P3nomads: how the idea began
P3nomads started at ministerial level — in Sri Lanka and Vietnam, alongside Obbe and Jan, as part of Taskforce Finance IWC. Here's the story.
It didn’t start with a business plan. It started with a question from a ministry.
Through Taskforce Finance IWC — a collaboration at ministerial level — I was asked, together with Obbe and Jan, to transfer PPP knowledge to governments abroad. Not as a course, not through a handbook. But by standing alongside the project teams that actually had to tender a major infrastructure project.
First destination: Sri Lanka. Then Vietnam.
What those missions made immediately clear was that the strength came from the combination. Obbe brings deep expertise in procurement and legal tendering. Jan covers operational execution and contract management. I work from strategic PPP and policy experience. None of us could have covered that entire spectrum alone. Together, we can. That’s the foundation of the 1+1=3 effect P3nomads is built on.
The first missions were exploratory — but the pattern was immediately clear.
What we do
We are brought in during the contract preparation phase. That’s the moment when a project team still has all options open — and when most mistakes are made that later become impossible to correct. Our task is clear: get the team up to speed, fast.
What that means differs by project. Sometimes it’s about procurement strategy — which contract model fits this project, this client, this market? Sometimes about risk allocation during the construction phase. Sometimes about operations and contract management: who manages what, under which conditions, and how does the government maintain oversight without constraining the private party?
We always look at the same thing: what does this team need to run a successful tender? Nothing more, nothing less.
The rhythm is intensive but manageable: a maximum of nine days on location every two months, supplemented by a weekly check-in via Teams during the weeks in between. That keeps the knowledge transfer moving without requiring us to be permanently on site.
Flying altitude isn’t an abstraction — it’s the point at which a team starts asking the right questions on its own.
From mission to method
After those first missions, the pattern was clear. Project teams at governments around the world struggle with the same problem: they have to do something they’ve never done before, within a timeline that leaves no room for trial and error. They don’t lack intelligence or motivation. They lack reference points.
That calls for more than training. It calls for practical capacity building — guidance that helps organizations implement better procurement processes and make better decisions at the moment those decisions actually matter.
That’s what P3nomads delivers. Expertise in procurement strategy, tendering, partnerships and implementation-driven project management — combined in one team, deployed when it counts. That has built us credibility in a niche that is broad in theory but narrow in genuine, operational knowledge: public-private partnership, public sector advisory and international capacity building.
P3nomads now works with project teams across multiple countries. Want to learn more or explore a collaboration? Visit p3nomads.com.