Three days in Denver. Dozens of conversations with capital program owners, CM/PM teams and partners. Here’s what came up most.
INTRO
From October 4 to 6, the OnIndus team of Sid Shah, Liz Harner, Shawn Davidson and John Carter spent CMAA2026 at Booth 206, talking with owners across government, water and utilities, transit, ports and higher education.
We went in expecting to talk about platforms. Most conversations ended up somewhere else: how programs actually run day to day, and what gets in the way. Five themes came up again and again.
1. Systems aren’t the problem. The gaps between them are.
Most teams we met already run a PMIS, an ERP and some kind of reporting tool. The trouble starts when those systems don’t agree. Finance has one number, the construction team has another, and someone spends the first week of every month reconciling them before anyone can make a decision.
2. Owners want to own their data.
Many teams told us their view of a project depends on what a contractor or partner chooses to share, and that access can disappear when the contract ends. Owners want a reliable view of their own programs, on their own terms.
3. Go-live is the start, not the finish.
Some of the most candid conversations were with teams who had picked a platform, implemented it, and were still working to get people using it the way it was designed. A system only pays off when the team trusts it and uses it every day.
4. Some programs get to start fresh.
A number of owners are still running on spreadsheets and standalone dashboards. That’s a real chance to set up the right structure, processes and data from day one, before a platform decision locks anything in.
5. AI starts with clean data.
Almost every team asked about AI. The ones with a realistic plan are starting with their program data, making sure it’s clean, connected and trusted before anything sits on top of it.
WHERE ONINDUS FITS
This is the work we do with owners every day. We help capital program teams connect their systems and data, take control of their own information, and make sure the people using the system actually adopt it. We’re advisory-led and owner-focused, so the program comes first and the tool comes second.
SEE IT IN PRACTICE
- Public sector: a major public housing authority moved 800 projects and a $2B annual spend onto one system. Read the case study
- Higher education: a $400M research university program recovered 24 hours a month in reporting time. Read the case study
- Healthcare: a 13-hospital system now answers its auditors without a scramble. Read the case study
BOOKING SECTION
Pick up where we left off
Whether we spoke at the booth or missed each other on the floor, twenty minutes is enough to compare notes on your program. Bring one report your team rebuilds every month, and we’ll walk through where the data breaks and what fixing it looks like.