In 2025, Assurance Shaped the Biggest Projects. In 2026, It Will Define Them.

2025 was the year many organisations realised something uncomfortable:

the biggest risks in major automation and fulfilment programs rarely come from technology. They come from assumptions.

We saw this play out across industries. Projects didn’t succeed because they had the best equipment or the most ambitious timelines, they succeeded because leadership teams insisted on clarity.
Clarity in what they were buying.
Clarity in what it should achieve.
Clarity in what could go wrong.

Where that clarity was missing, the cost showed up quickly: rework, tension, and months of drift.

2025: A Year of Hard Lessons

The patterns were consistent enough to be impossible to ignore.

1. Requirements left “to be finalised later” came back with interest.

Many organisations learned the same lesson the same way: if requirements aren’t explicit early, they get rewritten halfway through design — when every change costs real money and real time.

2. Vendor proposals looked impressive — until someone asked the uncomfortable questions.

Markets were busy. Proposals became thicker, shinier, and harder to challenge. Teams that brought in independent validation early avoided surprises later. Teams that didn’t discovered those surprises in the most painful places: throughput, integration logic, and building constraints.

3. Risk transparency became a competitive advantage.

Strong programs didn’t try to eliminate risk. They mapped it, shared it, and made decisions with eyes open. Weak programs carried hidden risks until they surfaced at the worst possible moment.

4. Change management was underestimated almost everywhere.

Not the “training at the end” version — but the structural, role, and capability shifts that need to begin the moment future-state design starts.

2025 reminded everyone of something fundamental: assurance is not an audit trail. It’s a steering mechanism.

2026: Assurance Moves From Supporting Role to Defining Role

The shift already taking shape for 2026 is simple, but significant.

Organisations are no longer satisfied with “good enough” answers. They want investment cases that withstand scrutiny, tenders that don’t collapse under challenge, and designs that don’t need rebuilding once boots hit the floor.

Assurance is moving from behind the scenes to the centre of how major transformations are led.

1. Business cases must stand up to the first five questions from the CFO.

No more optimistic paybacks without operational grounding. Leaders want defensible, scenario-tested models — and they want to understand the assumptions behind them.

2. Tendering will be judged by the strength of requirements, not the length of documents.

A crisp, validated requirement beats a 200-page RFP that leaves room for interpretation.

3. Designs will need to prove credibility early — not after the vendor wins.

Concept assurance is becoming standard. If it doesn’t work in theory, it certainly won’t work in concrete.

4. Independent project oversight will become a board expectation.

Too many programs ran into trouble in 2025 simply because nobody outside the delivery stream was looking at the whole picture.

5. People-readiness becomes non-negotiable.

Technology will keep advancing. The gap between current teams and future operating models will widen unless capability is addressed upfront.

The Real Shift: From “Can We Deliver?” to “Can We Justify This?”

Stakeholders now expect transformation programs to be explainable — not just technically, but commercially and operationally. That expectation is reshaping how decisions are made.

In 2026, assurance won’t just de-risk a project. It will define its credibility.

• Business Case Assurance — decisions grounded, not optimistic.

• Tender Assurance — clarity before signatures, not after.

• Design Assurance — concepts tested before construction drawings.

• Project Assurance — delivery kept honest.

• Change Assurance — people and processes ready when the lights turn on.

This is not bureaucracy. It’s what confidence looks like.

Our Perspective at Ethon Advisory

As we move into 2026, our conviction is clear: independent assurance is becoming the backbone of every high-stakes supply chain and intralogistics transformation.

It’s how organisations avoid painful surprises.
It’s how decisions become defensible.
And it’s how complex programs stay aligned from concept to go-live.

2025 showed the industry what happens without assurance.
2026 is the year organisations start demanding it.

Independent minds for complex decisions.