With its vast oil reserves, Alberta is poised to become one of the world’s major oil suppliers. However, extracting this oil economically will require effective management of the oil sands’ projects in order to build them on time and within budget. Projects are subject to both internal and external forces such as political, economic, social and technological which can destabilize and create tremors to the execution. The SAGD-ET model developed in this research, with its three pillars of engineering, project management processes and communications, provides valuable solutions to these types of issues thus encouraging effective project execution. This model was developed using the Delphi Method of survey by collecting lessons learned from professionals in the oil & gas industry who had worked on SAGD projects. The lessons learned which were then rated allowed for the identification of critical areas for successful execution of SAGD projects. The SAGD-ET model also provides solutions to the problems encountered during the engineering, procurement and construction phases of SAGD and oil & gas projects.