Lessons- learned offshore wind South Korea
Erik Roelans
CEO at ER-Marine | Board Director at ECCK | Offshore wind | Senior Advisor in floating LNG
Offshore wind in South Korea is still in the early phase where I wish to share my opinion that capturing and learning from lessons- learned is a very valuable tool, essential to drive offshore wind Korea.
Value and benefits of lessons-learned
Knowledge Adds Value
We initiate lessons-learned processes with an awareness that knowledge adds value. Acknowledging that we are losing valuable knowledge gained during projects is an important first step.?
We must recognise that knowledge sharing is not completed when the project team members complete their tasks on a project.?
From ER-Marine's 2020-2023 coordination of onshore and offshore activities in South Korea we can mention that a few clients did not promote learning through project lessons and focused on getting the job done as fast as possible. Some clients choose to complete lessons-learned at the post-project review and only 2 clients implemented lessons- learned from the initial project phase.
Capturing lessons learned at the post-project review is better than not doing them at all
However, to create value, lessons- learned should be captured throughout the project lifecycle and not just at the completion of the project.
Essential is to create a learning environment for capturing, analysing, storing, disseminating, and using lessons-learned from projects. Creating a learning environment that nurtures continuous improvement must be supported by all Stakeholders involved.
For this to happen, learning environments should establish a climate of trust where it is safe to make mistakes (no blame culture) and the norm to share knowledge.
The lessons-learned process is an approach that is aimed to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge so that the knowledge can remain accessible for reference and use when required.
HOW? Capturing lessons-learned
As a first step, we must define the lessons we want to capture and then identify the specific knowledge areas that relate to our efforts for improving project management practices and processes.?
As a second step, we must determine the method of capturing lessons-learned. Our experience from 2020-2022 is that the lessons-learned were conducted using (remote) meetings due to Covid restrictions where in 2023 we have the much more effective face-to face meetings.
Very important is to capture both successes and failures on projects
Future projects can benefit by following the lessons-learned that were successful and avoiding the failed lessons. Often team members do not have a problem with talking about project successes but they do often downplay negative feedback because people tend to take the failed experience personally.
This is particularly an important issue in South Korea where loosing face is the worst that can happen to a person. Understanding Korean culture is essential to create the environment where team members share openly positive and negative opinions.
From working with our clients they all have in common that there is "No blame culture" established. However, this is not very common in Korean companies where people can be prevented from advancing in their careers because of previous mistakes or failures.?
Important is that the project team members must know that their managers will tolerate errors and they expect the team to convey to others information that may enable future success.
Without this in place the lessons-learned have no function and will fail.
Knowledge transfer is an important goal. In practice we must be sensitive when attempting to capture lessons-learned as not all team members are willing to share their specific knowledge as some see it as their "trade secret".
Lastly, it is important to capture lessons learned on all projects, even the small and uncomplicated.
Analysing lessons-learned
Analysing lessons-learned reduces the risk of making the same mistakes over and over again. Not analysing lessons- learned can result in incidents or accidents. Lessons-learned that are captured and analysed should be seen as key project experience which have relevance for future projects.
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There are many ways to perform a lessons-learned analysis; proven techniques exist and most of our clients, who are oil majors who transferred into Offshore Wind, have all a lot of experience with HSE and analysing techniques. Our experience is that these clients have all good established frameworks in place to perform in-depth analysis. The challenge is more social - cultural due to some cultural differences in South Korea.?
What happens after the lessons-learned analysis?
Clients and Stakeholders could use a project risk register as a resource for documenting risks and lessons-learned. Every risk has a potential of turning into an incident or accident.
It is important that a lessons-learned database is accessible to everybody and is perceived as useful.
In practice we note that sharing lessons- learned is not always happening. Knowledge is power and lessons-learned is knowledge-based information. Few companies retain project knowledge but do not share this knowledge.
We should promote lessons- learned in order for Stakeholders to benefit and learn from other projects and remove barriers for capturing and using lessons- learned.?
Typical barriers we see:
Lessons- learned need to be part of all Stakeholder's learning curve and to be driven top-down by the Client. Stakeholders should be given a sufficient amount of time to search through lessons-learned during the early phase of a new project.
All Stakeholders need to realise the value in lessons-learned.
Retaining knowledge from lessons-learned is imperative for continuous improvement. Lessons-learned need to be captured and shared between all Stakeholders. Client and Stakeholders need to support and enforce the use of lessons-learned within the learning environment.
ER-Marine's best practices for implementing lessons-learned
A culture of successful projects can be created by a a cycle of continuous learning. To avoid incidents or accidents, making mistakes over and over again, we suggest to use a 5-step continuous process for capturing knowledge throughout the life of a project.
From experience ER-Marine knows that lessons-learned made projects more successful and that individual knowledge has increased by using lessons-learned.
Most importantly - it improved safety awareness with all Stakeholders reducing the risk of incidents or accidents drastically.
TTT - Things Take Time
Offshore wind in South Korea is not a mature industry yet. Things take time to develop.
Establishing good lessons-learned processes are a first step in avoiding incidents or accidents and completing successful projects.
ER-Marine is recommending to measure Stakeholders's performance using lessons- learned. If Stakeholder's performance is not measured using lessons-learned, they will not go through the effort of conducting lessons-learned—even though they know they have benefited from practicing lessons learned in the past.
ER-Marine has a track record of safest project completions onshore and offshore in South Korea. We wish to build on this together with all Stakeholders involved in order to fast-track offshore wind Korea - and ultimately keeping everybody safe as Safety is first priority in all we do.
Reach out to ER-Marine to learn more