About
The PROMISE Foundation holds in trust a body of work developed over fifty years of empirical observation in capital project delivery and fifteen years of operational experience in industrial production. The Foundation exists to make this work survive its authors, remain accessible to the public, and continue to be tested, refined, and applied wherever humans make commitments to each other.
Mission
To formalize, test, and disseminate the structural laws governing human commitment — so that the people who bear the consequences of broken promises have the language, the tools, and the institutional support to demand structures that protect them.
Support the Work
The Foundation is currently in formation. To support the work, the most useful thing you can do is read the papers, try the analyzer, and tell us what you find.
Authors and Board
Additional board members under consideration. The framework was transmitted from a father to a son before it had a name. The Foundation is the structure that ensures the work continues to transmit — across generations, across domains, and across the distance between the construction sites where it was discovered and the institutions that now need it.
Founding Principles
- Open framework, operational tools. The research is free. The diagnostic instruments fund the work.
- Falsifiability over advocacy. The Foundation funds testing, not promotion. If the framework is wrong, the Foundation publishes that finding.
- Third Party primacy. Every decision is evaluated against the Third Party Quotient.
- Generational transmission. The framework must survive its authors.
- The framework applies to itself. The Foundation's own governance honors the three laws it teaches.
Related Work
David M. Shelton's consulting practice, designbuildOA, advises construction project owners using the PROMISE framework. The practice predates the Foundation by fifteen years. Ongoing commentary and case studies appear there.