APTIM is a leading global provider of integrated maintenance services, environmental engineering and remediation, infrastructure, EPC services, program and construction management, and disaster response and recovery for private sector and government customers. With 5,000-plus employees in over 80 locations across the globe, APTIM is a partner and relentless advocate to clients in the oil, gas, chemical, industrial, commercial and power sectors as well as in government.
Last year, APTIM told the story of a company with more than 100 years of history and a fresh perspective. This year, Tom Vaughn, president of the APTIM Project and Plant Services business unit, shared an example of where the company is employing a different approach.
"Normally a company president wants to talk about company services and company culture -- the traditional things. I want to focus on projects," Vaughn said. "After all, a company is essentially made up of projects and the people who execute them."
APTIM is doing things differently on a major project by fully employing the process of advanced work packaging (AWP). According to the Construction Industry Institute (CII), AWP is "the overall process flow of all the detailed work packages (construction, engineering and installation work packages). AWP is a planned, executable process that encompasses the work on an EPC project, beginning with initial planning and continuing through to detailed design and construction execution. AWP provides the framework for productive and progressive construction and presumes the existence of a construction execution plan."
As with all new construction projects, teams are anxious to get right to work on their areas -- engineering, procurement, installation, etc. And, as is often the case, teams head to work without adequately planning and communicating with each other, resulting in frustration in the best-case scenario and a hit to productivity in the worst case.
The aforementioned project is just under a $200 million contract for process plant construction, with a scope of work that includes equipment setting, steel erection, and pipe fabrication and erection. APTIM decided this would be a good project to employ CII's AWP methodology as well as modularization. Employing AWP provides a very structured method to sequence construction work.
Because detailed engineering was virtually complete when APTIM started, construction packages were driven by known equipment delivery dates and foundation completion dates. The company stepped into the project in a different place due to the engineering status.
The construction packaging established the basic pipe fabrication requirements, order and priorities. While APTIM work packaged the equipment installation and steel erection, the heavy focus was placed on pipe, as is the norm for these types of process plants, with a very heavy focus on pipe installation work packaging (IWP).
Critical to its success, APTIM built IWPs early in the schedule at an accelerated rate. The company had to get the pipe fabricated, but fabricated in the correct order. This was complicated, as some of the pipe was arriving from overseas.
APTIM's strong pipe fabrication partner will package and ship the pipe by IWP. IWP (and some modularization) will save laydown space and double- and triple-handling of the pipe, minimizing the highly hazardous process of loading and offloading pipe from trucks. The company will use the exact same approach with pipe supports -- shipping by IWP.
10X faster work packages built
APTIM built the work packages manually, starting at a rate of 135 in the first three weeks. The company refined the process, and once it began using digital data management tools, it built the remaining work packages at a rate of 500 per week -- 10 times faster. The advantages are clear and significant: improved production, shortened schedule, less manpower and better quality. The data-centric work packages were developed from the estimate, model and procurement data, with collaboration and coordination enabled by electronic tools.
Instant productivity feedback
Everyone, appropriately, holds first-line supervisors responsible for productivity. What is not appropriate is that people don't always do a good job of making sure first-line supervisors understand what their productivity expectations are and how they are performing against those expectations.
"I have personally done a bad job in articulating these expectations to our first-line supervisors and providing them with the productivity data," Vaughn admitted.
By establishing the APTIM definition of an IWP as "one week's work per crew," at the completion of an IWP a foreman knows exactly what his or her productivity has been for the package. The value of this quick feedback is obvious.
Giving craft professionals the opportunity to succeed
There is one thing of which APTIM is certain: Craftsmen have a tremendous amount of pride in what they do, and they all want to do a good job. However, they need support and assistance from foremen for technical information, equipment needs, safety approach, etc. Chris Buck, a long-time colleague of Vaughn's and an expert in productivity, was involved with a study that won a 2012 Best Practices Award from the Construction Owners Association of Alberta (COAA). Data was collected that proved what most know intuitively: Craftsmen produce better-quality work and are significantly more productive and safer when the foreman is present with the crew. By creating IWPs and making sure all materials, equipment, scaffolding, etc., are available before work begins on an IWP, APTIM greatly reduces the need for a foreman to leave the crew.
To further enhance their presence, APTIM is working to maximize its foremen's use of tablets by creating its Digital Foreman environment.
Digital Foreman
APTIM uploads the IWPs on mobile devices (such as tablets) in conjunction with its Digital Foreman tool. Within that tool, they establish the safety and quality requirements for the package, as well as tools, equipment and scaffolding requirements. Access to the entire 3-D model is available, as is a real-time request for information (RFI), timekeeping and cost systems.
Modularization
While the pipe racks were not designed to be modularized, APTIM reviewed the design and deemed this not to be a problem. It is fabricating the modules off-site, thereby reducing the on-site manpower requirements by approximately 20 percent. Had APTIM been involved earlier in the design, modularization would have been greatly increased.
A new way of thinking
Driving cultural change is incredibly difficult, but fortunately, APTIM has some real champions in its organization. Executing a major project using AWP represents a significant cultural change.
Defining the processes, workflows and procedures to manage AWP isn't that difficult. However, to drive company culture change requires finding "champions" who will execute the process. Having the right people in place is mandatory to make AWP work for a company. APTIM has several champions on its team who told Vaughn they had wanted the opportunity to work on a project with this type of planning their entire careers.
"AWP is project controls on steroids," Vaughn said. "It provides precise control over tasks by breaking work into bite-size pieces. It involves construction-driven engineering and sequencing of construction work (such as pipe delivered in the order needed)."
APTIM has achieved alignment between construction, engineering and procurement. It has changed the way work is planned and executed, and it keeps the foreman with the crew. Accuracy and efficiency are improved as everything is easier to find, safer and more efficient. This, in turn, saves money for projects.
"If AWP works the way we believe it will, the productivity gains will be at least 15 percent," Vaughn said. "This will inherently shorten schedules, which will also save money and allow our client to get to market earlier.
"We believe that our total commitment to this approach, and our enhancement to the tools to employ AWP, will validate the CII committee's decision that AWP is the framework for productive and progressive construction."
For more information, visit www.aptim.com or call (833) 862-7846.
Advanced Work Packaging
In AWP, there are three types of work packages: construction work packages (CWPs), engineering work packages (EWPs) and installation work packages (IWPs).
- A CWP is a unit of the first level of a project's scope breakdown. It defines a logical and manageable division of work within the construction scope.
- An EWP is an engineering and procurement deliverable used to form CWPs. The EWP is generally aligned with the construction sequence and priorities.
- An IWP, also known as a field installation work package (FIWP), is the deliverable to a construction work crew that enables the crew to perform quality work safely, predictably, measurably and efficiently. An IWP is defined to be manageable, progressable and typically of limited size so a crew can complete the work in about a week.
For more information, visit www.construction-institute.org or www.coaa.org.
