The design and engineering phases of major projects have a poor record of delivery to schedule and budget and this poor performance impacts the build/delivery phase of projects. This applies to projects of all sorts and in all sectors. This presentation will provide evidence of this poor performance, will look at the reasons why planning and control of the design and engineering phase is often inadequate, and will describe approaches to help gain control. These approaches require consistency of progress capture and performance reporting across project teams, and mechanisms for capturing and managing actions from all members of the team will be described. Finally, this presentation will describe lessons from over 20 years planning and controlling the design and engineering phase of projects.