According to Chris Tisdale, associate director of the implementation and downstream and chemicals sector committee for the Construction Industry Institute (CII), the benefits of implementing advanced work packaging (AWP) are numerous.
From left, Martin Swain, 4D5D global delivery manager for Shell; Jay Moser, principle technical expert of constructions and fabrication for Shell; Antonio Romero-Monteiro, deputy site manager for Jacobs engineering; and Mark Lambert, WWE&C construction management for Eastman Chemical Co., participate in a panel at the AMP Conference held in Houston.
Bringing construction planning into the early phases of the project, AWP “provides better visibility to the progress in a given portion of the project by highlighting areas that are falling behind in the plan, and allows for more efficient recovery planning,” Tisdale said.
But the benefits don’t stop there. AWP also allows for flexibility in construction execution and provides a mechanism to maximize supervision time and tool time in the field, Tisdale said. In terms of its impact on the workforce, AWP results in less crew downtime, which results in productivity improvements.
Finally, AWP improves the visibility of issues that require attention by facilitating “communication between contractors and owners, feedback from workers, and increased contractor ownership of issues and their resolution,” Tisdale said.
As a panel moderator at the AWP Conference held recently in Houston, Tisdale asked industry leaders how they measure success of AWP implementation.
Mark Lambert, WWE&C (World-Wide Engineering and Construction) construction management at Eastman Chemical Co., referred to the familiar industry adage, “Culture eats a playbook for breakfast.”
“What we experienced in our early start-up are the cultural issues” in engineering, in the field and elsewhere, Lambert said.
“Setting expectations around performance and potential returns on early projects, we look at Level 0 to Level 3 on the maturity curve,” he said. “We have struggled with the concept of … delivering on Level 3 claims on our early projects, which will certainly not be the case.”
Martin Swain, 4D5D global delivery manager for Shell, said something that has “really worked” is embedding AWP coding structure into the project.
“We set up grounding workshops to bring everyone aboard,” he said.
Swain stressed that “communication all the way up and all the way down” is also integral to achieving success in AWP.
“You need that leadership support, which we have definitely got,” Swain added. “I think when we engage with our field and really get them more into it, as we have with several projects now, we see improvement. But if you haven’t got that, then you will be struggling.”
Jay Moser, principle technical expert of construction and fabrication for Shell, noted standardizing doesn’t work as well for some oil companies as it might for others.
“It’s regional,” Moser said. “Ways of working are different with oil companies. I think standardizing around one thing, saying, ‘This is the process, use it,’ doesn’t work. You have got to make your project and what you’re applying around it … fit your job.”
Antonio Romero-Monteiro, deputy site manager for Jacobs Engineering, said he believes “some universal metrics are worthwhile.”
“I think the ultimate line metric from an AWP perspective is analysis of tool time,” he said. “It is a universal-type metric that translates very well industry- wide.”
Moser noted that, in general, there are things teams can consistently do better, “like getting the right language in the contracts at the right time, early on, when we sign the contracts.”
He also suggested “getting construction involved early on in the feed process” is critical to AWP success.
“You have the contracts, you have the contractors on board, and then you have all parties talking about what needs to be done to ensure that gets translated to the engineers who, these days, may be very savvy, but they may be very young,” Moser concluded.
For ongoing industry updates, visit BICMagazine.com.
