Chemical Engineering February 2016 - 55

A real-life example
Discussed below is a real-life example
of what can happen " when
the meager are challenged by the
eager. " At one CPI facility (Figure 1),
a plant expansion was undertaken,
involving the construction of a new
facility to replace an existing one,
with the goal of more than doubling
the number of products from 80 to
170. The project was planned to be
performed with no downtime - so
the existing facility continued to produce
the initial 80 products throughout
this initiative.
Now envision this new facility
designed for 14 newly added production
vessels and reactors, each
requiring its own pumps, motors
and valves, and tapping into shared
service systems. Imagine more than
two dozen extra-large holding tanks,
indoors and outdoors, each with its
own set of pipes, pumps, motors
and valves, all feeding into the 14
production vessels and reactors.
Add to this the need to build a
structure to house all of this - just
one aspect of the project that required
more than 2,500 cubic yards of concrete
(enough to build a ten-mile long
sidewalk), and more than 600 tons of
structural building and support steel.
The five miles of stainless steel piping
connecting all of these tanks, vessels,
and reactors required 15,000
individual butt welds. Also required
were power cables - more than 13
miles of them - and nearly 30 miles
of instrumentation cables to connect
more than 1,500 instruments.
Although this project involved only
one main contractor, there were 50
subcontractors involved, and each
required coordination and support, in
a planned period of 14 months.
How does the plant manager,
or his or her designee, know when
trouble might be just around the corner?
Usually, the main contractor
promises that nothing major will go
wrong, but in the event that there are
signs of impending problems, the
contractor promises that the management
tools and protocols being
used will highlight them in plenty of
time to allow corrective action to
be taken. This was the case in the
above-described project.
When reality sets in
At some point, reality does set in,
as it did in the case discussed here.
One day the plant manager decided
his staff was too short-handed to really
know where the project stood.
There were more than 100 craftsmen
on the job, large vessels,
tanks and reactors were arriving
on a regular basis, pipe prefabrication
had begun at an off-site facility,
and safety issues were cropping up.
The plant staff just could not stay on
top of it all. So a third-party overseer
was engaged.
That engagement resulted in a
series of project reviews and subsequent
discussions. The first item
that was discussed was the current
project status - that is, what was
the contractor's perception in terms
of the percent of the work complete
at that time? At that point, the contractor
was reporting that the project
was 46% complete.
The first question from the thirdparty
consultant was: " So that
means there's only 54% more to go,
and then you're done? " The answer
was not a resounding yes. The next
question sought to learn how the
46% assessment was derived. As it
turned out, that estimate had nothing
to do with the work effort actually
being expended - the primary measurement
needed to predict when a
capital project will be done, and at
what cost.
Therefore the discussions turned
to how to better recalibrate progress
measurement. The contractor was
encouraged to look at the remaining
work and decide how it should
be scheduled going forward - by
individual disciplines (such as civil
works, steel erection and piping), or
by entire systems (such as reactor
vessel systems 1, 2, 3 and so on)?
Because if the project really was
46% complete, the work measurement
and focus should have been
on reactor vessel systems instead of
disciplines for quite some time. Everyone
agreed on this.
To improve the progress-measurement
process, the contractor restructured
the schedule to reflect the
work that remained in order to complete
the original 14 production vessels
and reactors and their support
equipment. This now allowed the
plant manager and staff to visualize
where progress was actually occurring,
and where it was not.
At the time the contractor professed
46% progress, almost none
ChemiCal engineering www.Chemengonline.Com february 2016
of the 14 vessels or reactors had yet
been placed in the building. Almost
no connecting piping had been received
onsite. And a check of the
warehouse receiving area showed
almost no valves, instruments and
other sundry items on hand and
ready for installation. It was clear that
the " 46% complete " number was not
a realistic reflection of the situation at
that time. So then the open question
was, what should it have been?
Measuring progress
Since the project would ultimately
have more than 5 miles of piping,
the contractor suggested the project's
progress could be measured in
terms of feet of piping installed. This
logic was agreed upon, because
everything in the plant (outside of
electrical work) was ultimately dependent
on the piping in one way or
another. For example, the steel was
needed not only to frame the building
in which the piping would reside,
but also to support the piping as it
was being hung. The piping then
would connect all of the 14 production
systems, their vessels, tanks,
reactors, pumps and motors. Even
installation of most of the valves and
instruments (not yet onsite) would
ultimately be dependent upon the
piping. Ditto for the insulation. Therefore
tying the project progress to the
amount of piping installation completed
made sense.
However, that was not the end of
the story. The contractor's suggestion
that using the number of feet
of piping installed as a proxy for
the project's progress had an obvious
flaw. Since progress measurement,
which is tied to schedule and
cost, is really about work effort, the
manhours required to put piping in
place had to be considered. For example,
how much effort does it take
to raise into place a two-foot section
of pipe versus a four-foot section?
Essentially the same, except that the
four-foot piece could claim twice the
progress of the two-foot piece.
So a slightly different measurement
was required, and that measurement
was the number of pipe connections,
in this case welds. Regardless
of the length of the pipe, only the
number of completed welds truly reflects
the real progress of the piping
work; hence this measure serves as
an even better proxy for the progress
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Chemical Engineering February 2016

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