Meet the Major Programmes team
Diego Guevara
Diego has built his career in capital projects, focusing on large-scale infrastructure and transformation programmes across diverse global contexts.
Driven by a desire to deliver impactful change and ensure projects genuinely benefit communities, Diego has continued to work with clients to innovate and improve the delivery of complex programmes. We caught up with him to understand what drives his mission-focused work, his experiences, and interests.
Have any life events compelled you to take action and deliver purpose through your work?
Yes! And funnily enough, it was my experience working at Deloitte Latam which made me realise capital projects were where I want to spend my career.
I was working on a three-year programme, supporting the construction of a new refinery in the north of Peru. The area was a very popular holiday destination (it has lovely beaches) but the surrounding area had a high rate of poverty and difficult living conditions.
We were supporting the government to deliver a large-scale oil and gas programme worth $5 billion, and the local community were fed up of promises not being fulfilled and frustrated by not seeing a positive impact in their hometown. There would sometimes be protests outside the office building.
But over time, the programme that we were running started to give back to the community. It was building football courts, improving schools, improving roads, building hospitals – and community members started to feel those benefits in their daily lives. Helping to manage a programme which was indirectly helping a community to thrive felt like magic, and inspired me to want to work in the infrastructure industry for a living.
I help construction projects to deliver the outcomes they promise, the benefits they propose, and achieve value within budget and time. In my role, I feel that I’m improving society and creating a better future for everyone – that is my source of inspiration.
There’s often a tension between the national benefits of large infrastructure projects and the disruption they can cause to local communities. How do you think we achieve the right balance?
This question really resonates with my past experiences and current work. I think it’s about how we manage benefits and showcase them. It can sometimes take a while for returns to be seen in large infrastructure projects, and I think we need to manage expectations and help quick wins to be realised before the end of a project. I believe that this is actually how we approach construction projects now: generating that initial sense of value rather than waiting for the long-term benefit after completion.
I think the mindset we have in Major Programmes goes beyond the budget and the plan; it’s about whether we are able to realise benefits of the project, for communities and for society, right from the start of delivery. I think how we create value with fewer resources, with less environmental impact, with tighter budgets, is in our thoughts across the entire lifecycle of a project.
Are there any past projects that felt like a real career highlight, where you were able to support change and deliver impact?
Earlier this year, I supported a consumer company to deliver a global transformation across their people business. After we implemented new processes and a new operating model, the client came back to us and said they’d been able to be much more efficient and were able to continue driving the transformation across the organisation with fewer resources and less stress.
We were able to help them unlock the full potential of their existing tools, create new ways of working, and deliver knowledge sharing sessions, helping to upskill their workforce too. The improvements we supported were impactful by themselves – when scaled they were transformational. Their project management resources, once upskilled, were mobilised to other projects, replicating the efficiencies created through our work, resulting in a huge multiplication of impact.
It was amazing to know that even once we’d finished our work with them, we’d enabled them to continue driving transformation, improving their processes, and increasing efficiency.
What sustains your motivation to keep delivering impact for your clients?
I always get energy from discussions with people who are as passionate as I am about delivering large programmes and projects successfully. I find that same drive across the entire Major Programmes team at Deloitte. Everyone wants to do things in the right way, in the most efficient way, with the right resources, and give back to society. We all approach delivery with that mindset and enthusiasm, and that’s what motivates me to keep learning and progressing.
Do you have a long-term vision for the kind of society you're working towards?
My vision, particularly within the industry I work in, is focused on how we build infrastructure today. It's no longer just about individual assets; it's about creating a systemic network of assets and understanding how they all tie together.This is important for us to understand in order to deliver the potential benefits, and work in a way that acknowledges the dependencies of an individual asset’s success.
I see this evolving in the future through the increased use of technology and better collaboration enabled by new tools, which will provide opportunities for new processes, operating models, and ways of working.
And finally, do you have a New Year’s Resolution? What do you want to achieve in 2026?
My New Year's resolution is to build the future of capital project professionals. I want to create the new career path for junior professionals, as it will be completely different to the traditional capital projects path. When I started my career it was very technical: you were often a manager of a specific aspect of the project – either cost, schedule, risk or change.
Now, it’s much more than that. We can be project managers whilst also building technology or using AI to get better outcomes. There is an extra layer which feels more generalist than specialist. We’re currently building that career path at Deloitte, working to make sure our capital project professionals are prepared and happy in their careers, and supported to deliver successfully. In 2026, I want to be a central contributor to that aim.
There’s often a tension between the national benefits of large infrastructure projects and the disruption they can cause to local communities. How do you think we achieve the right balance?
This question really resonates with my past experiences and current work. I think it’s about how we manage benefits and showcase them. It can sometimes take a while for returns to be seen in large infrastructure projects, and I think we need to manage expectations and help quick wins to be realised before the end of a project. I believe that this is actually how we approach construction projects now: generating that initial sense of value rather than waiting for the long-term benefit after completion.
I think the mindset we have in Major Programmes goes beyond the budget and the plan; it’s about whether we are able to realise benefits of the project, for communities and for society, right from the start of delivery. I think how we create value with fewer resources, with less environmental impact, with tighter budgets, is in our thoughts across the entire lifecycle of a project.
Are there any past projects that felt like a real career highlight, where you were able to support change and deliver impact?
Earlier this year, I supported a consumer company to deliver a global transformation across their people business. After we implemented new processes and a new operating model, the client came back to us and said they’d been able to be much more efficient and were able to continue driving the transformation across the organisation with fewer resources and less stress.
We were able to help them unlock the full potential of their existing tools, create new ways of working, and deliver knowledge sharing sessions, helping to upskill their workforce too. The improvements we supported were impactful by themselves – when scaled they were transformational. Their project management resources, once upskilled, were mobilised to other projects, replicating the efficiencies created through our work, resulting in a huge multiplication of impact.
It was amazing to know that even once we’d finished our work with them, we’d enabled them to continue driving transformation, improving their processes, and increasing efficiency.
What sustains your motivation to keep delivering impact for your clients?
I always get energy from discussions with people who are as passionate as I am about delivering large programmes and projects successfully. I find that same drive across the entire Major Programmes team at Deloitte. Everyone wants to do things in the right way, in the most efficient way, with the right resources, and give back to society. We all approach delivery with that mindset and enthusiasm, and that’s what motivates me to keep learning and progressing.
Do you have a long-term vision for the kind of society you're working towards?
My vision, particularly within the industry I work in, is focused on how we build infrastructure today. It's no longer just about individual assets; it's about creating a systemic network of assets and understanding how they all tie together.This is important for us to understand in order to deliver the potential benefits, and work in a way that acknowledges the dependencies of an individual asset’s success.
I see this evolving in the future through the increased use of technology and better collaboration enabled by new tools, which will provide opportunities for new processes, operating models, and ways of working.
And finally, do you have a New Year’s Resolution? What do you want to achieve in 2026?
My New Year's resolution is to build the future of capital project professionals. I want to create the new career path for junior professionals, as it will be completely different to the traditional capital projects path. When I started my career it was very technical: you were often a manager of a specific aspect of the project – either cost, schedule, risk or change.
Now, it’s much more than that. We can be project managers whilst also building technology or using AI to get better outcomes. There is an extra layer which feels more generalist than specialist. We’re currently building that career path at Deloitte, working to make sure our capital project professionals are prepared and happy in their careers, and supported to deliver successfully. In 2026, I want to be a central contributor to that aim.
