Project Managers: How to Manage Commissioning

If you manage projects and need to understand the project management steps to manage commissioning, then this is for you.

I’m willing to bet this is how your projects unfold:

• Nobody pays too much attention to commissioning during design and construction phases – everyone is too busy and doesn’t have time to think about commissioning…
• Nobody is too concerned when design and construction milestones are missed (if they are even defined) – there’s still time to make up for delays…
• Commissioning is a scramble at the end of projects, with twice as much work to complete in half the time.

9 out of 10 projects are late and over-budget, so we know this is occurring on most projects. But this is hardly the best-practices required to successfully complete projects during commissioning and startup. The industry-norm is to manage projects this way, with no structured project management processes to manage commissioning.

It’s actually not Project Manager’s fault. If PMs have never been shown the PM frameworks required to manage commissioning, how are they supposed to know the steps to take years in advance of on-site testing? And commissioning frameworks are not just for commissioning managers – the success of projects starts with project managers.

If you are never given a Google map, then it’s very difficult to get to your destination. Yeah, you’ll get there eventually, but without guidance from Google, you’ll be guessing at every turn and probably making a few wrong turns that cost you time. You certainly won’t get to your destination as efficiently as possible. The same applies to projects – without the project management frameworks to manage commissioning, you’re just guessing along the way, not really sure how your project will turn out in the end. Mistakes will be made that will cost you time since you didn’t have the project management frameworks required to manage commissioning.

People at McDonald’s are taught the processes they need for the roles they fill, but people with far more complicated jobs on projects don’t. It makes no sense. More complicated roles such as project management are expected to figure it out on their own, rather than get the frameworks in advance to manage commissioning.

Would you want to stand on the line of the untrained person at McDonald’s? Would you want to use the software written by the engineer who was never told how the rest of the code worked? A lot of companies think their employees are so smart that they can figure things out on their own. That’s silly, and a risky way to complete projects.

So what are Project Managers to do?

The process to manage commissioning is well understood, but not well established within the construction industry. When PMs are given the methodology to manage commissioning, they are much more successful delivering projects on-time and on-budget.

The Integrated Completions Methodology defines the project management frameworks required to manage commissioning:

CSU Frameworks in Contracts – technical and commercial completion requirements must be in engineering, construction, and equipment procurement contracts, specific to your project and industry. Miss any of these, and you’ll have expensive change orders and claims while completing your project.

CSU Frameworks in FEED – commissioning and operational input is required during preliminary and detailed design reviews, especially for control system and HMI user interfaces. When feedback is not provided, there are lots of delays when later groups are seeing design packages for the first time.

CSU Frameworks in Off-Site Testing – since these are the first physical tests of equipment, testing in the factory must align with on-site testing, particularly for control and protection systems. When testing doesn’t align, you get expensive delays while issues are addressed.

Construction Completions – the last 10% of any task is always the hardest, and robust processes are required to ensure systems are 100% complete and that nothing gets missed. Do a half-assed job with this, and the end of your project suffers with expensive delays.

CSU Completion Workflows – commissioning is fast-paced, and you need robust methods to manage all the details and keep pace with testing. Your customized spreadsheets are not getting it done efficiently.

When Project Managers do not include one or more of these project management frameworks in projects, it’s easy for projects to end up late and over-budget:

• Projects are not managed for success during design and construction phases. Short term decisions are made that impact the long-term outcome of commissioning.
• Construction and commissioning groups are not aligned, with disputes and delays that impact the project in-service date
• Commissioning gets squeezed into half the time, with poor quality systems at the end

Project Managers must embed these project management frameworks in all stages of projects if they want to be successful.

Join our next live webinar to learn more about Commissioning Project Management. Get the Zoom link here.