Parachute Your Whole Plant In

 Parachute Your Whole Plant In

Upon being asked by the “C” level of a major private sector client with an upcoming “giga” scale program to work with his delivery team to develop a strategy to deliver that would meet the owner’s aggressive schedule objectives it was quickly determined that success would be possible only if the delivery team was willing to go outside the box. This meant an openness to new, and at times radically different, design and contracting approaches.

An assessment of available labor and remote site productivity rates quickly flagged the near impossibility of meeting the schedule objectives if the entire facility was stick built at the ultimate site location. In order to kick the process off an initial call with the head of the owner delivery team was scheduled before a strategy team (whose help he might or might not want) arrived.

After the usual pleasantries at the start of this kickoff call, a simple question was posed, “If your whole plant could be built somewhere else and parachuted it in, would you care?”

There was a long pause. Clearly this was not the opening question that he expected. Finally he answered, “No…but where will you get a parachute big enough?” He was told that this was the strategy team’s problem.

As the strategy development process unfolded the team continuously looked at opportunities to take man-hours away from the site ultimately opting to build select facilities as modules which would be transported to the site. But even in the modularization discussions hard work was required to change mindsets and frameworks. The strategy needed to get the existing delivery team past “how many 40 (or 53) foot containers” to the notion of 1000 ton plus modules that were either major segments of a project or even an entire project.

The choice of modularization changed design sequence, procurement approach, logistics and construction sequence but it took unavailable man-hours of effort off the critical path and away from the highest cost, least productive construction location.

And yes we did consider flying the plant in…but not parachuting it down.