Projects rarely fail because the spreadsheet was wrong. They fail because the people running them could not execute the spreadsheet.
Both major federal frameworks require it — management is one of the five dimensions of 7 CFR 5001 and an explicit factor in SBA underwriting — yet the management section of most studies is a courtesy biography. The analytical version asks a harder question: does the team’s demonstrated experience match this asset class, this scale, and this project phase? Building a business and operating one are different competencies; running one location and running the proposed three is a different job.
Evidence, not adjectives, carries the section: years operating in the specific category, comparable projects completed, the named general manager with the verifiable track record, the franchise or management agreement that imports systems the sponsor lacks. Where the operator is untested at the proposed scale, the study quantifies the dependence — what the pro forma assumes management will achieve that an average operator would not — and prices the gap.
When the gap is real, the right determination is conditional, and the condition is specific: a qualified GM hired before funding, an executed management contract, a defined transition period with the seller. Wert-Berater determinations have carried exactly such conditions — including a GM-hire condition on a recreation start-up — because a study that waves at management risk has transferred it, silently, to the lender.
Key-person concentration deserves its own sentence in every study: who, specifically, cannot be hit by a bus, and what insurance, succession, or contractual mitigation the structure carries.
President, Wert-Berater, Inc. — independent feasibility study consultants since 1998. More than 4,000 feasibility studies completed across all 50 states and internationally, evaluating $40.2 billion in project value for SBA, USDA, EB-5, conventional, and institutional financing decisions. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and agency in every engagement.
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