Why Interfaces Decide Commissioning Success?

Paul Turner: Today, we’re talking about a very important topic on why interfaces decide commissioning success, and I’m pleased to be joined by David Tain, the Chairman of our Technical Committees, as well as Graham Temke, lead of our Commissioning Technical Committee. How are you guys doing today?

David Tain / Graham Temke: Very good man, doing good. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Really happy to be here.

Paul Turner: Excellent, and interfaces really do play a critical role in commissioning success, right? Individually, all parts of the project may work successfully, but they can’t come together as one plant process. Then that’s going to lead to a lot of problems on projects, as we often see. So let’s start with you, David. What is the core mandate of the Commissioning Technical Committee in terms of advancing the profession and helping practitioners understand things like the importance of interfaces?

David Tain: You know, thank you again, thank you for having us. I’m really happy to be here early. Morning everybody, and good evening, afternoon or night when you guys are everywhere in the world. The core message for the OR, the core Monday for the technical committee poll, precisely in all the areas, right? Not only we have, as you know, we have 3 branches, we have the commissioning branch, we do have the operational awareness branch and we don’t have the outcome assurance branch. And the mandate is essentially the same, right?

We want to advance the profession that we want to elevate. So all this fragmented knowledge that is across the world wants to make sure that we come to a common ground. So to be able to standardize good practices at a global level, particularly with commissioning, we would like to elevate that as a profession from a fragmented execution focused activity. We would like to elevate that into a more disciplined system-driven capability.

And not that right. So we want to make sure that people don’t treat commissioning not only as an activity, but it is a capability of the organization that governs how the complex assets are relied upon to transition to operation, right? So the ones expecting me in the elevations. So how do we do that? The first thing is pretty much precisely what we’re doing right now. Facilitating on these technical forums, ensuring that you know, we can gather professionals from all around the world and share the best practices. We advance in the profession by defining and standardizing and continuing to evolve. This discipline in the form of a consistent frameworks, global frameworks that can be applied that we draw from different geographies and different professions and different industries and creates the consistent frameworks methodologies, take the best of that and take the best possible practices, not prescriptive, but at least, you know, making sure that a global framework that that ensures effectiveness in the commissioning discipline competency models.

That’s exactly that. I mean, benchmarking-based practices want to make sure that this is repeatable, right? So repeatable and successful, and each project is unique, right? So that’s the reason why we want to create all this frame-based framework with the best of the knowledge across the world, right? So, of course, the most important thing right now that we’re doing is all this research and knowledge sharing, knowledge is advancing, to make sure that as we advance and as information evolves, as knowledge advances across the world, we want to make sure that we integrate that and facilitate professionals everywhere.

With this forum, you’re going to see progressively that we’re going to have particular technical discussions on some particular topics, systemization start up. I mean, we’re going to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to participate, learn and contribute to the discipline. Of course, that’s gonna allow us to come from an evidence-based systemised commissioning practice. That’s exactly what we want to do. And particularly today, another way that I see is just shaping how organization manage critical interfaces because commissiong is one key portion of that.

Interfaces are the most persistent failure points in the projects, particularly in commissioning. Commissioning is exposed to multiple interface engineering and construction operations. And you know, we want to get out of this narrative that we all know. I said, well, you know, we compress at the end of the project, which is good. That is what we are doing about that, how we’re ensuring that we don’t end compressed at the end of the project, but also we generate A capability, a capability in the organization that allows us to spread all across the life cycle of the project consciously and effectively.

Paul Turner: Graham, from your perspective, why do interfaces between the groups that are working on projects from engineering, construction and vendors, commissioning teams, why is this consistently become a failure point with regards to team integration and system integration during the commissioning phase?

Graham Tenke: Well, thanks for having me, guys. This is obviously my first technical presentation to you guys, and it’s good to have. David was quite point on. Whereas commissioning is a very critical juncture in a project, especially as it has varied over the years. And historically, we have kind of acted as an overarching link between engineering and construction and commissioning and operations. We’ve always been the binder in that glue. And I mean, this is common in every type of commissioning project because they are varied. I mean, let’s be honest about that. Our role has been very difficult to actually nail down specific steps for a specific, general area like commissioning. So we have always been that binder in the glue, right?

We’ve, we’ve always linked engineering, construction, operations, and obviously commissioning; we’ve linked them all together. And optimally, I think the CSU should be involved from the initial design phase all the way through to hand over to operations. And many times this will include initial startup and minimal help from the green operators that we get to help bring up through the ranks, so that they are able to operate the plant afterwards. That’s also a big struggle is this. We’re tasked with that as well, on top of getting the plant up and running. So for CSU, being involved in a project is a lot like being a single parent in an elementary school. You can attest from the fact that we are the guiders, we are the pushers of the project. And we are also known as the picky group project, always kind of unhappy with us because we were getting into the details. And usually what happens is getting into those details, making sure that everything is running properly. In the end, it slows the project down, and nobody likes that, right? But it’s a very necessary aspect of the project and getting things happening. So, so how do we manage these groups? How do we manage, you know, engineering, construction and operations? How do we manage these groups? This is a common issue and a common problem.

So knowing that our goal in commissioning is to ultimately hand over inspected, tested and safe projects to operations, that’s our goal. And notice I said safely, this is one of the biggest issues and one of the biggest challenges that commissioning faces is to keep on that safety train and make sure that what we’re handing over is in a safe condition, right?Graham Temke: And it’s always been a struggle having safety paramount. We’re always under the crunch with time, schedule, and money, of course. So safety has to be made paramount for commissioning. That’s the basic, basic, basic premise of commissioning is to do it safely, right?Graham Temke: So first, I think you need to know your in-laws, which means we hypothetically have to sit down and have a meet and greet with all of the teams, and we have to build those teams. And everybody hates team building initially. I think everybody hates that whole idea of getting together and making a group work. And it’s quite often challenging to do that. And hopefully, you have a good project manager who’s on board with that to make sure that these groups talk to each other and they make things happen, right?

So the project manager, hopefully, he’s on your side, and he schedules this, or you help schedule it, and make it happen because a kickoff meeting is critical to everybody understanding who’s doing what. And you need to know who was, who was in the zoo and what they are doing and what the approval and chain of command is. You need that communication right off the get-go. If that fails, then things just cascade into more failures of interfaces like that. So, you can’t possibly do your job on your own. And you need help, right? And you need these other groups. You definitely need these other groups, and you need to develop that relationship and develop your allies in this. The problem is, is that a lot of projects are almost like a tournament, and everyone has their own team, their own agenda, and not everyone is going to pass you the puck willingly. Crafting the Commissioning Execution Plan for Project Success. To me, step one would be to create a commissioning framework plan or a commissioning execution plan. They’re pretty much the same thing. So we need this execution plan. It sounds kind of ominous, ominous when you say execution, but this plan would outline how commissioning would do business and what they’re going to do and how they will do it.

So not only for these groups, but for the commissioning team as well. I mean, you have to pretty much train your commissioning team because a lot of these commissioning, they’re transient by nature, right? And they want to know how things are going to all come together. And not like David was saying, not every project is the same. It’s not structured the same. So we need to have that understanding. We need to have a written plan of how things are going to transpire, how we’re going to get it across the line, and how to do it safely, right? You have to explain in simple terms what your expectations are and who should be doing what. So, rest assured, engineering won’t have a framework plan. They depend on standards, codes, and work practices, and they don’t know a lot about conducting engineering business with other groups. They’re not good at communicating. They’re eye linking themselves in a lot of cases, right. You know, engineers are a cliquish bunch. So, and construction, well, it’s doubtful that they are going to work from anything but a construction work package. They’re going to install it this way.

And that’s the way it’s always been done. And oops, we kind of screwed up there, you know, so they, that’s the way construction works. And evidently it works that way, and it works successfully, but it’s not always the best way to work because construction work, they don’t want to really deal with engineering. They don’t want to deal with commissioning asks. And we have to develop that relationship. It’s getting better in the industry, these relationships, but they are still problematic. And operations, well, operations is most likely going to follow their standard operating procedures, and usually what operations do on a new project, at least they are developed, and they’re brought in from a very several other places, and they are having to try to work as they did on their previous project where they worked. And the problem with that is that you have a myriad of operational styles coming in and trying to work together. So they got their own issues and their own problems. How operations really do business seems to be a well-kept secret, if they don’t really share well in many cases. And as everybody knows, they’re infallible and always right. So, it’s truly never the same from one project to another with operations. So I’ve operated plans for over 25 years. So I’ve seen different methods of operations and how they deal with people.

Some have been very tight and say, ” You know, this is the way we’re going to do it, and we’re not very flexible in that way. Those are the groups that we’re looking at dealing with primarily, anyway. So by creating this commissioning framework plan or commissioning execution plan, it is quite liberating because it’s always budget-constrained for one thing. And so you can actually work around your issues and your problems with your budget in mind. If you have a budget, it’s 3% of the total project cost, and it is rising more than 3% in many cases. If you are operating in the budget of say 5% overall project, I think that’s manageable in today’s world, projects would like to keep you as low as possible on that. And of course, but there’s always commissioning can always develop a reason. If they’re working within a budget, they can say, hey, we need this extra money for this reason. If you understand the budget, you understand what you need to do in the framework plan and who is helping you and where you need extra, extra money for completing your tasks. If you have it in writing, it’s easier to explain and easier to justify why you’re spending that kind of money. And people understand holistically what you’re doing. And so if you know what you’re doing and what your expectations are in this plan, and what the realistic timeline might be.

You have your scheduling in mind and what you need to do, and it’ll highlight the barricades and trip falls that you’ve never expected. So you create this plan, you’re going to understand those barricades and those trip falls ahead of time, and you’re going to plan. So planning is critical. So one of the goals of the commissioning technical committee, with the help of a lot of other people, is to develop a global standard way of doing business based on safety, especially and best practices. And trying to do a global standard for commissioning is a difficult task because commissioning is spreading out into different areas. Like, I think I was reading the other day that 34% of commissioning in the US now is for data centers. Data centers are a new but old commissioning Ave. that we’re getting into, but 34% of commissioning is now in data centers. That’s amazing. Commissioning is now a billion-dollar-a-year industry, you know, in North America, and it’s just growing.

We have to get these to help those people get the commissioning aspect out there and make the businesses understand what commissioning does and the value of commissioning. We need to have a global standard that helps everybody progress from design all the way to operation. And hopefully, we can get something that gives. We want to build those tools. We want to build that whole toolbox for commissioning people out there so that they would have a library of knowledge that they could depend on. And if we standardize commissioning, it’ll be more efficient, it’ll be safer, it’ll be something that we can be proud of, that commissioning is taking the wheel in a lot of cases.

Paul Turner: Lots of great analogies in there. I love the hockey analogy, and you mentioned that commissioning can sometimes slow the project down. But I think your last points there were key, that with a good plan, your commissioning execution plan doesn’t necessarily have to slow things down at all. Proper planning is key to being able to execute commissioning in Florida, right?

Graham Temke: Yeah. So a lot of the unique problems with commissioning is, is you have that islanding of engineering and construction, commissioning and operations. They they island and isolate themselves, and they need to share their cookies with everybody in the schoolyard, right? They need to share problems. They need to share their successes as well. You can’t do it alone. And one of the key things is, of course, communication and planning. But when you communicate, you’ve got to do it effectively. You can’t be afraid of picking up the phone. You can’t be an e-mail guru. You can’t do all of that. You have to do it effectively. And really, it gets down to the basics of it. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions, right? There’s no such thing as a stupid question. It’s a clarifying thing. You need to clarify things by asking questions.

And one of the things that I’ve noticed, you know, we’re becoming more of a desktop commissioning group, and we have to get out there, and we have to be available, and we have to circulate. We have to make a lot of decisions at the water cooler, right? You need to be available, you need to be active, you need to be visible, you need to be nosy, and you need to be present and engaged, getting back to those basics of communication. So that’s a big, a big asset for anybody who’s in commissioning, to let’s help solve problems. So everyone hates having problems. And if you aren’t helping, maybe you’re part of the problem. So, help solve problems. And not just your problems, but also help solve other people’s problems, too.

David Tain: And that precisely is the outcome assurance. That surge in trace is exactly that. That mindset is the driver, the backbone of the outcome assurance, right? So is everybody. The project, the outcome itself is everybody’s responsibility. And the reason why all these frameworks, all these plans that you mentioned, is to have a solid foundation on a standard that takes the best of all across the world and applies it practically.

And you know, projects are going to become, they’re not transitions are not manifested transactions. They are actually integrated responsibilities where everybody has a skin in the game, and everybody has a piece of contribution to the actual outcome, not to the lever project, not to the lever scope. We’re delivering outcomes, right? So, it’s only through these ideas you’re putting together based on the global standardization, taking the best of the best across the world and evolving it, right? So taking the best doesn’t mean that you’re gonna have a static standard. You’re gonna you’re gonna evolve as the induce the industry evolves, exactly what you precisely said.

Paul Turner: So, question for yourself, Dave, then how can the ICxA technical committees define some of these global standards so that we do get a systematized process, a repeatable and predictable process to manage interfaces and deliver projects successfully?

David Tain: Well, that’s actually happening right now. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we are we have the base global standards, but all this knowledge is being squeezed in the in the way of different forms, right. As you can see in the subsequent weeks, we’re gonna have actual focus groups. We have technical groups, and we’re bringing technical people from all across the world. We actually promote this forum, attract the global talent, you know, to discuss at the same time, they learn from each other. I always like to use these words. It’s a co-evolutionary. A process that eventually is going to end, changing the way we think and evolving the entire execution ecosystem. I say, well, so that’s the most important thing, Paul is just trying to make sure that it is a win-win at a global level.

adiness team is off.

That’s the only way to produce these global forums through these open discussions at a technical level from multiple industries. And I mentioned in that in the last couple of weeks, we have professionals from totally different areas. We have from the nuclear industry, we have here in the old sands. We have in Latin America, we have the natural gas in Brazil. We even have James, our Vice President in Scandinavia, that come from the aquaculture brand new science for me data centers that Graham mentioned. We are now growing, you know, pains. I want to make sure that all the standards are industry-agnostic. Eventually. The way we’re helping, the way we are changing the execution ecosystem is through this national activities foundational strategy that we’re implementing across the globe, where, as I mentioned, professionals contribute with the idea, with shared knowledge.

We are all facing the same challenges across the world. And of course, at the same time, we learn from each other. We want to make sure that all the backbone standards that we build are industry agnostic, but take the best of the best possible practice. And eventually, you know, when you go to your specific projects, you will adapt to your specific conditions, but you’re always going to have this capability eventually. That’s what it is. Paul, these standards, these forums and these technical ideas are not going to help activities. It’s going to generate organizational capabilities that are going to make the whole industry better. And when, when I mean better translated into safety, that’s the first thing, cost effectiveness and high quality projects and high quality assets that can last as long as possible, right? Maintenance costs and all the trickle down that happens after the well, after the project A-Team and the actual readiness team is off.

Paul Turner: Mastering Interfaces: Schedule, Completions, and Long-Term Consequences. Graham, you mentioned a lot of the critical interfaces that exist on projects for systems and assets for a lot of the groups that are involved, even the communication interfaces that you mentioned there. So it would seem like interfaces are really where the project value is captured or lost. So should interfaces be a critical focus for people to master and really become the defining capability for world-class commissioning?

Graham Temke: Wow, that’s a brilliant question. It’s got a lot of tentacles to it. So these interfaces are a lot like a three-legged stool. So if you have a weakness in one leg, what happens, right? You need strong interfaces, and you’re correct in identifying these interfaces to the likes of completions, test integrity and schedule. Let’s talk about the schedule for a second here. So with the schedule, we depend on an integrated schedule with construction, and everybody is looking at this integrated schedule, and it’s a very difficult thing to put together this integrated schedule. You have to put a construction schedule together with the light of commissioning and actual start-up in mind, right? So commissioning really has to be involved in a schedule. They need to get beyond the bulk completions to the finer, more detailed system completions.

Your building and concrete and your steel and everything else, your columns and all your pieces and parts are coming together. But it’s the detailed system completions that commissioning is getting involved with more so. And we have to figure out how to put those pieces together properly so that when we go to start up a project, construction understands we need these parts first, usually utilities, right, that kind of thing. Construction needs to understand why we’re we’re wanting this certain area first. We say you need cooling water, or we need air, that kind of thing. So, the construction needs to understand that. And a lot of times, they don’t just want to bulk build, and let’s get going. And it takes a lot of planning to do this, especially on the part of commissioning. So commissioning has a sequence of what they want first in order to start up properly and on time, and it takes a lot of people and a lot of oversight to get it right.

It gets in the way of being the big thing, and it doesn’t show much in the way of progress. When you get into the finer details of the system, we need to have a schedule that’s pretty solid. But as everyone knows, the system’s completion is critical to commissioning work and its schedule. CSU has to be very, very involved in scheduling and quite often they’re, they’re overlooked in that regard. And we again have to get back to the plan, the execution plan, saying we want to be inserted here. This is what we want to do, what we want to be involved with. And these are the things that we can control. The more planning that is detailed and inserted into the schedule, the more the project will see slips and delays associated with construction. So this is the path we need to follow.

We need to have a solid integrated schedule with a lot of interaction from everybody. That’s the path we’re going to follow. We’re going to follow this all the way from initial construction all the way to operations. It’s got to be on the schedule, and everybody will understand this pathway, and when their involvement in it, it shines a light on what systems need to be turned over first. If you follow those blocks, then we can get ahead of the game. So, and completions, well, from a turnover perspective, we need to see the documentation and the proof of life before we take a system. So otherwise it’ll be on commissioning to clean up the mess, or at least get into a leg wrestle with the project to fix the problems that we discovered. So, completion of a really good Bank of test records is vital to commissioning as well. So the test records are going to show what testing has to be done on instruments, and what methods and steps we need to take to complete some of these programs, right? So have a solid Bank of test records in your completions, and the better the checklists, the more thorough the result. So having a really solid completion software system and people who know how to use it intimately is invaluable, right?

Make sure you have solid Bank of quality test records. And if you fail on the testing aspect, it’s going to bite you in the end, guaranteed. So, it’s going to cause delays. So, have this solid Bank of inspection test records, go through them, make sure they’re signed off properly and have that testing done. And the testing is becoming a lot more complex these days than it used to be in the past. So we need a solid Bank of the Itrs, and these are the headlights on the scheduling path, and make sure that they’re bright enough to make a difference. And so the completions involve the transfer of care costing controls of systems. Commissioning is a systems-based organisation. They look at the details and get these systems together, knitting these systems together just to start up right. So it’s critical that all of the parties involved in this know how this is going to go down.

So, back to the commissioning framework. Document it. It’s the future forecaster of what commissioning expects at turnover and what they will do, and how it’s going to happen. And if commissioning has a plan and they’re going to have solid legs on this stool, then they’ll be able to dictate the sequence of turnover of systems so that it all layers together. Like lasagna. It doesn’t help to have the cheese ready when the noodles are still cooking. So we need to have systemization. We need to have a sequence of progression that will get us started right. You need to be at the construction table. You got to push your agenda as well. And construction milestones and bonuses are based on bulk progress, not necessarily on system detailed progress. So expect a manpower fight, or you get what you get to help you do. Your cause is to get the apprentices to help you. So know what you need and ask for it.

Paul Turner: You mentioned a lot of those critical interfaces, too. I want to go back to this question, David, on these critical interfaces and transfer of assets through these various phases, right, because these interfaces are important, but we often see that this transfer is compromised by again interface misalignment. So what are the long-term consequences on asset performance as we move into operational readiness when these critical interfaces and asset transfers aren’t managed correctly?

David Tain: There are two things here. Completing one of the key things that I interface with is a topic that I have been along my career fascinating me since day one. And for sure, I mean, we’re gonna talk about the long term, but one of the things that I would like to add is that interfaces are one of the key indicators of complexity, one of the things that pull overlook and when they start looking at words like complexity, ambiguity. So, trying to put it into practice is something that is paramount to define, including our technical committees. One of the things he was in a couple of workshops that I did a few years ago, I used to end my presentation with the dev release in the details. Well, dev release is actually in the interfaces, not in the details of complexity; this complexity is either controlled or allowed to propagate into failure in the form of risks.

So this is what Graham mentioned as well. This integration, this tool analogy, we, the chain, is as strong as the weakest of these links. We want to make sure that all these interfaces work well together, and we orchestrate. And I know that I try not to use these buzzwords, that orchestration is really important to understand, because orchestration is more than coordination and management integration. Orchestration entails the permanent evolution of the interfaces. It’s just like acting on the right actions at the right time because information is going to evolve. One slight change in the midway of the construction that you need to adapt, and a lot of things are going to trickle down.

It’s important for you to orchestrate these activities with a mindset of co-evolution. So you want to make sure that we as a team, we as a project, we as an asset, co-evolve to ensure that this outcome assurance is preserved and, of course, the value is protected, particularly the long-term consequences. So is pretty much everything is going to be a much realizing operational risk as soon as you start coming from a controlled construction and relatively controlled construction environment, when nothing is alive, you start pushing, watching just starts testing. You start seeing components working together, and if you haven’t anticipated any mode of failure, you’re going to enter into improvisation. And as soon as you enter that realm, complexity stems, and you come from a complexity to a chaotic regime. We know you are pretty much at the mercy of the reactiveness of your team and yourself. You’re learning now you are, you know, the consequences can be unpredictable, from money loss, value loss, to, as I mentioned in the previous webinar, having fatalities at work.

Of course, you’re going to come from the frequency of your alarms and manual interventions to now long-term consequences like increased maintenance costs for train operators’ frequency, you know, trying to bypass your alarms, bypassing your system. Now you don’t know if the alarm is true or not, sending the additional increment, increasing the field personnel, which actually, of course, as soon as you start increasing that, you increase your exposure to safety, you increase your exposure to yourself and your team to save the incidents. And of course, we’re talking this one here. And you can see that as we talk about that, you’re dripping value, you’re leaking value, rising all sorts of stuff. So the long-term consequences can be, you know, really, really instrumental, and can be really big in terms of not only the exposure, but also, you know, the leak of values. And, you know, as soon as you enter into this improvisation work, trying to go into damage control time to repair, right, where you weren’t able to anticipate risk management through a robust integration to a robust orchestration that takes you to this transfer, it can be detrimental.

I mean, you can see that we have seen plants that are actually dealing with problems that were identified, starting up years later. And that was supposed to be, you know, an automated process. Now you have a manual process, right? So you not only invested in a technology, you invested now into a parameter that was determined even in the engineering phase, but also now you’re sending people to this field and creating a new best practice, which is quite inefficient, leaking value every time that you are bypassing a system just because it wasn’t able to perform the way you anticipated. So the long-term consequence can be devastating, as I said, and can come from bypassing, doing a bridge into a circuit to ensure a latent property. I want to make sure that as soon as this is understood, when we talk about long-term consequences, we’re talking about a latent problem. We’re talking about something that you cannot pinpoint, that you cannot do only through manual processes. And it’s a latent problem that at any moment can stem in a different consequence and can lead to different scenarios that are probably highly likely you did not anticipate.

Paul Turner: These latent problems are a challenge for sure because they’re coming out of different budgets, right? The latent problem would be an OpEx problem versus a CapEx problem during projects. And unfortunately, it’s viewed that way sometimes, as it’s the next guy’s problem to deal with, right? But these interfaces are critical. So from your perspective, Graham, how do project teams, particularly the commissioning team, address some of the value that’s leaked? That’s David’s talking about when it comes to interfaces. What can commissioning teams do to prevent that value from leaking and spilling over into OpEx?

Graham Temke: So, another complex question, but I kind of hark back to deficiencies in construction and commissioning. So deficiencies usually show up in the Itrs. The inspection test records, so agencies are there. We have to know how to manage these deficiencies. You cannot leave these deficiencies unresolved. Or what happens is like David was saying, is that you get into a bypass this and bypass that situation, which is naturally unsafe, of course, in our industry. So you’ve got the deficiencies in the Itrs, you’ve got a master punch list that you have to manage. And you know, the master punch list, although it’s ideally it’s a construction issue, a construction problem, commissioning has a lot of onus on that master punch list as well. So when we walk down the system, we look at the deficiencies, and the deficiencies show up. They’re dependent on the level of knowledge and expertise of the people who are actually looking at the deficiencies. A lot of people would not catch a lot of the deficiencies.

So that experience level has to come into play. And so you have the master punches, you’ve got the deficiencies on the Itrs, and then you’ve got the management of change issues developed right from design. Pretty much this is another unresolved issue. In many cases, when you’re going to start up, some of these Mocs are not done. So now you’ve got, you’ve got your deficiencies and the ITRS, you’ve got your master punch list, you’ve got the MOC issue and the inspection records and all of these deficiencies and problems. They manifest themselves like a nasty virus if you do not pay attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to have deficiencies, and nobody wants to really deal with them because they are, they are quite time-consuming. They might be a replacement part that has to be ordered and and installed and it has to be the right piece of equipment has to be tested. These deficiencies cause delays, of course, right? And nobody likes that.

So from that standpoint, we’re managing that in the completion system. The more robust the completion system is, the happier everybody is at the end of the day, because you have a reduced amount of deficiencies, hopefully, and all depends on the constructor and their quality. And there’s another interface that we have to be involved with, which is the quality. The quality and engineering is 50% of that come from commissioning in the end. It’s not engineered properly, it’s not the right product that’s been installed. These are the issues that commissioning faces. We can’t look at that and not deal with it. Dealing with it early is better than waiting just before startup. So we do, we do have a capture net, of course, a pre-startup safety review, which is the pre-startup safety review started back in the 80s with the explosions that we had in India. So the industry got together and said, Hey, we need a pre-startup safety review, a checklist that is solid enough to capture all of our issues. And, this is this, these unresolved issues usually show up in the PSSR because the question will be specifically enough saying, have you done this going, Oh, no, we haven’t done that. Do we have to do that? You know, these things show up. So there’s another unresolved issue that needs to be capped, and the final safety review, it has to happen before startup. It’s mandatory now. It’s the OSHA requires it.

We have to have that safety review done, and many times the safety review becomes a work to go list, and it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be a work to go list and get those work to go items in. The deficiencies need to show up earlier than just before startup. These are methods to capture a lot of these deficiencies and unresolved interface issues. The more that we ignore things, of course, you know, this is just basic life. It becomes a complicated mess if you start ignoring things. So we can’t overlook deficiencies; we can’t overlook the master punch list. We need to work with it and get all of this everything resolved. All these interfaces need to be resolved before startup, and this is the challenge, right? But because we are a startup, risk analyzing issues all the time and ranking them by severity for the sake of the schedule, it’s going to spread like a virus, and we need to get beyond that and discover the deficiencies early with pre-walkdowns of our own. Maybe shine a light on it, make it known and don’t wait until the final PSSR walk down to capture these issues, to be proactive, not reactive.

Paul Turner: You mentioned experience as critical to being involved in identifying some of these deficiencies, which I agree. And that’s one of the core mandates of the ICxA technical committees: to capture all this knowledge and experience from our wise commissioning experts. Because this knowledge and experience are retiring, and we need a method to transfer this body of knowledge to the younger generations to help them learn, understand and get the knowledge and experience as well. So, for people who are interested in building this body of knowledge, David, and contributing to the technical committee’s efforts to capture this body of knowledge, how can people get involved, David, if they want to contribute to this effort?

David Tain: In multiple ways, I mean #1, if you have an idea, reach out to your original lead. So we have original leads across the five continents, right? So no matter where you are, we’re going to have a regional lead that is going to guide you through what is the best way you have an idea. We’re going to have technical forums. Please subscribe to the ICxA page so that you can actually contribute with the knowledge. You can contribute with the articles, papers, anything, any knowledge that you feel you have, you’re going to be a key part because you are part of the industry. No matter where you are, we have global chapter leads, chapter leads, and regional leads all across the continent. So be in touch, follow, and become a member.

And yeah, so if you have an idea, just reach out or open. And we’re going to be pulling together technical discussion forums just, you know, as I say, industry agnostic and also at the same time particular issues, pains that the industry has. So I encourage you to join in these technical discussions so that you can learn. And this is all about that. The main mandate here, as you mentioned at the beginning, is that ICxA is a non-profit organisation whose mandate is just to advance knowledge and create a body of knowledge across the world. So that’s the most important thing. And at a global level, no matter where you are, you can participate. You can as a professional, you can not only participate, but also contribute and learn.

Graham Temke: I would cherish and love anybody telling me this is the problem I’m having out here. I would like people to say or have some avenue of saying, look, this is a problem for our industry or me specifically, in the way I’m doing commissioning for myself, for our technical arm, anyway. If you have a problem in commissioning, don’t think that the problem doesn’t exist somewhere else, right? Though if you show your problems, they can say why is this so problematic? And we need to understand what those problems are or the issues that you’re having in your day-to-day work. And collectively, hopefully, we can bring everybody up to a level of confidence that’s saying that’s a problem. I can handle it because it’s been handled before, and this is how it was done. It helps people and relieves the stress of everyday life for the commissioning guys. If we understand what your issues are out there, ask for our help, maybe giving us some subject matter that we can actually look at and respond to, that would be quite helpful.

Paul Turner: Yeah, I definitely encourage everybody to get involved. There are challenges in the industry for sure. And ICxA is here to help with support. So definitely reach out to anybody on the ICxA team. If, like you, like Graham is suggesting, there are specific issues that need a deeper dive to dig into, then that’s what the team is here for. Reach out to David, me, or Graham. And that’s something the technical committee can definitely look into for sure.

I see there are some questions. Let’s go through questions in the chat here in the time that we have left. And as we’re going through the questions, anybody that’s watching live, if you have an additional question, please feel free to shoot it into the chat. And this is your opportunity for the experts here to answer your questions and get you the information that you need.

Q & A

Paul Turner: So the first one we’ve got here is maybe we’ll ask you this one. Graham, in your experience, how can we better align interface management with the project progress measurement system to ensure risks are caught before the commissioning phase? And how do you handle the conflict where two different EPC contractors have competing priorities at a critical interface point? Now this is a common problem for sure, and a very interesting question. What are your thoughts, Graham?

Graham Temke: Yeah. When you usually have different EBC contractors, generally, they don’t like each other because they didn’t get the whole bid. And so their communication between each other is a problem is it’s a critical problem, and they are not going to help each other in most cases. You’ve got a few bridges there that you can explore. Unfortunately, commissioning needs to be the bridge there. The commissioning from square one in a project is the bridge between engineering, construction, and operations. So they’re going to be there hopefully for all these issues and priorities that you need to get done. So they need to communicate, and I know we go back to that again, but you need to understand their issues and their problems and help solve their problems. This will show up at the project progress measurement system, which is a schedule. It’s going to show up in the schedule. It’s always been problematic having more than one EPC on site, and there should be wedged into producing at the same quality and the same rate.

But that’s never going to happen when you have two entities like that working together. You’re going to have this offset all the time and it usually reflects itself on the schedule, but critically, there’s only one commissioning team. Usually, you have to work with that. And unfortunately, it’s always unfortunate that that happens when you have two different contractors, and they usually are fighting each other, and sometimes they might be sharing facilities as well. So it’s a struggle for sure, and it’s not the best scenario, but it’s through communication, and you have to communicate with both sides equally and make them know what your demands are. Commissioning is in control of this point because you are going to be receiving this, and you need to make sure that what you’re receiving is to your level of expectation.

David Tain: And that’s exactly why we have a commissioning, which is just the interface management. And just to go back to the same question from EDOA, it’s not an activity; it’s a capability of the organization. Is the organization able to just integrate and orchestrate all these resources? So it’s not just normally what you see is that somebody just put an interface management and surface manager there, but that person is an orphan person that’s trying just to struggle between different competing stuff. It’s a capability, it’s not an activity, it’s not a function, it’s an actual capability of the organization to integrate all these resources. That’s your interfaces. I cannot overemphasise that enough. Interface is one of the key contributors to complexity in a project. And then as soon as we’re talking about complexity, we’re talking about improvisation, we’re talking about a transient, we’re talking about irregularities that are probably unanticipated and uncontrolled.

Paul Turner: So in closing, if there was one thing you could leave the audience with, Graham, if you were sitting across the table from a project executive, what would you tell them with regards to commissioning interfaces that they should be planning and preparing for a smooth project completion?

Graham Temke: The earlier that commissioning is involved, the better. And unfortunately, the world that we’re living in today is that our window of opportunity between construction and operations is getting squeezed. We have to start squeezing back, saying, look, this is the value of commissioning at the design stage. We need to be on the model reviews, the operability reviews, looking at it from the perspective of commissioning. Now, to convince the project managers and the developers, we have to convince them of the value of commissioning at that point, and how it saves them money. In the end, it’s all down to the budget. Nobody likes to pay for the budget of commissioning. A lot of people in the project feel that, you know, commissioning can be done by anybody, and everybody in commissioning knows that’s not the case, right?

It’s a very specific, specific thing, a very specific industry is commissioning. So the earlier involvement that we can be, you know, on first base, we get the first base that traveling to first base. We need to be hitting a home run for one thing. So we’re just passing through first base. We don’t want to be a baseline hit. And it’s like, OK, well, we’re going to, you know, just make it the first phase. We need to be totally involved in the project itself, not just the commissioning phase, because commissioning extends through all stages of a project. And the earlier that we’re involved, the better.

Paul Turner: Lots of good analogies. We’ve got some hockey analogies in there and some baseball analogies. We might need to get some golf analogies in there, too. How about from yourself, David? What would you like to leave the audience with here today?

David Tain: If I want to leave the audience with that particular today is is one of the main motors. So the devil is not in the details, he’s in the interfaces. So always pay attention to creating a capability. Make sure that, in particular, commissioning is so critical. Anything goes from being in a controlled environment as soon as you push your button to a live environment that you better anticipate. The more integration, the more standardized, the best knowledge that you have, the more prepared you’re going to be so that you can transfer access in a safe, sustainable and reliable way to operations.

Paul Turner: Really good discussion today. Appreciate your insights and input, David and Graham. And for anybody watching this live or watching the replay, please feel free to reach out to ICXA, get involved in the technical committees, and we’re here to help you with these complex problems and challenges on projects so that we can all deliver successful projects in the end. So thanks for joining everyone, and have a great day.

Graham & David: Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. See you again.

Paul Turner: Visit icxa.net for more information.

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Are You Responsible for Project Outcomes?