EDGE5 looks beyond delivery to test long-term viability.
Every system is assessed against the conditions it must function within — after external support is removed.
The Post-Handover Gap
Where long-term performance is determined.
Most projects perform well while funding, training and support are in place. The test begins after handover, when local people become responsible for keeping systems running.
This is where investments either continue creating value — or begin to decline.
Project Delivery
Funding, training, infrastructure and activities completed, with external support in place.
Handover
External support is withdrawn.
The Gap
The system must now operate on local capability alone.
This is where investments succeed or fail.
Independent Operation
Running without external support or guidance.
Long-Term Viability
The investment continues creating value.
Independent advice, before the money is spent
The gap is cheapest to close while the design is still open.
EDGE5 is not there to justify a project that has already been decided. EDGE5 assesses whether a proposed system is practical, suited to local conditions, and capable of running once external support is reduced.
Where a weakness is found, EDGE5 helps redesign the system before it becomes an expensive problem.
An assessment that can only confirm the plan is not an assessment.
The EDGE5 approach is best demonstrated through real projects.
Case StudyRainbow Ridge, Tanzania
From Degraded Landscape to Long-Term Performance
In 2014, Rainbow Ridge was a degraded hillside. Rainfall ran off as surface water, driving erosion and declining soil health.
Working with Communities Assist, the landscape was redesigned to harvest rainfall and restore soil function — using simple earthworks and local materials.
Local staff and community members were trained to build, maintain and manage the system independently.
Today, virtually all rainfall is retained on-site. The landscape supports agroforestry, healthier soils and increasing biodiversity.
It continues to improve because the land systems work as intended — and local people can manage them.
Rainbow Ridge today.
- Most rainfall lost as surface runoff
- Active soil erosion
- Sparse vegetation and limited tree cover
- Low productive capacity
- Virtually all rainfall harvested on-site
- Healthy, functioning agroforestry systems
- Improved soil function and water retention
- Regenerating tree canopy and biodiversity
- Managed and maintained by local people
The same site before implementation, and several years later.
When water, soil, labour, skills and authority are designed together, landscapes keep improving long after the work ends.
The EDGE5 Survival Gates™
A practical framework for assessing whether an investment will remain functional after external support ends.
A gate is not a scoring category. If one is missing, the investment can perform while external support is present — and fail after handover.
A supply the system can rely on without external delivery.
Soil function maintained by the system rather than dependent on imported inputs.
People available in the numbers and at the times the system requires.
Capability held by the people who remain after handover.
Legitimate local standing to make decisions and hold them.
The gate-by-gate risk profile, early-warning indicators and self-assessment — written for board and leadership review.
By the time it surfaces, it is no longer a delivery problem
A program can be photographed, reported and signed off as complete — and still fail the only test that matters.
When it does, the cost lands in three places at once.
Risk
An unmanaged grievance. A stalled relationship. A problem that escalates instead of resolving quietly.
Social Licence
The trust that lets an operation run without disruption erodes quietly — then is tested at the worst moment.
Reputation
A program claimed as a success, visibly failing, is the story that reaches a journalist or an NGO report.
They surface when a company can least afford them: after a budget cut, a team change, a licence renewal, an audit.
The gate that failed most often was Authority
Across advisory engagements with resource companies in Africa and Asia, and eighteen years inside an Australian operation, the same pattern recurred. The work was commissioned by an individual rather than adopted by the organisation. When that individual moved on — a promotion, a restructure, a change of country manager — the commitment moved with them.
Nothing failed technically. The assessments were sound and the designs were workable. What was missing was legitimate standing inside the organisation to carry the decision forward. That is the fifth gate, and it closes programs as reliably as a dry season.
It is not a mining problem. It is what happens to any commitment held in a relationship rather than in the organisation.
Scope before spend
Where no clear scope exists, the first step is to define one — what the investment must achieve, and what would have to be true for it to survive.
Findings in writing
Findings are written for the organisation, not for one contact — so they remain useful after the person who commissioned the work has moved on.
Capability held on site
Where the design depends on knowledge, the aim is to transfer it to people who remain — so the program is not carried by a single champion.
Results of the kind shown at Rainbow Ridge are available to mining operations. They require the organisation to commit, not just an individual within it.
Non-negotiables, learned on-site
- Rain is not supply. Storage is.
- Labour is finite. Carrying systems fail.
- Distance defines survival.
- One system that works is worth more than ten that collapse.