We’ve got another great session to go through, focusing on another part of the ICA Global Commissioning Standard. This is part two of our five-part series to help everyone understand the ICA Commissioning Standard, the best practices for commissioning, and how to help you and your projects succeed with commissioning. So, we’ll get started here in just a minute. In the meantime, let me get the slides pulled up.
Last week, we went through the first part of the ICA Global Commissioning Standard, and this week we’re diving into part two, which includes ICA-003 and ICA-004. These parts of the standard are really the foundation of the overall Global Commissioning Standard, serving as the path to commissioning leadership. Because commissioning is really about leadership. Often, people think commissioning is just about testing, but commissioning is actually about leadership. That’s what we’ll explore here today.
Last week, on the 26th, we covered ICA-001 and ICA-002, discussing the phases of the commissioning process as well as some of the terminology that’s important to use in commissioning. It’s critical that we’re all speaking the same language and understand the details of commissioning. Today, in part two, we’re going to explore ICA-003, which focuses on roles and responsibilities, as well as ICA-004, which addresses commissioning strategy and planning. These are two very important documents that set your commissioning up for success and really allow you to step into that leadership role and lead your projects to success.
We’ll continue this each week. On March 12th, we’ll go through ICA-005, which covers commissioning engineering, manufacturing, and construction completions. On March 19th, we’ll discuss ICA-006, focusing on on-site testing, which is just one step of the process. Then, on March 26th, we’ll cover ICA-007 and ICA-008, addressing handover, in-service and closeout, safety and risk management, lessons learned, and continuous improvement.
The problem on a lot of projects is that there’s often not a strong leader who steps up and leads the commissioning process through all phases of the project. When nobody steps up, that’s often the reason projects fail. There are lots of doers on projects, but we need strong leaders who step up and lead the commissioning process. When it’s disorganized, with no structured commissioning process, that’s what leads to nine out of ten industrial mega projects failing, being late, and over budget. Commissioning is really the last line of defence on projects, holding everybody accountable and keeping the project on track for success, for an on-time and on-budget completion.
But the truth of the matter is, a lot of times on projects, people just wait for someone else to step up and take charge. I’m sure you’ve worked on projects where there are lots of people doing the work, but there’s maybe a bit of a leadership vacuum—someone hasn’t stepped up to be that strong commissioning leader and lead the commissioning process through all phases. What often happens on projects is that commissioning is ignored because there’s that missing strong leader who hasn’t stepped up and led commissioning right from the start of projects.
So, the important aspects we’re going to go through today are ICA-003 and ICA-004. ICA-003 defines the key roles and responsibilities for commissioning, and this is important because we need to make sure that the right roles are defined and that the right people are in those roles to fill each of those aspects of commissioning. As people say, you need to have the right seats on the bus and the right butts in those seats on the bus before we start going forward. ICA-004 focuses on embedding the commissioning strategy early in your project planning and execution. This is what’s required early in projects to make sure that the strategy is defined and that projects can actually be completed later, at the end, during on-site testing and startup.
This applies to all industries. Whether you’re working in the oil and gas industry, the power industry, any infrastructure or manufacturing facilities, wastewater treatment, or any large project that consists of more than just HVAC—any complex project with electrical, mechanical, and automation systems—the ICA Global Commissioning Standard definitely applies.
When you’re thinking about commissioning, there’s really that call to commissioning leadership. There are lots of people who want to do the testing, and we need those roles on projects. We need people to be the instrument techs, to do the HVAC test and balance, to handle electrical startups and mechanical startups, and those aspects. But what projects really need is that strong leader to step up and be the leader of all the commissioning doers—all the people doing the testing. The commissioning leaders who step up and lead projects are the ones whose projects win because they have a strong commissioning leader to lead them to success.
Every project that I’ve ever worked on that’s been successful has had one common factor: there’s that strong commissioning leader who took ownership of the commissioning process and led projects to success. Leadership is not a title; it’s the one who understands the commissioning process and steps up and makes that choice to be the leader and lead the projects to success. When we’re talking about roles and responsibilities, it’s really important that we define that leadership role and that you’re the one who takes that ownership, steps up, and is that strong leader to lead projects to success. It’s not a question of who will lead; the question is, will it be you who steps up and makes projects successful in the end?
We’ll go through a breakdown of ICA-003 because it’s very important to define the commissioning roles and responsibilities on a project. It’s the bedrock, the foundation of any successful project, that roles and responsibilities are correctly defined and everybody understands what those roles and responsibilities are—not just for commissioning, but for anything. Everybody needs to know what they’re doing and who’s responsible for what. A clear definition of roles and responsibilities is required on any team that you work in, and that’s why this is an important aspect of the ICA Commissioning Standard: this roles and responsibilities document. It’s critically important to define those clear definitions of what the roles are and who’s accountable for each aspect of the projects.
The commissioning manager role is the key leadership role that needs to step up on projects. They’re the ones who are the strong leaders and don’t hesitate to step up and lead projects. Commissioning management is a unique discipline where commissioning managers can see the chaos on projects—which are always chaotic, with lots of things going on—but can bring order to that chaos and bring projects to completion. It’s a critically important role on projects. When you’re the commissioning manager, you don’t wait for others to step up and lead and take charge. Commissioning managers know their role and are those strong leaders who guide projects to success. They don’t wait for direction; they’re the ones who can take initiative and keep projects from falling apart.
I’m sure you’ve been on projects where commissioning just seems like chaos because no one stepped up and led the process right from the beginning, and it just seems like cowboy commissioning at the end of the projects. That’s why this role exists. The question really is, are you the one who wants to step up and become that strong leader and implement the IC Global Commissioning Standard on your projects so that you can lead projects to success?
This is a typical org chart you would see on a lot of projects. The project manager, of course, is the overall project lead, and this chart applies to any project structure—whether you’re working on an EPC contract, for the client, or for a separate commissioning team. The structure all exists; there would just be different contract boundaries between these groups, but these roles need to exist on all projects regardless of the contract modeling structure. The procurement manager, engineering manager, and construction manager are all the early project groups that need to set the project up for success and set commissioning up for success. The QA/QC manager, HSSE manager for health, safety, security, and environment, and the commissioning manager, with the commissioning team, are shown on this org chart as well.
All of these roles report to the project manager. It’s the project manager’s role to oversee each of these aspects of the project to make sure everything is planned and coordinated. The project manager relies heavily on the commissioning manager planning projects early at the beginning to make sure that projects are planned for success. That’s the reason the commissioning manager needs to be involved in the projects very early—to plan commissioning in conjunction with engineering and construction.
So, what happens on projects when nobody leads? I’m sure you’ve seen this before: commissioning managers aren’t involved early in the project, or they’re brought in very late, and there’s been no leadership for commissioning. It’s pretty easy for those projects to spiral out of control because there’s been no proper planning to form commissioning plans in conjunction with engineering and design functions. There’s no accountability when there’s no one leading commissioning. Often, the design groups have already left the project in a lot of cases, or construction groups have demobilized from the site. There’s nobody accountable for this stuff to make it work in the end because there’s been no continuity of leadership through all aspects of the project. Everyone blames everybody else. You’ve been on projects where it’s just everybody pointing back and forth, saying it’s the other guy, and it’s pretty easy for budgets to explode when nobody takes responsibility.
Why is there a lack of leadership on projects? Why don’t most people step up and become those leaders? What holds a lot of people back is maybe they feel that they don’t know enough, that commissioning is complex, and they don’t have enough depth of technical knowledge or understanding of the process and are unable to—or don’t feel comfortable with—stepping up to be that strong leader. Some may feel that they’re not senior enough, that they don’t have 30 or 40 years of experience to lead commissioning on complex projects. Or some just don’t want the responsibility—they much more prefer just to be the doer, the one on the tools with the multimeter, and they don’t want to step up and take that responsibility.
But really, none of these are real reasons; they’re just excuses to not take that challenge and not step up and not be that commissioning leader. Commissioning leaders, if you know that you’re the leader, you don’t wait until you feel that you’re ready. You jump in, you dig into the issues, you solve problems, and you start figuring it out because you know that you’re the strong leader to step up and lead the team to commissioning success.
When there are commissioning leaders who do step up, when we have comprehensive plans, when commissioning has been involved early in projects, those are the projects that finish on time because someone has actually taken ownership of the commissioning process and guided it through all stages of the projects. When there is this continuity from start to finish for that strong commissioning leader, this is what unites the team together to start with the end in mind and be able to complete projects on time and on budget. When you have this continuity, that is how you protect your commissioning budget because when you have that strong leadership for commissioning, you can anticipate risks before they even happen.
Most people, unfortunately, wait for someone else to step up. You’re looking around at everyone else and wondering who’s going to be that strong leader. When you know that you’re the strong commissioning leader, you don’t wait; you take action, you step up, and you guide the team to success because you know that the success of your projects depends on it.
These are some of the commissioning roles that are the leadership roles required on projects. We mentioned the commissioning manager. If it’s a really big project, sometimes you have a commissioning director who would have a team of commissioning managers reporting to them. On really big projects, often most projects, you would have a commissioning manager who would oversee the planning and execution of the overall commissioning process. The project manager, of course, is integral to commissioning success because they’re responsible not only for commissioning but also for the design and construction aspects as well. The project manager must make sure that commissioning is integrated into all phases of the project right from the start.
The quality manager is an important role because they’re the ones overseeing construction aspects and making sure that construction meets the requirements needed for successful commissioning, as well as the HSSE manager. Risk and safety are important aspects of commissioning; we must make sure that everything we’re doing is safe, and close collaboration between the commissioning manager and the HSSE manager is required for successful commissioning.
Then, there are the commissioning execution roles—the ones doing the commissioning. It may be commissioning engineers out in the field who are doing the testing and verification or overseeing others who are doing the testing and verification. The commissioning technicians are the hands-on execution of the commissioning tasks that have been defined in checklists and procedures. And then, of course, operations is an integral part of commissioning as well—to have operations embedded as part of the commissioning team for operation of the equipment through startup to get ready for ongoing operation and maintenance.
There are also some commissioning support roles. It’s very much a team effort. We will have document control specialists involved because there’s a pile of information that’s produced on projects for controlling documents, integrating with CMS software systems, and managing data in and out of our CMS software systems. Our CMS software admins manage all of the punch lists, triage the punch list items, and make sure that they’re being completed on time. Those are important roles. The training coordinator handles lots of training aspects to get operators ready for operation and maintenance of the new facilities. Permit coordinators are some of the supporting roles that are required to support the commissioning process on projects.
Often, a lot of the challenges we see on projects with commissioning are due to a lack of clear communication or maybe even a lack of collaboration. Sometimes, the groups on projects—between design, construction, and commissioning—can end up quite siloed, and they’re not necessarily working in conjunction or collaboratively. They may be throwing things over the fence to the next group. We want to break down those barriers and have everybody communicating and collaborating in an effective way to guide projects to success. The bedrock foundation of that is to define the roles and responsibilities that are required on projects and then foster that clear communication between all of those groups.
Sometimes, when projects don’t have that strong leader—nobody who’s stepped up to be the strong commissioning manager to lead projects—then this is when some of the challenges exist, where there are misaligned goals. If we’re only focusing on design, if we’re only focusing on construction, and we’re not focusing on the overall project success, including commissioning, then we end up with misaligned goals or unclear communication processes to make sure that everybody’s working collaboratively.
A lot of the digital platforms that exist out there now help facilitate this and help facilitate the sharing of information, and we need to be leveraging these tools to make sure that everybody has what they need. Nobody likes meetings on projects—often there’s too many meetings—but it’s still a very important collaboration tool to make sure that everybody has up-to-date information on a weekly cycle, getting the right progress updates and having the right information in hand to do their jobs correctly.
That was a bit of an overview of some of the roles and responsibilities that are defined in ICA-003. Definitely get a copy of the standard because everything is defined in detail in there—all the roles and responsibilities, a detailed description of each one—and you can see the roles and responsibilities that need to exist on your projects. It is going to scale, of course. If you’re working on a very big project or a medium to smaller-sized project, then you’re going to scale your org chart up or down. In some cases, maybe you have a very large project, and you’ve got disciplines for mechanical engineering, say, related to large rotating equipment—a mechanical engineer there might be a role for that—or an HVAC commissioning engineer and mechanical systems mechanical engineer. Maybe you’ve split that into three roles. On a smaller project, you may have that all as one individual, single responsibility. It depends on the size of your project—how big you’re going to scale up or scale down your project org chart.
Let’s move on to the next one, ICA-004. This is commissioning strategy and planning, and this has been missing in a lot of commissioning standards. In every commissioning standard that I’ve seen, the early aspects of commissioning for planning are often missing. In all cases, the commissioning standards you may have seen in the past talk about construction completions and on-site commissioning going forward at that point in time, missing all of the early activities that are required for commissioning strategy and planning that take place during project concept and during FEED stages. The ICA Commissioning Standard is the first standard that defines what early commissioning involvement actually means. It’s no wonder that there’s been a misconception that commissioning is just testing at the end when that’s all the standards have ever defined—construction completions onwards on projects.
Definitely get a copy of ICA-004 so you can see the missing parts of commissioning standards and see what early commissioning involvement actually means. You can use this one, particularly ICA-004, as a tool when you’re talking about commissioning to others on the project who maybe aren’t as familiar with commissioning and use this as a tool to explain to them why you’re asking for some of these early aspects on projects and help them understand and explain what early commissioning involvement actually means. It’s very important that we’re engaging commissioning early on projects so that we’re planning for commissioning success.
On a lot of projects, I’m sure you’ve been involved in projects before where commissioning has been involved late—maybe partway through construction is when commissioning folks get involved. This significantly increases risks and can have a lot of costly rework because it’s not fair to the construction groups to tell them last minute what the definition of construction completions is. If you’re only telling the construction folks partway through construction how they need to finish, well, they’ve already made plans, they’ve already procured equipment, they’ve already engaged large workforces, and to come along and tell them to shift gears and go in a different direction for the sequence of construction completions—that never goes well. That’s why that needs to be defined upfront in contracts, and that’s why we need to have early commissioning involvement on projects to plan for those aspects and make sure that contracts are written correctly for construction completions.
It’s really about proactive commissioning. We need to be integrating our planning processes early in projects to reduce risk and take advantage of the cost savings and the value that commissioning allows when we’re planning commissioning in conjunction with design and construction. It’s really aligning the goals of those three large groups on projects to make sure that everybody’s working towards the same direction and everyone has a clear vision of what success looks like during commissioning. It allows informed decision-making right from the project outset when you have this commissioning information involved and embedded in projects early. It allows some early project decisions—say from a design or procurement aspect—that align things for smooth commissioning at the end of projects. It’s really about aligning all aspects of the project so that we can have enhanced project outcomes for improved cost and schedule at the end of projects.
The commissioning leaders who plan early—these are the project leaders who win and succeed at delivering projects on time and on budget. The ones that don’t, though—when they’re only scrambling at the end, when commissioning hasn’t been involved early in projects—these are the projects that fail. In fact, nine out of ten projects are late and over budget because of this exact reason. Project leaders who are involved earlier are the ones who anticipate problems before they even happen and can prevent costly delays. The projects that fail, though, are the ones that don’t take commissioning seriously until it’s too late on projects. I’m sure you’ve worked on these projects where it’s been a scramble at the end, and this is why you need to be the one to bring commissioning into the project right at the beginning, from day one, to guide projects to success.
The primary document to do that, as defined in ICA-004, is the project commissioning plan. The PCP is a key input to your overall project execution plan, and this is the document that defines your commissioning strategy and defines all the commissioning activities, the roles, and all the responsibilities of how you’re going to be able to guide commissioning to success. This is really the overarching document. It doesn’t necessarily have all of the details—the detailed execution plans—at this point, but this document, the project commissioning plan, has the high-level strategy to ensure that all the systems are aligned and everything is going to be commissioned safely, efficiently, and on time, so that the project is structured for commissioning success right from the beginning.
When we’re talking about early commissioning involvement, this is during your commissioning concept stage—even before your financial investment decision has been made—and certainly during your FEED stage for early project planning. We need to be aligning engineering, procurement, and construction so that we achieve successful commissioning later and that we’re planning for a systems-based turnover versus area-based construction. When commissioning is an afterthought, often projects will always start with area-based construction, but if there isn’t a strong plan to transition from area-based construction to systems-based completion, then that process isn’t going to happen on its own. It needs to be properly planned in advance in contracts so that everybody knows the expectations of how that’s going to take place, and the only way to do that is with early planning in projects so that you can prevent delays and ensure that safety and operational goals are met.
The second key aspect, next to the project commissioning plan, is your division of responsibility matrix. This is prepared before construction contracts are even awarded. Your DOR matrix assigns all the roles and responsibilities for commissioning in conjunction with construction. During that complex transition between construction and commissioning, the DOR defines how that transition is going to take place and who’s responsible for each of those activities so that there’s no confusion and everybody knows exactly what they need to do. All the roles are clearly defined, all the responsibilities are defined, so everybody is accountable for what they need to do and prevents confusion during this complex time on projects. This DOR gets integrated into contracts so that when contracts are awarded, everybody knows upfront the roles and responsibilities and what the complex transition from construction to commissioning is going to look like.
Some of the key transition points where the DOR would apply are when the construction phase is being completed. The construction manager is responsible for that construction completion phase to meet the construction completion milestone and then transition from the construction team to the commissioning team during the commissioning phase. Then, the commissioning manager becomes responsible for system verification, and your DOR defines the transition between these two points in time. This is a very key input that’s required for construction procurement because, without this focus on commissioning, it’s easy to choose the wrong contractor that isn’t able to meet a systems-based completion.
When you look back on a lot of the commissioning challenges that exist on projects, 80% of commissioning failures can be tracked back to some sort of bad procurement decision that was made early on projects—where groups weren’t selected correctly or underqualified groups were selected, and they can’t meet the needs of what’s required for commissioning. Commissioning involvement early to prepare the DOR and provide this into contracts is critically important to make sure that we’re selecting groups that can actually meet the needs of what’s required for commissioning. If this isn’t taking place, then you’re just going to end up at the end of your project fighting fires and trying to prevent delays rather than actually leading projects to success.
This proactive leadership to make sure that contracts are aligned with commissioning success is critically important. When commissioning leaders are involved at the beginning of projects to participate in these procurement projects, then we can ensure that the right people are selected who can actually meet the requirements for commissioning. We must make sure that all of the construction milestones are aligned identically with the project startup sequence and, therefore, the commissioning sequence, to make sure that the construction-to-commissioning handover is smooth. All of these key milestones must be included and prepared for inclusion in contracts.
Some of the CMS interface requirements—so, what’s the commissioning software that’s going to be used, how are construction folks expected to integrate with this software—this all needs to be defined upfront in contracts so that there’s no confusion. This is how you guarantee that projects are successful at the end—when they’re aligned for success right from the beginning.
For anyone who is up for the challenge and ready to step up and be a commissioning leader, we do offer our transformational leadership commissioning programs to help people step into these leadership roles and lead their projects to success. We do offer training on our ICA-compliant commissioning processes. You can implement these on your projects and really transform you and your project for maximum commissioning efficiency by showing people what this leadership role looks like and how you can become the leader that projects need to lead projects to success.
We have our intermediate commissioning leadership program. This is really the core fundamental aspects of commissioning and will show you how to prepare for commissioning leadership, as well as our advanced commissioning leadership program. This is advanced commissioning strategy, commissioning engineering that takes place at the beginning of projects—all so that you can implement the ICA Global Commissioning Standards on your projects from a contractual perspective and from a digitalization perspective. I definitely encourage you to step up and become the commissioning leader that projects so badly need, and you can do that at icxa.net/leadership.
The leaders who step up and lead projects to success—that’s why we’ve created the ICA Global Commissioning Standard, because this is really your map of how to lead projects to success. This is not just another standard—there are lots of standards out there—this is a standard to lead movement, to lead change in the way that projects are led right from the beginning, to start with the end in mind. The world definitely does not need more people just to follow a bunch of procedures—that was not our intent when we wrote this standard. The project world needs leaders; they need strong people to step up and lead projects to success. If that’s you, and if you’re ready, then definitely get a copy of the commissioning standard, and it will help you guide your projects to success.
Commissioning is hard, so you need a map, you need a guide to show you how to get projects to success at the end, and that’s what this ICA Global Commissioning Standard is. You can get a copy of the standard—there’s no cost to get it—at ic.net/join. That’ll give you access to our members’ area, and you can download the commissioning standard right there. There are all sorts of other helpful resources in there as well—all the document templates that you need that are mentioned in the standard are all in the members’ area as well: systematization guidelines, contractual implementation guide, and a digitalization guide (this is coming soon, something we’re working on). All the resources you need are available at no cost, and you can get access in the members’ area at icxa.net/join. That’ll help you become the commissioning leader that projects so badly need.
Here’s another bonus for you as well: if you go to icxa.net/brochure, this will get you a one-page document of a summary of the commissioning standards. This is helpful as an overview of the standard, or if you’re talking to others on projects—if you’re talking to your project manager—you can download a copy of this brochure. You can use it for discussion with them and show them the ICA Global Commissioning Standard and how it can help projects. Definitely get access to that as well—icxa.net/brochure—and you can get a copy of that PDF.
If it’s not going to be you who’s going to step up and be that commissioning leader, then who’s it going to be? Who’s going to lead your projects to success? Commissioning leadership isn’t a title; it’s a mindset. It’s taking ownership of the commissioning process and leading projects to success. You’ve seen the problems on projects—we need people to be part of the solution. It’s time to act and get more people involved in commissioning leadership to lead projects to success. So, become a commissioning leader, go to icxa.net/leadership, and check out the resources that are available to help you step into this leadership role and become the leader that projects so badly need.
That’s the end of today’s session. We will go into a Q&A session now for the remainder of today’s session. Definitely check out our next workshop on March 12th—a week from now, same time—we’re going to go through the next portion of the ICA Global Commissioning Standard, which is ICA-005: commissioning engineering, manufacturing, and construction completion. Definitely get a copy of the standard—go to icxa.net/join—you can get a copy of the standard and get access to all the helpful resources that are in there.
I’m going to go through the comments section here. If you have any other questions, shoot them into the chat, and I’ll get your questions answered here and help you figure out how to implement this commissioning standard on your projects.
First one: “Anthony, good to see you, Anthony. I’m glad you’re here. Need to touch on estimating here.” Yes, this is an important topic for sure. When commissioning folks are involved early in projects, it’s very important that we’re planning our schedule elements as well as our cost elements in project budgets too. Commissioning usually isn’t the biggest portion of the project expenditures—there’s lots of equipment procurements and large labor forces during construction—but it’s very important that the right aspects are included for commissioning in project estimates so that we have the resources, tools, and labor that’s needed for commissioning excellence at the end of projects. This is a very important aspect as well. I know, Tony, you’re working on some good resources that can help some people with commissioning estimating, so I think that will be very helpful for the commissioning community as well.
Let’s take a look—what’s next here? “Would it be possible to download the recorded video?” Absolutely, yep. This is being live-streamed on LinkedIn and on YouTube. You can get a copy of the replay in either of those locations. Maybe the easiest is to go to our YouTube channel—look for Industrial Commissioning Association—and you’ll see this live session recorded on there. You can access it anytime you want on there; you can even download it from YouTube if you want. Yep, you can definitely get access to the recorded video.
“Early involvement of systems completions and commissioning requires proper support from the top, of course. It starts with the mindset and budgets.” Yep, that is absolutely true. It’s also a huge challenge—people often view commissioning as testing at the end and don’t understand that this is a commissioning process to be managed on projects. When people think commissioning is just testing at the end, then when you start that discussion, they say, “Well, we don’t need a team of people testing at the beginning of our project. Why would we want that? That sounds like an extra expense. We’re going to push that to later in the project.” That’s another reason we wrote the ICA Commissioning Standard—to use that as a tool and show people that commissioning is more than just testing at the end; it’s a process to manage through all stages of the projects.
Definitely use the standard as a tool when you’re having some of those discussions with your management to get that early involvement support and get commissioning involved early in projects. The standard will help people understand that this is a little bit more complex than just testing at the end. Download the brochure—icxa.net/brochure—that’s a good first starting point to raise discussions with some people on projects to show them what the standard is all about. Use the standard as a tool, get it in the hands of people to show them what commissioning is about, and that should hopefully help you with some of those discussions so that you can get that right early involvement and you can get that right commissioning mindset and budgets planned properly at the beginning of projects.
“You didn’t mention the OR activities and deliverables. When is the time recommended to start planning and execution of the OR activities?” Yes, this is a very important point as well. Operational readiness is a very important aspect of projects as well. It’s not fair if the project team completes the project and then just drops their tools and runs from the site. We need to support a soft transition from the project team to the O&M team—operation and maintenance team—so that they’re prepped and ready for ongoing operation and maintenance of the facilities as well. Just like planning for commissioning early in projects is very important, planning for operational readiness early in projects is very important as well. The two processes—the commissioning process and the operational readiness process—really take place in conjunction at the same times to make sure that the operations folks are prepared for operation and maintenance of the new facilities.
I would say that when the question is, “When is the time recommended to start planning?”—it’s never early enough. The earlier you can plan, the better, because that’s planning for operational resources to be involved in the project earlier, during some of the static commissioning activities or dynamic commissioning, particularly during startup—giving operators the time to see and work with some of these systems, ask the experts while they’re on site, so that there’s a level of comfort at in-service date and they’re familiar with a lot of these systems. Systems are getting quite complex these days; everything’s integrated. Having an operational simulator is certainly a good idea—it’s another tool that we can use to get operators familiar with the systems at in-service date. Take advantage of some of those systems as well to have operational simulators as an option for operators to become familiar with these complex systems.
“Is there an available database for estimating norms that you are aware of?” I don’t know if there’s a great database—one all-encompassing location—but I know there are some things that are being worked on that would be fantastic tools available to people to help with some of the estimating activities early in projects for commissioning. I don’t know the timelines of when those will be available, but definitely stay in touch with the Industrial Commissioning Association. As those resources are developed and made available, we’ll definitely help everybody understand when they’re available and how to get their hands on them to help you with some of these early estimating activities.
“For the commissioning manager, in your experience, does this role have to be on site during the commissioning phase in order for the commissioning phase to be successful?” I would say yes. Maybe during some of the early planning aspects of commissioning—during design and maybe during early aspects of construction—the commissioning manager can be on and offsite, maybe in some sort of regular rotation. But when it comes to construction completions and on-site execution of commissioning, commissioning is not really a remote activity. You need to be there; things are moving pretty quickly, and it’s best to be on site, talk to the team, see the issues, address and collaborate with others on the project. It’s definitely better to be on site and participate with the team. I think if you were trying to do that job remotely, I think that would be pretty tough to do. I’m not sure how well that would go. In all my experience and all the projects I’ve worked on, I’ve been right there on the front lines with the people executing commissioning so that I can see the issues and understand the challenges and help the team get through some of these challenges for successful commissioning.
“What are the most common and proven successful softwares?” Yes, this is a good question. We need to be using commissioning software on our projects. If project teams are still stuck using spreadsheets or paperwork processes, that’s really outdated. I’ve heard that 2025 is the year to declare that those old, outdated, archaic methods are dead. We need to be going forward with commissioning software on our projects, especially in the age of AI. I can only imagine, in five years from now, how these software systems are going to have changed and the new technologies that are going to be available. If you’re still using spreadsheets and paper on your projects, then I think you’re going to get left behind pretty quickly.
Yes, Max, you’re definitely right—we need to be using CMS software on our projects. To help you select the right one, if you log into our members’ area of the Industrial Commissioning Association, we’ve got several listed in there. All the leading commissioning software are listed in there; there’s information PDFs you can download, case studies, client reviews as well. Some of the best feedback you can get is in the members’ area—you can ask questions of the other members. We have over 3,200 members in the Industrial Commissioning Association. Actually ask in there for feedback or experience from people who have used these different systems.
There are over 25 different commissioning software that exist. I haven’t used them all; I’ve had experience with some of them, but depending on your particular industry, there might be some that are better suited or better suited for other industries. It’s best to get feedback directly from people who have worked with these systems, and the best way to do that is in the members’ area. Check out the ones that are listed in there, check out the information that’s available, ask questions of people who have used some of these software—or the ones that you’re looking at—to get their feedback and see what their experience has been actually applying these software on their projects. That’s my best advice to find one that might be a good fit for your projects—check out the members’ area, get access to that information, reach out to the community, and see what you can learn from others who have had hands-on experience with the software.
“The big issue facing during commissioning—the budget management and paying to vendors—that can sometimes be a challenge for sure.” I haven’t found that the commissioning budget is a large portion of the overall project budget. However, delays during commissioning are where the expense really accumulates. What’s the standard value is—a commissioning budget is typically maybe three, four, five, six percent of the overall project budget. It’s not the biggest part of the budget, but each of those days of commissioning is extremely valuable due to the project burn rate. I’ve worked on projects that have had a $5 million daily burn rate, so you need to have pretty precise commissioning execution when each day costs $5 million. Those delays during commissioning can easily out-cost the original commissioning budget that were no fault of commissioning. That’s why it’s very important that commissioning is planned early in projects for design and construction to make sure that everything is integrated properly at the end during commissioning to avoid these expensive delays during commissioning.
“Absolutely, yeah, you mentioned commissioning delays there—that’s the biggest challenge, right?” Where those delays often get attributed to is commissioning, even if it was a problem from an earlier design aspect or an earlier construction aspect. That’s why it’s critically important to plan this right from the start.
“PECI is close for budgeting commissioning, but depends on the market.” Yes, absolutely. I’m not familiar with PECI for commissioning budgeting, but for anybody who wants to check that out, definitely check that out, and maybe it will be helpful.
Any other questions today on ICA-003 or ICA-004? We’ve got a bit more time here for some questions.
I will add that some of these early commissioning aspects are the most important and will determine your commissioning success. If skipping these early parts of commissioning, then I’d say there’s a low chance that you can be successful in the end. We need to be properly planning our projects right from the beginning, and the ICA Global Commissioning Standard is the method to do that. Get a copy of the standard because it’s available to everyone—it’s available for free—and it’s there to help you plan and execute your projects. If you want to get more in-depth, to get up to speed quicker and become that leader that projects need from a commissioning perspective, then definitely check out our leadership programs, and we’ll get you advanced in the commissioning methodologies to plan your projects for success a lot quicker to help you succeed with your projects.
Thanks for joining—we will be doing this next week again, same time, same location. We’ll be going through the next portion of the standard, ICA-005: commissioning engineering is a critically important aspect of planning for projects as well because this is where we’re actually planning the details of commissioning. This is our commissioning execution plan—this is planning all of the precise details required for checklists, for procedures, for early aspects that are required during construction planning, our systematization, and our construction completions. This is where we really get into the meat of the commissioning process and make sure that all the precise details are planned in advance so that projects can be completed successfully.
Alright, thanks everyone for joining, and I’ll see you again next week.
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