Nobody in the room worked only for the airport.
Los Angeles World Airports was fourteen months into a major Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP implementation and was being asked to approve more time and more money. LAWA brought in Avèro to answer a question the program could not answer about itself: is this on track, and what will it actually take to finish?
When the integrator reports on its own progress, the owner is not getting oversight. It is getting a status update.
Los Angeles World Airports operates Los Angeles International and Van Nuys Airport, among the busiest aviation operations in the world. Replacing the enterprise system that runs its finances is not a routine software project. It is a program with board visibility, public accountability, and no tolerance for a go-live that fails in production.
By early 2026 the implementation had been running for over a year, and leadership faced a decision without an independent basis for making it. Requests for additional time and funding were on the table. The projections supporting those requests came from the same team delivering the work. That is a structural problem, not a personnel one, and it is the condition Avèro was built to address.
Avèro was engaged in March 2026 for a focused independent health check: project governance and controls, RAID validation, technical configuration and integration status, and an independent read on whether the proposed schedule and budget matched the work actually remaining. Four to six weeks, fixed fee, with one deliverable that mattered most: a direct recommendation on whether the program could be recovered under its current structure.
The findings pointed to structure rather than to any single failure. Governance existed but was not being used to stop progression when readiness criteria went unmet. Phases were advancing on calendar targets rather than on validated completion. LAWA then retained Avèro for the recovery itself, as Owner's Representative PMO leading the program to a validated go-live across five stages, with the systems integrator continuing to deliver against gates the owner controls.
A diagnosis first. Then the authority to act on it.
The health check produced an evidence-based picture of where the program actually stood. The recovery plan was scoped from those findings rather than drafted before them.
Independent diagnostic
A structured four-to-six-week assessment across governance and controls, RAID completeness, configuration and integration status, and organizational readiness, built on documentation review, stakeholder interviews, and direct examination of project artifacts.
Schedule & budget opinion
An independent assessment of whether the requested extension and additional funding were proportional to the remaining scope of work, written so leadership could negotiate from evidence rather than from pressure.
Path forward recommendation
A direct answer on whether the program was recoverable under its existing structure, what conditions had to change, and what governance restructuring would be required to protect the investment through go-live.
Owner's Representative PMO
A full-function program office accountable to the airport, with explicit authority to halt phase progression when readiness criteria are unmet, and a single reporting channel consolidating every workstream to the Steering Committee.
Readiness-based stage gates
Five stages from stabilization and re-baseline through design finalization, build and system integration testing, user acceptance and readiness, then cutover and hypercare. Each stage closes on a gate. No stage advances on a calendar target alone.
Re-baselined program plan
A schedule grounded in validated program state rather than contractual targets, produced jointly with the integrator so all parties commit to the same plan, plus a RAID log restructured into a live decision and escalation engine.
Three tiers. One accountability spine.
Executive Steering Committee
Chaired by the CFO with executive membership, holding decision authority over phase gates, change orders, and escalations. The integrator and platform vendor attend in a relationship capacity, not a governing one.
Owner's Representative PMO
Avèro as the single point of accountability to the Steering Committee, coordinating functional, technical, data, integration, and change management workstreams, with the authority to stop a phase that is not ready.
Systems integrator
Continues to execute build, configuration, conversion, and testing, now against ratified readiness gates and a re-baselined schedule, reporting delivery status into the owner's PMO.
Independence is the whole mechanism, not a credential.
Avèro holds no delivery role for the integrator, no contractual relationship with it, and no financial interest in extending the program. That structure is what allows the PMO to halt a phase, challenge a schedule, or tell the board that a request is not proportional to the work remaining. An advisor with implementation revenue on the other side of the recommendation cannot credibly do any of those things.
Owner-side by structure No integrator relationship · No platform reseller agreement · No incentive to extend
Related work.
Other engagements where independent oversight carried the program.
Valley Regional Transit
Independent oversight alongside the system integrator through two go-lives, with the legacy platform retired on schedule.
Monroe County
Full-lifecycle independent oversight through an SAP-to-Workday replacement for a county of 750,000.
Project Recovery
Rapid diagnostic, honest read, and governance reset for implementations that have gone sideways.
Running something similar? Let's talk.
Thirty minutes. No pitch. If Avèro isn't the right fit, we'll tell you who is.