Commissioning as a Strategy to Complete Capital Projects

There are a lot of strategic decisions to make on capital projects. A few examples:

• Civil Structures
• What strategies do you take to achieve concrete placement productivity
• What approach do you want to take to mitigate geotechnical issues
• Labour
• What strategy to take for accommodation for remote workforces
• What strategy is required to attract skilled labour
• Environmental
• What strategies are required to ensure you meet environmental license requirements
• How are you mitigating disruptions to the work due to migratory birds

With many more strategic decisions to be made for your project to be successful. Each one of these decisions either gets you closer or farther away from your end goal of completing your project on-time and on-budget. Make the wrong decision and you could actually be getting further away from your goal.

Commissioning strategy never seems to get the same attention that these other strategic discussions take place earlier in projects. For example:

• Will you use contracts as a tool to manage quality and commissioning, or will these details be determined after contracts are awarded?
• What is the approach for off-site testing, will tests be advanced to take place earlier in the factory, or minimal testing during FAT to focus on site testing, or just let the vendor decide?
• Will commissioning be led by construction groups, or will contractors be participants in commissioning led by others, will the owner lead commissioning, or will a third-party commissioning contract be awarded? How do all these groups integrate as one commissioning team?
• What defines the end of construction and the start of testing?
• What software tools will you use to manage the work and how will all groups use these tools?
• What is your gated commissioning process, how are all project participants expected to follow this process and how is this enforced (payment milestones), and who is the authority to sign off each gate?
• Where will you find experienced commissioning personnel?

All of these strategic commissioning decisions impact the outcome of projects, and many of these strategic decisions need to be made at the very beginning of projects to set the direction of how the work will progress to the end.

The problem is there are some very big strategic decisions to address early in projects and the commissioning strategy gets deferred or forgotten about. There are huge civil challenges on projects that if not properly addressed, can cause significant delays and extra costs on projects. Unknown ground conditions have caused significant delays on many projects. But this is no reason to ignore your commissioning strategy as well. This is one of the reasons to engage commissioning personnel early in projects, so that they can work on this strategy in parallel with earlier strategic decisions. 

If the decision is to not make a decision, or defer the commissioning strategy to later, these strategic decisions will be made for you one way or the other. And when you do start preparing for your commissioning later in your project, it will be too late to reverse any decisions – contracts have already been awarded that may or may not have the right commissioning requirements, the equipment has already been delivered from the factory that may or may not have been properly/fully tested. And at this point, these decisions may or may not have been the right ones to add to your on-site commissioning success. But it’s too late to take a different commissioning strategy, you must live with the path that was chosen for you by deferring commissioning to later.

Think of your project like a brick wall consisting of 100 bricks. Your project is only complete once every brick is placed. The civil, environmental, labour, etc bricks are equally important as the commissioning bricks to be added to the wall. And each strategic decision made on projects needs to get you one step closer to successfully placing all 100 bricks. You can’t ignore/defer any of the bricks or you won’t complete your wall. Or if any of the bricks are poorly placed, your wall can come crashing down.

The current strategies to complete capital projects are not working – it is hard to get all 100 bricks placed on your project, there are a lot of details for each brick to be successfully placed, and this is the reason that 9 out of 10 projects are late and over-budget. But by not giving your commissioning strategy the attention it requires starting early in your project, this is a guaranteed way to be missing bricks at the end when you’re trying to complete your project.

Not only is commissioning strategy important at the beginning of your project, but commissioning can also be used as a strategy to complete your capital projects and keep your project team focused on the end goal of your project. This is why everyone on your project should understand what commissioning is all about.

When making decisions on projects, ask yourself – will this get me one step closer to successful commissioning and startup (which is of course the last steps required to achieve your project in-service date). If the answer is yes, then you’re working on the right things. For example, is it important to achieve daily concrete placement targets? Absolutely, the civil structures are fundamental to the project and these dates need to be met for equipment installations to take place to achieve construction milestones. Is it important to tweak settings to optimize the performance of a subsystem that already meets contract requirements? No, the subsystem meets requirements, this can be done later after the equipment is in-service. So commissioning as a strategy to complete capital projects is a good way to think about priorities and keep everyone focused. When you use this thought process, this is planning from right to left.

Strategic elements of commissioning are what make projects successful. You can move all the rock and mud that you need for a hydroelectric dam and meet all your civil dates. But if the facility doesn’t produce power at the end, your project will not be deemed successful. The reason to move all the rock and mud to build a dam is to generate power, and the last step to achieve this is successful commissioning and startup. Because your project has incurred significant expense by the time commissioning is taking place, the interest charges alone can be significant for each day that is delayed during commissioning, no matter how successful earlier stages of the project were.

Keep your commissioning strategy in mind early in your project to stay focused on the end goal. As Simon Sinek would say – Start with Why – why was your project started in the first place, and stay focused on your commissioning strategy to achieve your original objective.