Based at the University of Texas at Austin, the Construction Industry Institute's (CII's) Advanced Work Packaging Community for Business Advancement (AWPCBA) is a group of passionate individuals seeking to take the advanced work packaging (AWP) framework and apply its lean concepts of continuous improvement to get the most out of its programmatic benefits for project execution.
Brian Vogel, who serves as AWP champion for The Dow Chemical Company as well as part of the AWPCBA, said Dow has overlaid programmatic AWP implementation onto its already robust project methodology and in-house EPC capabilities to "make it applicable to all sizes of projects" across the company's portfolio.
"We haven't made it all the way through the construction phase of an AWP-implemented project yet, but we're getting very close to that," he said recently as part of a panel for the Downstream Engineering & Construction Canada Conference & Exhibition 2018 held in Calgary, Alberta. "The first one that hit the field is actually in construction now, so we're looking forward to seeing what the gains are from there.
"We've got several life-extension projects we're implementing it on, which bring their own challenges because then we have a turnaround component associated, so we have to work with not only the capital side but then integrate with the turnaround team.
"Our maintenance organization has really grabbed onto this … We have all different sizes, all different types of projects we're implementing it on. Our leadership has said, 'This is the way we're going forward, and we're going to implement it on every project from here out' -- a real top-down [commitment]."
Jamie Gerbrecht, global technology sponsor for ExxonMobil, added his company's programmatic adoption of AWP hinges on its ability to improve project execution "across the performance dimensions of safety, quality, cost, schedule, productivity and predictability."
"Knowing that AWP can bring improvement in safety performance and as well in execution efficiency, and also recognizing that we as an industry jointly developed AWP as a foundation through CII and then ultimately designated it as a best practice, we are applying the fundamentals of AWP on projects of various sizes and complexities, from large projects to smaller projects, in a fit-for-purpose way," Gerbrecht explained. "And we plan to continue doing this with projects going forward."
"From a program standpoint, we're introducing AWP to projects basically at the FEL [front-end loading] kickoff meeting," explained Vogel. "Then we have a session with them shortly after, hopefully within a week, and start to go through more of the details. The problem we have is it's new to the organization; there are a lot of people who have heard of AWP but they really don't know what the details are or what it entails.
"And there's a lot of misinformation going around: 'Oh, I hear it causes me all this extra work.' Well, we've gone to great lengths to integrate it into our existing work processes such that we don't believe that it causes the disciplines additional work. And so, my discussion with them thus far has been, 'If you think it's causing you additional work, come and talk to me because I don't believe that it is and we're going to try to figure out a way to minimize or eliminate what you think that additional work is.'
"We've taken great steps toward full implementation and integration at the work process level to make this as transparent of an overlay process as we can."
"In the beginning, the intent was that advanced work packaging would be something that companies could take and encode into the way they do work with their systems and processes and tools that exist," concluded Gerbrecht. "And I think most of us, as we understand -- through the implementation resources that CII has in place -- the gaps that we have and the opportunities for improvement relative to what AWP is about, find that there's something that AWP has for each of us."
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