Can we keep our club on track for the long term?

Where Plans Go to Die

Most private clubs have, at some point, done serious capital planning work. A committee spent months developing a capital plan. The board voted to adopt it. A presentation was made to the membership.  Eighteen months later, the plan was effectively gone. Not discarded — just no longer governing anything. A new board came in with different priorities. A major unplanned expense disrupted the funding schedule. Someone on the finance committee questioned the cost estimates. The plan got revised, then revised again, and eventually replaced by a new ‘plan’ - potentially based on emotion and reactivity.

The clubs that handle capital challenges well did not get lucky. They had someone on their team who understood what was coming — before it arrived, while it was happening, and long enough after to make sure history isn't repeated.

This is not an unusual story. It is the default outcome for capital plans that are delivered as documents rather than embedded as processes and capabilities. A plan is only as good as the institutional infrastructure that keeps it alive — and most clubs do not have that infrastructure.

What Phase III Actually Is

Phase III begins with the plan the board selected at the end of Phase II and asks a simple question: who is responsible for making sure this happens and how will they do so?

It cannot be the GM — whose job is to run the club, not to manage a multi-year capital program on top of every other operational responsibility. Not a volunteer board member — who will rotate off the board before the first major project is complete. Not a large consulting firm — which will deliver its engagement and move on. Not the architect, the contractor, the designer, or the engineer — each of whom serves their own scope and has no obligation to the overall plan.

Provident is not the architect. Not the contractor. Not the designer. Not the attorney. Not the project manager. Provident is the board’s advisor—focused on keeping the club on plan.

Phase III is Provident’s role as the board’s advisor for the full arc of execution — from the first detailed scoping conversation to the ribbon cutting and the post-project accounting. Not an owner’s representative in the construction sense. Something closer to a long-term, knowledgeable presence on the ownership side of the table: the person who has read every version of the plan, understands the details, and is accountable to no one but the club.

The scope of Phase III depends on the club’s situation — what the plan calls for, what the board has prioritized, and what challenges are most immediate. But the function is consistent: keep the plan current, shepherd the major initiatives, and make sure the board has what it needs to govern and communicate at every stage.

Keeping the Plan Current

The Plan produced and adopted in Phase II is not static or fixed. The world does not cooperate with twenty-year models. Costs change. Timelines shift. A storm damages a roof that was not scheduled for replacement for six years. A membership boom creates pressure to accelerate the fitness expansion. A new GM has ideas about the dining room that were not in the original plan.

Phase III generally includes an annual review —aligned with the budget cycle — that updates the model to reflect what has actually happened, revises assumptions where the evidence demands it, and produces an updated Overview the board can govern against for the coming year. The structure stays the same: same framework, same line items, same graphical reserve balance projection. What changes is the precision and the currency of the inputs.

The question is not whether your club will face major capital challenges. It will. The question is: will the board face them with a plan, an advisor, and a governance framework that survives institutional turnover; or will it rediscover the same problems the three boards before it already found and start fresh?

Over time, this process builds something invaluable: a documented history of decisions, assumptions, and outcomes. A board member joining in Year 4 of a capital program can read the plan’s history and understand not just where the club is, but how it got there and what the reasoning was at each stage. Institutional memory becomes a feature of the governance system, not an accident of who happens to still be on the board.

Shepherding the Major Initiatives

The major items identified in the Plan each represent years of work, significant member impact, and substantial financial risk. Each will pass through multiple phases: conceptual scoping, budgeting, design development, member approval, construction drawing, bidding, construction, and closeout. Provident’s role through those phases is not to do the work of the professionals hired to execute. It is to make sure the board stays consistently informed, the professionals’ are productive, and the project stays on-track as the work progresses.

A three-year pool complex renovation project will see at least one board election, possibly a GM transition, and dozens of decisions each with long-term implications. Without someone carrying institutional knowledge through those transitions, projects drift — and drift is expensive.

In practice, that looks like: clarifying budgets, helping the board refine the scope before an architect is engaged, so the design brief reflects the plan rather than the architect’s vision. Translating contractor communications into terms the board can act on. Preparing the materials the board needs to communicate with members.  Being present when something goes wrong, which it always does, and helping the board respond without overreacting.

This is the role no large firm will fill. They are not structured for it and do not price engagements to support it. A volunteer board member cannot fill it either — the continuity requirement alone rules it out. It is a gap in the private club service ecosystem that most clubs do not know they have until they are in the middle of a major project and feel it acutely.

What This Is Not

Phase III is a governance and advisory engagement. Provident does not manage construction, prepare architectural drawings, provide legal counsel, serve as a licensed inspector or engineer, or replace the authority of the club’s management team.

The GM runs the club. Department heads manage their operations. Contractors build what they are hired to build. Provident’s role is to make sure all of that activity is happening in service of a plan the board understands, has approved, and can defend — and to make sure that plan remains coherent and current as the years pass and the people involved change.

The Question Phase III Answers

Every board that completes Phase II faces the same question: now that we have a plan, how do we make sure it actually happens—and that the next board doesn’t discard it and change course?

Phase III is the answer. Not a guarantee of perfect execution — capital projects are complex, and complexity produces surprises. But a committed, knowledgeable presence on the ownership side of the table, for as long as the work requires it, with the institutional memory to keep the plan alive plus the judgment and experience to help the board navigate what the plan could not anticipate.