Under Pressure: Discipline, Material Readiness, and Leadership Where Failure Is Not an Option

Projects don’t fail in the field. They fail months earlier—quietly—through unverified assumptions, fragmented ownership, and invisible gaps in material readiness. In Under Pressure, former U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician and infrastructure executive K.S. Ernce applies the discipline of high-consequence operations to modern capital projects, utilities, and supply chains. Drawing on decades of experience across large-scale infrastructure programs, Ernce reframes material management as a leadership system—not a clerical task. He exposes how missing ownership, broken handoffs, and unchecked assumptions quietly destroy schedules, inflate costs, and erode credibility long before problems appear on reports. This is not a book about software. It is a field manual for leaders responsible for outcomes—where failure is expensive, pressure is constant, and verification is the only defense. Written for executives, project leaders, engineers, and operators, Under Pressure shows how disciplined preparation, closed-loop accountability, and material intelligence separate organizations that survive pressure from those exposed by it.