- Board MIS, KPIs & Executive Dashboards06
- Vendor, Tender & Contractual Governance07
- Cash Flow, Budget & Variance Control08
Technical & Delivery
- Primavera P6 · Microsoft Project01
- Critical Chain (CCPM) · Agile · Scrum02
- SAP PM Module · Power BI03
- PI Planning · Kanban Framework04
- Commissioning · PSSR · RTO05
- Six Sigma — Black / Yellow / Green / White06
- Cybersecurity (ISC2) · Gen-AI (Oracle)07
- EV Design (IIT Roorkee)08
Where the value
compounds at the board table.
Audit Committee
Rigorous review of internal financial controls, capital work-in-progress, project cost overruns and impairment triggers on long-cycle assets.
- CWIP Governance
- Cost Overrun Diagnostics
- Vendor Contract Trueing
Risk Management Committee
Enterprise risk with a project-realism lens — schedule risk, statutory exposure, single-vendor dependency and force-majeure planning.
- Constraint Mapping
- Statutory & Regulatory Watch
- Interface Risk Resolution
HSE, Safety & CSR
PSSR, RTO, incident-close-out and site-safety culture at plants and mining leases — including community and land-interface governance.
- PSSR & RTO
- Contractor Safety Assurance
- Community Interface
Nomination & Governance
Boardroom composition, succession maps for CAPEX and manufacturing leadership, and independent challenge to promoter-side proposals.
- Succession for CAPEX Leadership
- Independent Challenge Culture
- Board Skills Matrix
CapEx & Strategy Committee
Front-end loading, stage-gate readiness, IRR sensitivity and post-completion audits — the committee where two decades of practice directly compounds.
- Front-End Loading (FFL)
- Stage-Gate Readiness
- Post-Completion Audit
A parallel practice —
expert calls and short-form advisory for institutions.
Verified subject-matter expert — advising institutional investors, private-equity firms, hedge funds and top-tier consultancies on capital projects, cement, steel and industrial operations.
On-call industry advisor for institutional clients — expert calls, written commentary and deep-dive project reviews across cement, EPC and heavy manufacturing.
Four ways to engage — from a single expert call to a standing advisory role.
Expert Calls
One-on-one paid consultations for institutional research — market structure, project economics, vendor landscape, unit-level operations.
Written Advisory
Structured written response on a specific investment or operating question — with sources, assumptions and confidence bands stated.
Deep-Dive Reviews
Full technical + commercial diligence on a capital project or plant — schedule realism, capex overrun risk, single-vendor dependency, statutory readiness.
Advisory Retainers
Ongoing advisor to a management team or investment committee — pre-reads on board packs, project reviews, governance uplift and MIS design.
Twenty-one years of practice, converted into a directly consultable dataset.
- Cement & building materials01
- Steel & heavy manufacturing02
- Power generation · WHRS · thermal03
- EPC & industrial project delivery04
- Capital projects · CAPEX governance05
- Emerging: EV design · cybersecurity for industrial06
How a board would work with me — from first conversation to standing cadence.
Fit conversation with chair and nominating committee
A structured conversation on mandate, industry exposure, committee expectations and board dynamics — before any formal document exchange.
Two-way due diligence on strategy and books
Independent review of the last three annual reports, capital work-in-progress schedules, litigation register and prior board minutes — with a written point-of-view returned to the chair.
IICA-guided induction and committee alignment
Board handbook, plant visits, first-tier management interviews, and a working cadence with the company secretary and audit / risk committee chairs.
Quarterly rhythm and independent commentary
Structured pre-read on every board pack, targeted follow-up on CAPEX and risk, and a private independent note to the chair once a quarter — the discipline of continuous oversight, not seasonal review.
Four groups.
One discipline.
Leading PMC operations for a ₹3,200+ Cr integrated steel plant program — end-to-end planning, statutory readiness, board MIS and multi-vendor governance.
Progressive elevation across Power Plant + WHRS, Warehouse & Industrial Infrastructure, Township & Villas, and finally DGM — directing 10+ concurrent cement manufacturing programs (₹1,800 – ₹2,300 Cr each). Recovered a 26-day schedule delay applying CCPM.
A decade with the Aditya Birla Group across Bulk Terminals, Grinding Units and the Integrated Cement Plant — Pearl Project (₹2,350 Cr) commissioned in 364 days. Cost savings of ~₹3.7 Cr and 36-day delay recovery.
First professional practice: site execution, contractor coordination and mechanical commissioning of core cement plant equipment.
What has been delivered, measured in cash and calendar.
Team Excellence Award — WHRS Program
Three boilers, STG, ACC and BOP delivered in a record 11 months, without cost overrun.
Cumulative savings of ~₹11.5 Cr across three programs.
Delivered through constraint management, procurement discipline and interface risk resolution.
A board that reads the plan carefully never has to explain the variance. That is the whole practice — written in cadence, not commentary.
What the room says once the meeting ends.
“Asad's contribution on the Pearl Project stood out for one reason — his schedule was the schedule. He was the one person in the war room whose numbers you could take to the executive committee without recalculating them.”
“Over 7 years at JK Cement, Asad progressed from Manager to DGM on merit alone. He recovered a substantial delay when nobody else believed it could be done — and did it without cutting a single safety or vendor corner. He is exactly the kind of independent voice a manufacturing board needs.”
“Bringing Asad into PMC-Head for the INR 3,200 Cr. Integrated Steel Program was one of the most consequential appointments we've made. His governance discipline is McKinsey-grade — and unlike most PMCs, he can hold a wrench in the other hand.”
“In the IIM-A Leadership programme, Asad was the practitioner in the room — the person cohort members turned to when a case study drifted into abstraction. Any board committee that adds him will hear the operator's voice most rooms are missing.”
Additional written references from four industrial groups (Aditya Birla · YP Singhania · JP Aggarwal · Binani) are available on request to nominating committees.
The PMC Perspective.
A LinkedIn newsletter on program governance, CAPEX discipline and independent oversight — written for practitioners, chairs and audit committees.
Reading the plan before the plan reads the board.
Why upstream stage-gate discipline is the single largest predictor of board-level surprise — and how to instrument it.
The arithmetic of cost overruns, plainly stated.
A field guide to the ten most common variance patterns on ₹1,000+ Cr capital projects — with the countermeasures that actually work.
Constraint management is not a Gantt chart.
How Critical Chain thinking reframes schedule risk from a calendar exercise into a scarce-resource discipline.
PSSR is not paperwork. It is the promise.
Pre-startup safety review as a leadership behaviour — what boards should ask before, during and after commissioning.
New editions are published on LinkedIn. Follow the newsletter to be notified when articles go live.
A governance philosophy,
written in five chapters.
The plan is the promise.
A capital program is a written commitment to shareholders. I treat the schedule as a contract, not a forecast.
Governance is upstream, not downstream.
Stage-gates, FFL and PSSR exist to prevent — not to explain. Boards should be alerted before variance, not informed after it.
Numbers are moral.
Every variance report has a human meaning: a safer plant, a retained job, a shareholder returned. I do not soften them.
Independence is a discipline.
An independent director is only useful if they are willing to be inconvenient. My value at the table is not consensus.
The board is the last review.
By the time an item reaches the board, information should be structured, tested and truthful. Executive dashboards should read like an audited page.
Formal Education
- Expected 2026Executive MBA (Finance) — Rabindranath Tagore University, Bhopal
- 2024PG Certificate, EV Design — IIT Roorkee
- 2004Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) — Pune University
Professional Certifications
Documented, verifiable, on the record.
Note — Additional continuing-education records (IIT Roorkee EV, IIM Ahmedabad Leadership, Oracle Gen-AI, ISC2 Cybersecurity, EMBA Finance in progress) are maintained on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn profile in the footer is the master record.
For chairs, search firms
and expert-network clients.
Board mandates, expert calls or advisory projects — please share a brief note. Enquiries are read personally and answered within two business days.