Manufacturing · Engineering · Capital Project Advisory
Annual capacity delivered under one capital program · 2013–2026
Thirty years leading capital projects, facility expansions, and manufacturing engineering for companies that cannot afford a missed startup.
Budgets built on optimism. Schedules that assume nothing slips. Scope agreed verbally and discovered in the field. KJW Consulting is engaged by owners, executive teams, and private-equity firms to put an experienced operator on the project before those decisions harden — and to stay on it through commissioning and startup, when the plan meets the plant floor.
Kevin J. Walsh, PMP, spent thirty years inside manufacturing organizations rather than advising them from outside — as Vice President of Engineering, Director of Engineering, and project manager across multi-site networks in the United States and Mexico. The advice is operator-side, and it is accountable to a startup date.
Engagement can begin at any phase, but the leverage is front-loaded: scope and budget decisions made in planning set the ceiling on everything that follows.
Scope, order-of-magnitude cost, and a schedule that survives contact with reality. A capital request built on wishful numbers is approved once and paid for repeatedly — this is the cheapest phase in which to be wrong, and the only one where being right is free.
Developed and executed a strategic growth plan that more than tripled annual production capacity, including the design, construction, startup, and subsequent expansion of a purpose-built manufacturing facility. Built the engineering, maintenance, reliability, facilities, automation, and utilities organizations that ran it.
Directed engineering across six manufacturing facilities and led network optimization initiatives spanning capacity allocation, consolidation, and productivity. Established a three-year capital planning process that surfaced opportunities the annual budget cycle had been missing.
Led engineering due diligence and post-close integration across six acquisitions — asset condition and capacity assessment before signing, then equipment transfers, process alignment, and consolidation once the deal closed. The work private-equity buyers most often discover they needed after the fact.
Client names and project photography are withheld under confidentiality and non-compete obligations. Detailed references are available under NDA on request.
Manufacturing and engineering executive with more than thirty years of leadership across complex manufacturing environments — capital investment programs, multi-site engineering organizations, transformational capacity expansions, and new facility construction. KJW Consulting is his practice.
Order-of-magnitude cost & schedule · AACE Class 5
A concept-screening estimate built the way a capital committee expects to see one — equipment-factored, banded, and honest about its own accuracy. Two minutes here will tell you whether a project is worth the cost of a real study.
Recommended contingency: 30% carried against the point estimate at this stage, released as definition matures. A Class 5 estimate that carries no contingency is not an estimate, it is a wish.
What this is. An equipment-factored estimate using published Lang factors, banded to AACE International's Class 5 accuracy range. It is built for one decision only: whether to fund a real study.
What it is not. Not a budget, not a quote, and not a basis for a capital request. Those need a Class 3 estimate built on actual drawings, quotes and a defined scope.
Send these numbers to KevinEvery capital project estimate is wrong. The useful question is whether it is wrong in a direction and by a magnitude you planned for. That is what the band is for, and it is why the number above is a range and not a figure.
An initial conversation is a scoping call, not a sales call — what the project is, what it is expected to cost, and whether the schedule is real. If an engagement makes sense after that, it will be obvious to both of us.