Capital projects commonly face limited time, constrained resources, and fixed budgets—yet they are expected to deliver a business case that depends on advanced technology and rapid attainment of design capacity. When new technology is introduced without deliberate readiness planning, capability gaps in tools, processes, and workforce proficiency delay ramp-up and permanently reduce realized ROI. This white paper presents an integrated plant launch framework that combines reliability analysis, workforce gap analysis, a comprehensive training plan, documentation and learning asset development, training implementation, and operator commissioning. The objective is “vertical startup”: stable production of saleable product at or near design capacity in the shortest feasible time. Figure 1 illustrates why startup performance matters: the area between the planned and actual ramp-up curves represents unrecoverable opportunity.