Power April 2022 - 19

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
owners realize how important meetings
are to the success of a project. He said
one of his top clients faithfully respected
meeting times and it led to great success.
" If the customer knew I, as the
project manager, was in my POD-plan
of the day-meeting or was in the schedule
meeting, that was sacrosanct. It was
never impeded upon. We would talk after
that, " von Lazar recalled.
For meetings to be truly effective, they
require all the necessary stakeholders to
be present and engaged. " If you have a
schedule meeting, everybody needs to
go to the schedule meeting. No excuses.
If you have a budget meeting-field cost
meeting-you need to go to that meeting, "
von Lazar said. " If you are rigorous
in terms of the participation and communication
in those meetings, it will lead to
success from the beginning of the project
through the end. "
Jessica Garder, assistant structural department
manager with Burns & McDonnell,
who also works on EPC projects and
is currently the engineering manager on
a large job the firm is doing, suggested
planning is vital to success. " We hold an
integrated project planning meeting at
the beginning of the job. We get all the
stakeholders in on that meeting, so it's
kind of a long process, but it's extremely
important, " she said. " It gets everyone
aligned on the schedule, how we're going
to execute the job, and when we
need to hit certain milestones in order to
get the equipment to site on time. "
Pre-planning and pre-design
conferences
are another tool Burns & McDonnell
uses to ensure projects go smoothly.
These cover a range of different topics,
depending on the scope or type of project,
and bring together people from all
aspects of the job-engineering, procurement,
construction, startup, and others.
Truthfully, the gatherings sound more like
brainstorming sessions than traditional
meetings, but the results speak for themselves.
" We try to answer questions like:
'How can we meet the client's goals with
our design? How do we incorporate safety?
And, how can we be most efficient?'
" Garder said. " People offer ideas-no
idea's a bad idea-then, we talk through
the specifics. Often, the team comes up
with an innovative idea that makes sense
to implement on the job. "
Managing a Safe Project
" Safety is job one. It's paramount in
terms of what we do, " said von Lazar.
" Zero accidents is achievable, " he said,
" but you need everybody engaged in
April 2022 | POWER
thinking about safety and truly acting as
our brother's and sister's keeper. "
" Health and safety should always be
everyone's first priority, " Bilfinger's Hill
said. " It is very important that we take
everyone's observations onboard during
a project and empower people to point
out unsafe acts and to stop work if they
spot a problem. This process is iterative
and it is essential that we capture the
learning as well as stopping the unsafe
act, so that we can revise others-and
ours-working practices accordingly. The
final part of the improvement process is
to communicate the learning to all parties;
both formally, via toolbox talks and
project reviews, and informally, as part of
our daily interactions. "
" One important thing is to use proactive
tools to address safety, and by that, I
mean an observation program to tell you
where your problems are going to be, "
said von Lazar. " If you do enough observations,
the data will tell you a lot, " he said.
In reference to one job von Lazar
was on, he said: " The data from observations
told us where the next issues
were going to be, whether it was
housekeeping, scaffolding issues, rigging
issues, communication, spotting
issues, or something else. Observation
programs can really help you mitigate
what could be problematic. "
" Safety starts day one, too, " said Kram.
" There are so many things that can be
done early on with all of the stakeholders
that can reduce some of that safety risk
[Figure 2], " he said, noting that accommodations
can be made in designs to allow
efficient and effective commissioning,
flushing, and cleaning, for example, or
pertaining to energized systems, where
safety is extremely important. " If those
items are incorporated in the design early,
it can make a big difference. Breeding a
robust safety culture with the engineers,
procurement, and also our construction
startup resources engaging in the design,
and then carrying that to the field, is just
what we do. It's all about our team buying
into that day one. "
A Modified Framework for Success
While traditional EPC contracts have
served the power industry well, there
have been more than a few projects that
haven't gone as planned. " As power projects
have become much more complex,
owners are often finding that the past
EPC delivery model of owner contracting
directly with the contractor under a
lump sum contract, who then contracts
directly with the engineer, is losing its
www.powermag.com
2. When metal components can be prefabricated
in a shop rather than constructed at the
jobsite, it is often an easier and safer process.
These types of opportunities can be identified
and taken advantage of when relevant stakeholders
are involved in the planning process
from day one. Courtesy: Burns & McDonnell
value proposition, " Jack Grauman, HDR's
power integrated delivery director, told
POWER. HDR is a global engineering,
architecture, environmental, and construction
services
firm
headquartered
in Omaha, Nebraska. " Setbacks are
frequent due to the inherent flaws of
owners soliciting RFPs [request for proposals]
much too early and without the
detailed scoping that contractors and
engineers require to effectively bid the
project, locking in pricing too early, and
requiring the parties to operate under an
adversarial contractual setup, " he said.
Grauman said Integrated Project Delivery
(IPD) offers a solution to the problem.
" With IPD, the owner, engineer, and contractor
work under a single contract with
three signatures and a no-fault clause. The
owner, engineer, and contractor collectively
develop a preliminary design package,
which includes input from key stakeholders,
value
engineering,
constructability
reviews, and mitigation of major risks,
amongst other deliverables. The engineer
and contractor are typically selected
based on qualifications and rates during
this preliminary design stage, " he said.
" Once the preliminary design package
has been developed, the owner,
engineer, and contractor collectively estimate
the cost of the project, identify
risks and associated costs, and develop
a shared contingency and profit pool, "
Grauman said. " Throughout the project,
as risks are mitigated or accepted, each
party recognizes the loss or gain relative
to their equity in the project's success.
What we've found is that this type of
contractual arrangement encourages the
parties to work together as a team for
the overall benefit of the project, which
often includes improvement in cost and
schedule performance. " ■
-Aaron Larson is POWER's
executive editor.
19
http://www.powermag.com
Power April 2022

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