This is day 2 (Don't worry I won't be bringing up the day every time). If you missed Day 1 check out this post.
Today I am thinking about systems, specifically business and project management systems for engineering heavy capital projects. These are capital projects where at least 25% of the total cost is in engineering. A great example of this would be a control system upgrade at an existing facility. The breakdown of costs, without including the opportunity costs of downtime, would be around 25% for engineering, 5% for management, 20% for materials and 50% for execution.
If you are a company (or engineering firm) that has a lot of the same equipment or facility types; think hydro-electric utility, energy pipeline, etc; then there should be efficiencies in the engineering to reduce the total project cost. However, the reality is that either the facilities are different enough to resist standardization, or the operators do their work in slightly different ways and hold a lot of political power within the organization.
What I am thinking about today is how to set up a system that has the overall corporate alignment goals, and the flexibility for individual sites, that will lessen the total time for the capital projects on average, but require more front end work.
I have a system that I use in general that helps with this. I never start a project without asking the client a couple of questions:
- Why is this project important?
- What are the measurements of success? Not the project success, but what business KPIs will this influence.
Most clients don't really know the answers to this, however without knowing there is no way to know if the project is needed, or if when it is complete it has been a success. These thoughts are left for the executives, and rarely filter down to the frontline staff.
I'm still not sure of the structure that this will take, but when I have it laid out I will let you know. If you are in the engineering or project management fields, I would love to start a conversation around this. Reply below and let me know your thoughts.