ImmersaEngineering / Technical due diligence
Whether the technology does what the deck says.
Prepared for boards, investors and acquirers. Whether the technology is proven, whether the claimed performance is achievable, whether the capital and operating estimates are credible, what the unit economics actually are, and what belongs on the risk register that is not on it yet.
What it covers
Four questions, answered against evidence.
Technical due diligence fails most often not by missing a flaw but by accepting a demonstration as proof of something it did not demonstrate. The distinction between what has been shown and what has been inferred is the work.
Is the technology proven, and at what scale
The gap between a result obtained once, under controlled conditions, and a process that runs continuously is where most technology investments are actually decided.
- What has been demonstrated, at what scale, and for how long
- Which steps have been proven together rather than only in isolation
- Which assumptions hold at laboratory scale and are known not to hold at operating scale
- Whether the failure modes seen at pilot were solved or merely not encountered
- What remains to be proven before the next commitment of capital
Is the claimed performance achievable
Performance claims are usually true about something. The question is whether they are true about the plant being funded.
- Yield, conversion, selectivity and availability against demonstrated data
- The operating envelope the claim holds within, and how wide that is
- Turndown, start-up, shutdown and off-design behaviour
- Feedstock variability and its effect on the claimed figures
- The measurement basis behind the numbers, and its uncertainty
Are the numbers credible
Capital and operating estimates for novel process technology are systematically optimistic in characteristic ways, and those ways are checkable.
- Capital estimate basis, class and the scope maturity behind it
- Operating cost build-up, including consumption figures that assume design performance
- Unit economics at realistic rather than nameplate availability
- Scale-up cost assumptions and the exponents used
- What is excluded from the estimate, and whether the exclusions are recoverable
How it is delivered
Written for the person who has to decide.
A due diligence report is read by people who are not process engineers and who will be held to the decision. It states the conclusion, the evidence, and the confidence — separately, so each can be weighed.
What arrives
The data room, or whatever part of it is technical: process description, test data, estimates, vendor claims, prior studies, and the investment thesis the diligence is testing.
Access to the technology team for questions, where the transaction allows it.
What comes back
A written assessment addressed to the decision, with findings ranked by consequence to the investment case and each stated at the confidence the evidence supports.
Including, explicitly, what could not be established from the material provided.
Typical findings
What technical due diligence turns up.
Illustrative and non-attributable. Each is invented; no engagement lies behind any of them.
- A yield demonstrated once, at conditions the plant will not hold. The figure was real. It had been achieved at a residence time the commercial design could not sustain at throughput.
- A cost estimate scaled on the wrong exponent. A factor appropriate to conventional equipment had been applied to a step whose cost is driven by surface area, not volume.
- Availability assumed at a figure no comparable facility achieves. The unit economics held at ninety-five per cent availability and did not at any figure the sector actually reports.
- A technology that was sound and a programme that was not. The process worked. What had not been established was how the remaining unknowns would be retired, or what that would cost.
Invented for illustration. Nothing arising from a real engagement is reused, retold or cited as a credential.
See the deliverable
Read one before you commission one.
The specimen is a process design review rather than a due diligence report, so the subject differs from the work on this page. The structure does not: ranked findings, stated assumptions, residual risk, and a revision record that closes each finding against a named response.
It carries the assumptions relied on, a sensitivity table, the items examined and found sound alongside those that were not, the residual risk that remains after the recommended actions, and a passage setting out where the conclusion could be wrong. Every page is marked SPECIMEN; the facility, the client and the findings are invented.
Commission independent technical due diligence.
A short description of the problem, the document set or the decision is enough to confirm suitability, propose a structure and give an indicative cost. A mutual non-disclosure agreement is executed before technical detail is exchanged.
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