I

THE PROJECT CYCLE

Introduction
• Organizations are rewarded by the market in the form of higher stakeholder
confidence and share prices when projects are delivered on budget and on
schedule.
• Failure to get it right the first time results in rework, cost increase, schedule
changes and severe penalties from shareholders and other stake holders.
• Thus, it is in our best interest to continually hold management to higher
levels of accountability in project management.
• To do so requires excellent project leadership skills, a committed and
focused workforce, a supporting business environment, a vision that is
shared by all stakeholders and often long, exhausting work days over
extended periods.
The simplified project cycle
Stage 2
Scoping
and design

Stage 1 Continuous Stage 3

learning and
planning execution
improvement

Stage
4close out
The simplified project cycle - planning
• Unacceptable work condition
• Market or business opportunity
• Financial and economic feasibility
• Selection among alternatives
• Technology defined
The simplified project cycle – scoping and
design
• Defining and finalizing the scope
• Detailed engineering designs
• Detailed construction plans
• Final cost estimates
The simplified project cycle - execution
• Work packages
• Construction
• Commissioning
• Start up
The simplified project cycle - closeout
• Performance testing – output/production
• Reliability and availability
• Market opportunity captured
• Unacceptable condition removed
 II

PRACTICAL WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT TIPS

1. Have the right person for the right job
• Leadership skills are an absolute
• Leadership, technical and communication skills
• Focus here is on the experience of key and functional managers
• Flat organizations are generally desirable
• Flexibility to work long, demanding hours
• Managing change and multi tasking
• Excellent communication and leadership skills
• Prior experiences on construction, commissioning and operations
• Team building skills
Have the right person for the right job

Leadership skills
- Sets standards –
including safety
- proactive/takes action
Builds trust and
relationships
Develops self and
followers
Leverages existing tools

Communication
Technical
skills
competency
-
- COPs/SOPs/PSM
reading/writing/ver
bal - Site specific
knowledge
- Conflict resolution
- regulatory
- Body language
2. Make safety a priority
• Establishing the desired safety standard
• Personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Adherence to code pf practices (COP)
• Use of standard operating procedures (SOP)
• Adoption of behavior based safety training and standards at the
project site
• Availability of safety experts
• Belief in zero harm on personnel and other resources
• Leading and lagging safety indicators
Lead indicators
• Near misses
• Front line visits
• Employee perception survey
• Behavior based observation process
• Pre hire screening of personnel
• Contractor selection process
Lagging safety indicators
• Injury frequencies
• Employee
• Contractor
• Total
• Number of times first aid is provided
• Number of loss time incidents
• Loss time injury frequencies
• Number of workers on restricted work
• Amount of loss time incurred
3. Safety and the contract work force
• Historically, contractor safety performance lags employer
performance
• Safety of work site must address both groups
• Two stage contractor safety management process
• Screening contractors carefully
• Manage safety performance
• No blame culture
• Treating all workers the same in matters of safety
• Contractor safety performance as a key performance indicator
4. Hire a mature workforce
• Maturity is reflected in the skills and experiences
• The execution phase is not generally a learning phase
• Nevertheless the execution phase creates the best opportunity for
inexperienced workers to learn
5. Clarify expectations, responsibilities and
authorities
• Expectations on the organizational values
• Safety, respect, drugs etc.
• Avoid overlapping as well as orphan responsibilities
• Opportunities for decision making
• Also full communication of authorities
6. Have a retention plan
• Avoid being a training ground
• Retention bonus with a locked in clause
• Development opportunities
• Satisfying work place
• Workers don’t leave jobs they leave leaders
7. Treat everyone fairly and with respect
• Celebrate diversity
• Cultural sensitivity
• Harassment
• Reward management system
• Audit systems
• Training for fair treatment
8. Leadership visibility at the front line
• Implies that leadership is interested in the work the front line worker
does
• Frequency of visits must balance cost, impact and effectiveness
• Creates an opportunity for detecting problems, provide guidance and
also feedback.
• The key to success is to plan the visit in advance
• Listening moments
• Joint visits by both the contractors and owners
• Observation of safety standards by the visitors
9. Embrace and promote diversity
• Diversity enhances creativity and innovativeness
• Cultural diversity
• Gender diversity
10. Recognize exceptional contribution
• It is the single most important motivator
• Both individual and group recognition
• Develop, steward and administer a fair system of recognition
• Trinkets
• Safety challenge trophies
• Team building social events
11. Celebrate milestone achievements and
successes
• Are significant advancements in the endeavor
• They are identified initially
• For front line workers it is a victory . . .
• It is even more resounding when the celebration is before or within
schedule
12. Avoid conflict among construction,
commissioning and operation
• Site ownership
• The respective majority system
• Ownership transitions
• Ownership of facility or project ultimately resides with the operations (owner)
organization
• Is concerned with a facility with high reliability including the nice to have frills
• The construction organization seeks to deliver based on design and scope with
emphasis on the need to have
• The commissioning organization is concerned with making the process,
machinery and equipment work at least for the duration of their involvement
with the project so that ownership can be transferred from the construction
organization to the operations organization.
13. Have a RACI CHART
• Who is responsible
• I did not know I was responsible for that task
• Who is accountable
• Does anyone know who is accountable for this work?
• Who should be consulted?
• No one consulted us before this task was undertaken
• Who should be informed?
• I was not informed that this exercise was taking place
14. communicate, communicate,
communicate
• Ensures safe and successful completion of work
• Leadership meetings
• Toolbox and prejob meetings
• Town hall type meetings
• Notices
• Email and electronic communication
• Combination of all communication methods
15. Rotate personnel out as required
• Helps manage problems of burnout
• Prolonged firefighting will lead to personnel frustration and high rate
of turnover and fatigue
• Again rotation may help out by injecting new blood
• Proper transfer of responsibilities and knowledge is important though
• Care must be taken to avoid steep learning curves
• Job shadowing is a possible option
16. Ensure adequate facilities are available
• Accommodations
• Office spaces
• Meeting rooms
• Kitchen facilities
• Washrooms and toilets
• Copiers
• Telephones
• Presentation equipment
• All other equipment required to make the day at work pleasant and fruitful
PRACTICAL WORK PROCESS MANAGEMENT
TIPS FOR SUCCESS
IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1. Don’t reinvent the wheel
• When a process works, avoid reinventing it
• Unless there is significant value to be gained from building new
processes and tools, it is best to apply proven tools and techniques
that may already exist within or external to the organization.
• But, minor adjustments may be required
2. Ensure proper representation of PHAs and
HAZOPS
• PHAs and HAZOPS are generally conducted before the execution
phase.
• Involvement of engineering, process safety management, process
engineering, frontline operations expertise, relevant trades disciplines
is recommended.
• Though it looks too early the operations organization has the best
opportunity here to influence the quality of the final product in terms
of control systems and safety.
3. Use construction and commissioning organizations
with consistently high standards of work.
• High performance.
• Appropriate values and behaviors
• Consistent and sustained high performance should be used as a
criteria for selection
• You get what you pay for
4. Apply simple control systems that work
• Simple
• Practicable
• Follow through on consequences
• All or none
• E.g. Dry camp
• E.g. Three strikes and you are out policy instead of speeding variation
5. Ensure ownership and buy in for all
stakeholders
• Business partners, business planners, designer engineers,
communities bordering the project and their leaders
• Regulatory bodies
• Construction, commissioning and operations personnel
• Construction personnel pride themselves on building the project
• Commissioning personnel pride themselves on testing the facility
• Operations personnel pride themselves on making the project work on a
sustainable basis
• Vendors and service suppliers
• Marketers and end product users
6. Get big quickly when required and lean in
a well orchestrated approach
• Timely introduction of the commissioning organization and the operations
organization
• Well planned recruitment and hiring of operations organization members
• Factors
• Factors on getting big fast
 Market availability
 Skill of workers,
 Economy,
 Labor mobility, these activities taking place in a region of construction.
 The recruitment and selection process.
 The leadership team.
7. Delay process hazard introduction as long
as possible
• Generally, when the construction organization owns the workplace
and process hazards are not yet introduced, the work pace and
worker productivity are high and risks are low and associated only
with construction type incidents
8. Centralize the work permitting system
• Refers to joint decision making regarding work to be performed on
various systems during this phase of the project execution stage in a
multi-ownership scenario.
• Work permitting should originate from a central location regardless of
the site ownership.
• Improved site safety
• Easier workflow control
• Effective control of concurrent work on multi owner system
9. Use communication and standard operating
procedures at all times
• Well constructed commissioning and SOPs are designed to ensure
equipment and machinery are operated properly and to avoid
unintended damage to the equipment and machinery.
• The use of procedures also helps inexperienced workers start up and
operate equipment safely.
10. Maintain a log of activities and events on
critical systems and events
• Is for validating warranty and liability claims
• Historical information databases on activities to ensure costs
associated with repairs or damage related to equipment are properly
assigned and recovered.
• Vendor representative be present during commissioning and start up
of critical equipment.
11. Have a backup or contingency plan
• Ranges from the simplistic resource allocation of resources to the
elaborate redesign of systems
• Backup plans are applicable for all the three readiness issues
12. Flush all critical systems before putting
into service
• Flushing and cleaning the system to remove the debris, contaminants,
mill scales and unwanted materials
• Physical inspection
• Water washing and even acid washing in some cases.
13. Consider human factor in designs
• Human machine interface – e.g. tight space, difficult to service
systems
• Make facility operator friendly
• Avoid tight designs
14. Know when to focus on optimization and
efficiency improvement
• when a project is turned over to the operations organization, leaders of the
organization are of the view that the project should produce at design capacities
quickly.
• For simple projects for which the technology is proven and well established and all
the operating variables are known and tested, this is a reasonable expectation.
But,....
• On the other hand, when technology is new and the project is among early
adopters, organizational leadership expectations may be much higher than what the
project may actually be capable of producing.
• The focus, therefore, should be on getting the project to deliver on production
parameters while new learning occurs. Once this learning has occurred and the new
operating parameters have been defined, optimization can occur to improve
operating, technical, and commercial efficiencies.
15. Ensure an effective document control
system exists
• Careful management of the documentation is required since these
documents will be required
• to perform maintenance work on equipment,
• to manage change in design and process, and
• for insurance purposes in the event of an unplanned occurrence.
• A document control and management system that requires sign out
and in for documents and systems packages is essential for ensuring
control.
• Ideally an electronic data processing system is required
16. Capture and share lessons learnt

• During project execution, there are many project activities that will
be repeated over time. Learning captured from previous similar
activities makes future attempts much easier.
• A key competency of a successful project leader is the ability to
recognize, capture, and share lessons learned and knowledge
(successes and failures) that are transferable for application in future
projects.
• Generally, areas of strengths and weaknesses are best demonstrated
in captured learning.
THE READINESS PROCESS AN OVERVIEW
People readiness criteria
• All personnel are hired and properly oriented
• SOPs are developed for all operating areas
• All personnel are properly trained, assessed and qualified
Process readiness criteria
• The equipment hierarchy has been fully developed for CMMS
• Preventive maintenance schedules have been fully developed for all
critical equipment
• Accounting systems have been developed and all methods for
procurement of support and services have been organized
Systems readiness criteria
• Power distribution system has been completed, tested and energized
• The instrument air system has been tested, punch listed . . .
• Turnover documentation has been completed
Projects, milestones, components and
elements