Initiation: From Opportunity or Idea to Funded, Execution-Ready Work

Whether you’re pursuing contract work or prioritizing capital investment, PACE gives Owners and Service Providers one connected system to qualify, propose, assess risk, and fund what matters — before a single task begins.

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Where Capital Programs and Contract Wins Actually Begin

Every project starts with the same test: can you assess it, price it, or fund it with enough confidence to commit real resources? Whether it’s a capital investment your organization funds internally, or a contract you pursue and deliver for a client, that test happens at Initiation.
Get it wrong, and the consequences show up months later — proposals built on assumptions that don’t survive execution, capital committed to the wrong projects, or funding decisions made without knowing what’s actually still available.
PACE treats Initiation as a governed stage, not a formality. Opportunity tracking, proposal development, budget planning, and funding approval all live in the same system that carries the project through execution — so what gets proposed, funded, or approved here becomes the baseline everything after it measures against, instead of getting re-typed into a new system once work begins.

Common Challenges at Initiation

  • Opportunity and proposal data scattered across CRM exports, spreadsheets, and email threads — disconnected from delivery reality
  • Risk and feasibility assessed too late, or not at all, before a bid or a funding commitment is made
  • No single view of how much capital is actually still available before a new project gets proposed
  • Portfolio and funding decisions made on numbers that are reconciled by hand before every steering committee
  • Assumptions made during a proposal or a planning scenario get lost the moment a project moves into execution

Contract Projects

Winning work isn't just about submitting proposals — it's about submitting the right ones, with assumptions that survive contact with execution. PACE centralizes opportunity tracking, proposal development, risk assessment, and approval into one environment, so nothing gets lost between pipeline and project launch.
Manage
Opportunities
Track and qualify opportunities from early qualification through award — synced with your CRM or managed directly in PACE, across custom sales stages, with a structured real-time pipeline view.
Develop Proposal (Scope, Estimate, Resources) and submit for approval
Build structured, data-driven proposals: define scope, develop cost estimates and resource plans, and route the proposal for review across technical, commercial, and finance stakeholders before it goes out the door.
Win Opportunity and initiate planning process
Convert awarded work directly into an active project — scope, budget, and assumptions carry forward automatically. No re-entering data, no gap between what was proposed and what gets planned.

Asset Development / Internal Work

Every capital program faces the same structural question: too many candidate projects, a limited pool of funds, and no reliable way to see how much is actually still available before the next commitment. PACE turns that decision into a governed process instead of a spreadsheet exercise.

Categorize and Develop Organization Budget

Define funding sources — reserves, grants, debt — by planning year and business line, so every dollar of capital has a documented source before it’s committed.

Collect Proposals into base Portfolio

Gather eligible funding requests into a single Planning Portfolio, ready for prioritization instead of scattered across individual approval threads.

Analyze portfolio, develop scenarios and submit for approval

Model different funding scenarios, include or exclude candidate projects, and propose allocations against what’s actually remaining.

Approve funding for projects in finally selected portfolio

Publish final funding decisions with a full audit trail, and carry the approved allocation directly into execution tracking — so approved funding never has to be reconciled against actuals by hand later.

What Gets Decided Here Doesn't Get Redone Later

In most organizations, the proposal that won the work or the budget that funded the project stops mattering the moment execution starts — buried in a folder while a new set of spreadsheets takes over. In PACE, the scope, estimate, and funding decisions made during Initiation carry forward automatically into Planning and Execution, forming the baseline that performance gets measured against for the life of the project.

Outcomes — What Organizations Gain

• Full visibility into pipeline and portfolio before commitments are made
• Fewer errors and assumptions lost between proposal or planning and execution
• Faster, better-documented approvals — auditable from day one
• One connected system, from the decision to bid or fund all the way through delivery

See How PACE Supports Initiation — for Every Kind of Project

Whether your team is qualifying opportunities, building proposals, or deciding what capital work gets funded next, PACE gives you one connected environment to do it in.
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