In brief
- A health check is a short, independent review of delivery confidence that a sponsor or board can commission at any point in a programme's life.
- The best time to commission one is before a commitment that is expensive to reverse, or when the reporting and your own experience of the programme stop agreeing.
- A thorough review tests eight areas, from the business case to people and readiness, and puts every finding on evidence.
- You should receive a delivery confidence rating, a short list of owned recommendations, and a briefing before anything is final. A red rating calls for a decision within weeks.
- A Gateway review serves a government decision point. A health check serves whoever commissions it, and between gates it covers the stretch where problems grow unseen.
What is a project health check?
A project health check is a short, independent review that tells the accountable executive how likely a project or programme is to deliver its objectives, and what would change that. It can be run at any point from initiation to closure.
It is also called an independent project review, and independence carries most of the weight. The review is conducted by people with no role in delivery and no stake in the answer, working from documents, delivery data and confidential interviews. It looks forward: what still has to go right, and whether the programme is set up for it.
That makes it different from internal audit, which asks whether controls operated, and from status reporting, which is written by the people being assessed. A programme health check applies the same discipline across a set of related projects, with more weight on dependencies, shared resources and benefits.
The NSW Infrastructure Investor Assurance Framework uses the term formally: Health Checks run between Gateway decision points, carried out by independent practitioners appointed by Infrastructure NSW, and are mandatory during delivery for the highest-tier projects. The questions are the same. The commissioner and the audience are different.
When should you commission a project health check?
Commission a health check before a decision that is expensive to reverse, or as soon as the reporting and your own experience of the programme stop agreeing. The second is easier to put off, and usually the more valuable.
- Before a major funding release, a contract signature or a go-live decision.
- When a new sponsor, programme director or board takes responsibility and needs an independent baseline.
- When status has been amber for several reporting periods and the plan has not changed.
- When contingency is being drawn down faster than milestones are being met.
- Before a re-baseline, so the new baseline starts from a diagnosis of what went wrong.
Timing matters more than scope. A review that lands two weeks before a board decision can change the decision. The same review two weeks after it can only describe the consequences.
On a long programme, set a cadence as well. The six to nine months the NSW infrastructure framework uses in delivery is a sound guide.
Precision perspective
What are the signs a health check is already overdue?
A health check is overdue when the programme's own indicators have stopped changing the plan. Each sign below means the information reaching decision makers no longer describes the programme accurately.
- Green reporting and a draining contingency. The status report and the financial position describe two different programmes. One of them is wrong, and it is rarely the money.
- Milestones that move while the finish date holds. Interim dates slip and the end date stays put, which compresses the remaining work into a window nobody has tested.
- Decisions that keep coming back. The same issue returns to the steering committee meeting after meeting, because nobody holding it has the authority or the information to close it.
- Risks that are logged and never owned. The register grows, the ratings never move, and the mitigations describe intentions.
- Benefits that have gone quiet. Nobody can say who will realise the benefits in the business case, or the case has not been revisited since approval.
- A supplier who holds the narrative. The best information about progress comes from the vendor, and the client team has no way to test it.
Any two of these together justify an independent read. By the time a programme shows four, the question has usually moved from assurance to recovery.
What does a project health check cover? A checklist
A thorough health check tests eight areas, and each finding should trace to a document, a data set or corroborated interviews. Any competent review should work through this checklist.
| Area | The question the review answers | Evidence it looks for |
|---|---|---|
| Business case and benefits | Does the case still hold, and does someone own each benefit? | The current business case, the benefits register, and evidence the case has been revisited since approval |
| Scope and requirements | Is scope defined, stable and controlled? | The scope baseline, the change log and the trend in change requests |
| Schedule | Is the plan achievable, and is the critical path real? | The integrated schedule, the critical path, milestone history and any schedule risk analysis |
| Cost and contingency | Is the forecast credible, and is contingency sized to the risk? | The cost baseline, the forecast to complete, and contingency drawdown against milestones |
| Governance and decisions | Can the people who decide make decisions, on good information? | Terms of reference, decision logs, and the papers the steering committee actually receives |
| Risk and issues | Are the material risks known, owned and moving? | Risk and issue registers, and how ratings and mitigations have changed over time |
| Commercial and suppliers | Do the contracts reward the outcome the programme needs? | Contracts, supplier performance data and the history of variations |
| People, change and readiness | Is there the capability to deliver, and will the organisation take the change? | The resourcing plan, key person dependencies, and change and readiness plans |
The checklist is the minimum. The judgement lies in weighting it for the programme in front of you: a regulatory deadline, a single dominant supplier or an unproven technology changes where the review should spend its time.
How long does a project health check take, and what do you receive?
A health check is short by design: scope and duration are fixed in the terms of reference, and findings arrive in weeks. You should receive five things, each written for the person who has to act on it.
- A delivery confidence rating, with the reasoning behind it.
- Findings that each trace to documents, data or corroborated interviews.
- Recommendations that are few, prioritised by urgency and assigned to an owner.
- A briefing to the sponsor before the report is final, so nothing in it is a surprise.
- A follow-up check that the recommendations were acted on.
Be wary of a report that runs to a hundred pages. Length usually means the review team has not decided what matters.
What should a board do with an amber or red rating?
Treat the rating as a finding about the plan and decide within weeks what will change; for a red, that means choosing to re-baseline, re-scope, pause or stop. The worst response is to wait for the next reporting cycle and hope the rating was pessimistic.
- Ask what would move the rating. The review team should name the two or three recommendations that matter most. Those become the agenda.
- Give each critical recommendation an owner and a date. Track them at every steering committee meeting, in the review's own terms.
- Test the fix before relying on it. A short follow-up review a few months on shows whether the programme changed or only the paperwork.
- Resist shopping for a softer opinion. Commissioning another review to soften the first spends the time the first one bought.
Government frameworks agree. A Commonwealth Red means delivery appears unachievable and the programme may need re-baselining, and the NSW infrastructure framework gives a project rated Stressed or Low up to 12 weeks to address its critical recommendations.
What should a sponsor ask before commissioning one?
Ask who will do the work, whom they will speak to, who sees the report first, and what happens if the answer is bad. The answers tell you whether you are buying assurance or reassurance.
- Who leads the review, and have they held accountability for a programme of this scale?
- Is anyone on the review team involved in delivery, and will the firm declare at the outset any interest in work that might follow?
- Will interviews be confidential and non-attributable, so that people say what they think?
- Who receives the report first, and can anyone change it before it reaches you?
- What happens if the review finds a problem the terms of reference did not anticipate?
Health check or Gateway review: which do you need?
A health check is commissioned by the sponsor or board, whenever they need it, and reports to them. A Gateway review is run by government at a defined decision point, and many government programmes benefit from both.
The frameworks recognise the gap between gates. The Commonwealth adds Intermediate Assessments in the build stage so that no more than 18 months pass between reviews, and NSW adds Health Checks. A sponsor's own health check does the same job on the sponsor's timetable.
Used well, it confirms that the last review's recommendations were closed and have held, tests the programme against the next gate's questions while there is time to act, and gives a new sponsor a baseline of their own. Our Gateway insight explains that process.
Sources and further reading
Statements about government frameworks were checked against these sources on 26 September 2026. Frameworks are revised, so read the current guidance for your jurisdiction.
- Infrastructure NSW, Infrastructure Investor Assurance Framework
- Infrastructure NSW, Introductory Guide to Infrastructure Investor Assurance Reviews (March 2026)
- Digital NSW, Gateway Reviews by Digital Assurance
- Department of Finance, Assurance Reviews Process Overview
- Department of Finance, Guidance on the Assurance Reviews Process (RMG 106)