A review of the more than 70 projects we have supported points to a single, recurring barrier to smooth development and validation: project design is delayed until PD drafting is already underway.
This near-universal delay is the principal cause of the difficulties that follow, including backtracking, extended development timelines, and cost overruns.
The reason is straightforward: late-stage design forces teams to reverse-engineer the project in order to demonstrate compliance, which in turn requires constructing justifications for work that has already been carried out. It is comparable to altering the foundation of a house after the walls have been built.
What Gets Decided Too Late
The issues that prompt this reverse-engineering are rarely matters of documentation. They are design decisions, difficult to resolve after the fact, that should be settled at the outset. The following examples, though not exhaustive, are illustrative:
- Natural risk identification and mitigation: What fire, pest, drought, or flood risks threaten the project’s permanence, and have corresponding mitigation measures been incorporated into the design itself, rather than addressed retroactively?
- Financial viability: Does the revenue model and cost structure adequately support the proposed activities across the full crediting period?
- Land tenure and carbon rights: Have rights, easements, or leases been secured across every parcel, particularly in grouped projects involving multiple landowners, prior to the commencement of activities?
- Stakeholder identification: Have all affected landowners, communities, and rights-holders been identified?
- Stakeholder engagement strategy: Does the engagement approach reflect local context, traditions, and culture, and is it implemented early enough, and in a culturally appropriate manner, to surface concerns before they become obstacles?
- Grievance mechanisms: Is there a genuine, accessible channel through which stakeholders may raise concerns, one capable of withstanding scrutiny rather than existing only on paper?
- MRV and monitoring system architecture: Have plot design, remote sensing methodology, and permanent sample plot placement been determined before the project begins generating the data these systems are intended to capture?
- Leakage risk and mitigation: Has the project assessed whether its activities will simply displace existing pressures elsewhere, with corresponding mitigation built into the design rather than introduced in the writeup?
This process of reverse-engineering compliance becomes increasingly difficult the longer it is deferred. Undertaking it at the PD drafting stage is already too late; discovering such gaps during validation, when the stakes are highest, represents the most severe possible outcome.
A Completely Avoidable Cycle
Fortunately, this entire cycle is completely avoidable. With Drawn Carbon, we’ve made aligning your project design at the very onset both simple and affordable.
Rather than handing teams a blank template once they’re ready to write, Drawn Carbon organizes the full methodology into a structured outline of every requirement from day one, each paired with its own evidentiary record, so eligibility, baseline, boundary, additionality, land-use alternatives, and double-counting checks get worked through while the project is still flexible, not after it’s already built.
By organizing project development around methodology requirements from the outset, Drawn Carbon allows teams to address validation expectations progressively rather than all at once. Evidence is collected as activities occur, design decisions are documented when they are made, and compliance becomes an integrated part of project development rather than a retrospective exercise.
By the time the PD is written, there is nothing left to retrofit. The design work is already done, and the document simply reflects it.
Check this video out to see exactly why delaying this process is costing developers time and capital, and how Drawn Carbon helps you design out validation risks while your project is still flexible.