This is the last part of our five-part live workshop series where we cover each section of the ICA Global Commissioning Standard. In this workshop session, we cover 006 On-Site Testing, 007 Handover, In-Service, and Closeout, 008 Safety and Risk Management, and 009 Lessons Learned and Continuous Improvement. This is a very important discussion to conclude your projects. Listen to this episode to learn how the ICA Global Commissioning Standard can help you and your project succeed at commissioning. Welcome to today’s session. We’re on our Industrial Commissioning Association, the Global Commissioning Standard. Today, we’ve got a great presentation to consider the last part of the sections of the commissioning standard: ICA – 006, 007, 008, and 009. These are the most important ones. These are the ones where true commissioning leaders are tested to see how your early advanced planning holds up and if you’re ready to fully withstand the pressures of commissioning at the end of the project and execute to deliver on time and on budget.
If you haven’t already become a member of the Industrial Commissioning Association, you can join at the link here: icxa.net/join. You get access to the standard, you get access to several helpful resources, and everything you need to be successful with commissioning. So definitely check that out at icxa.net/join, and you can become a member today. We’re going to focus on the last three to four parts of the ICA Commissioning Standard, and we’re actually going to wrap up our discussion on the standard today to go through Part Four and Part Five of our five-part series here because we’ve got lots of other topics we need to talk about: contractual implementation of commissioning, digitalization of commissioning, leadership for commissioning, project management for commissioning, strategy, standardization. There are lots of topics that we’ve got to cover here. So watch your email; I’ll be sending out some more invites on some of those topics so we can dive even deeper into what’s required to be successful before commissioning.
We’re going to focus on the last part of the standard. This is really the moment of truth for commissioning leaders to see how you’ve planned commissioning and if you’re actually ready. This is what is needed, really, to lead projects with confidence and precision if you want to deliver your projects on time and on budget. So, as I mentioned, this is Part Four of our five-part series, and we’re going to go through Part Four and Part Five in this session to cover ICA – 006 On-Site Testing as well as 007, 008, and 009 for Handover, In-Service, and Closeout, Safety and Risk Management, and Lessons Learned and Continuous Improvement. ICA – 006 is really the moment of truth after many years of the project and many months of planning for commissioning. It’s time to see how your planning efforts have taken place and if that’s successful for you to be able to improve yourself and deliver projects at the end. It’s really a big question: Are you ready to execute commissioning with precision? If you’ve done all the work in advance, then your on-site testing usually goes pretty smoothly. If you haven’t done the advanced work ahead of on-site testing, then that’s what leads to chaos. Commissioning is really your true test as the commissioning leader to see if you’ve done well in your planning efforts to plan for commissioning.
Like I said, if you’ve gone through zero effort or very poor planning, then you may be questioning your career decisions when you’re in over your head and getting swamped by the fast pace of commissioning and not able to keep up. But true commissioning leaders know that on-site testing is where the champions are truly made if planning for commissioning earlier in projects was successful. We’re going to break it down: What does it take to lead on-site testing like a true commissioning leader? If you’re not ready for on-site testing at the end, then these can be career-ending consequences for you. You just get completely overwhelmed by the pace of commissioning; you can’t keep up, you can’t keep your head above water, and there’s lots on the line here, right? Time is always very valuable in projects, there’s lots of money on the line, and if you can’t execute with precision, then projects can quickly fall apart at the end. There’s no faking expertise; you need to know what you’re doing at the end of projects for commissioning to be successful.
The problem is that lots of project teams treat commissioning just as testing at the end of the project and somewhat treat it as an afterthought rather than setting projects up for success right through ICA – 006 as your roadmap on how to execute the on-site commissioning works—those that are required to properly manage commissioning. It aligns perfectly with digital workflows that would be used in a lot of the commissioning software that’s out there, all of the documentation requirements that are required at each of the gated milestones or commissioning workflows, that precise contract execution in alignment with the well-defined contracts we defined earlier in earlier sections of the ICA Global Commissioning Standard, plus the safety protocols that are required and all of the established communication channels so that everyone is communicating effectively or committed. The first real hands-on stage of testing is called static commissioning. Some people may refer to this as pre-commissioning, but this is equipment-level verification before we get into the system-wide testing of groups of equipment. Static commissioning is where we would be doing our instrumentation calibration and checks, ensuring that all signals are intact and that we’re getting proper communications to our HMI screens and the control room. Static commissioning is also where we’re doing functional testing of individual pieces of equipment—so say a pump, a pump operating on its own to verify the performance of that pump, measuring three points on the pump curve and verifying the pump itself functions correctly, or verifying safety and compliance checks.
If there are several interlocks or safety devices, we need to verify that these are functioning correctly before we move into dynamic commissioning. Then this would be the first milestone in our gated commissioning workflows to verify that all of our checklists are complete, this static commissioning is complete for this particular system, and the stakeholders sign off on that, saying it’s released and ready for the next stage of testing, which is dynamic commissioning. So, dynamic commissioning is where we’re testing a group of equipment functioning together to perform an intended outcome of the system. This proves that the components are integrated correctly together as a system, and this is where we test how everything works together on clean fluids before we move into the startup phase with the introduction of process fluids or full plant loading of electrical systems. During dynamic commissioning, we’re looking for system-level functional tests, so no more isolated pieces of equipment; everything must work together as one plant process at a system level as we build up each of these systems. We’re validating our control and automation systems, so our control narratives, our control logic, making sure that everything is functioning for the intended design and everything is being controlled, and that includes all normal operating conditions and both operating conditions to make sure that all contingencies are functioning correctly, taking a risk-based testing approach to mitigate risk so that when we go through startup of the plants, everything is safe and operable and ready for plant fluids and to operate for many years.
This is also where we’re performing any last punch list closeout items that are required- A, B, or C-type punches. Certainly, A-type punches need to be closed; B-type punches we’ll be working on concurrently as well during dynamic commissioning. We then move up into startup and performance verification, and this is the ultimate test. This is where plant processes are started for the first time with the introduction of process fluids or the introduction of full electrical loads to test the systems in their normal operating conditions and bulk operating conditions in a real-world environment to make sure that everything is functioning correctly. This is really the first true operational condition that the facility will be experiencing, and we’re proving the design intent because commissioning is really an engineering function. Several years before, the systems were designed during detailed engineering phases and project engineering; commissioning is the other end of that to verify from an engineering perspective that systems are meeting the original design intent. Commissioning and front-end engineering are really the bookends that sandwich the construction activities in the middle, and both of those—design and commissioning—are important to make sure that what’s being built actually functions as it needs to be.
During startup, we’ll be ramping up to full loads, slowly introducing plant process fluids or electrical loads as we ramp up to full loads, and we’re measuring the real-time performance. All of our important parameters are being measured to verify that the system is operating correctly as we continue to progress through planned startup, and this is where we’ll then move into performance verification. This is verifying that the plant is operating for the original intended design intent. We may be modifying some of the settings to optimize the performance of the system—that’s taking place during performance verification—to get plants up and running and optimized to perfection for many years of operation. So, some common mistakes that are encountered here: often there could be a fear of ownership, right? Commissioning is a big responsibility, and what people may prefer is just to fill out the checklist and do what they’re told. It can be somewhat challenging or intimidating to be the one that steps up and leads commissioning because, what if something goes wrong? Then you’re held accountable for it. But that’s why we’ve put together these resources; the ICA Global Commissioning Standard is to help you and have that map of how to proceed with a safe startup so that there are fewer things that go wrong, minimize the risks, and help you succeed in your commissioning roles. Sometimes on projects, it’s left with a reactive mindset, right? “Let’s just see what happens; let’s just turn it on and see what happens.” And that’s not a good approach because it’s unsafe and damages equipment, causing mistakes in the project schedules. It’s not a proactive approach to mitigate risk and make sure that things are going to go smoothly during startup; we want to avoid that reactive mindset.
Lots of times, there’s a lack of documentation or a lack of a proper data management system. We may have our document management control processes, but we’re missing real data management to manage the information from engineering and the information generated during commissioning to produce quality data on the projects because if it’s not documented, then it didn’t really happen, right? For compliance reasons, we need to document everything we’re doing for commissioning to have the documentation as a backup to show them how things are tested, and that they do, in fact, comply with original requirements. Another common mistake during commissioning is a failure to align stakeholders, right? There’s lots going on projects, and everybody’s scattered doing their own thing, but it’s commissioning’s role to bring everything back together into one workflow, into one plant process, and it can be challenging to align particular groups that are resisting or want to do their own thing or don’t truly understand what commissioning is really about. It takes a lot of effort to make sure that owners, vendors, and contractors are all aligned and working towards the same goal and have the same clear vision of what success looks like during commissioning. We’ve created all these resources at the Industrial Commissioning Association so that you’re able to lead your commissioning with confidence.
We’ve got all of the ICA document templates and checklists that you need so that you can pre-plan your on-site testing with success. Everything’s there; you have a map you can follow with the ICA Commissioning Standard to download any of the document templates you need. It’s really a commissioning kit, if you want to call it that, so that you can lead your projects to success. The ICA Commissioning Standard is really that benchmark that you want to be evaluating your projects against—that global standard—to make sure that you’re implementing projects to the highest level possible and de-risking them for project success. We want to be able to have a reputation for delivering projects that work, right? When you look at the data that’s out there, 9 out of 10 projects are late and over budget. That’s not a good track record for the construction industry and certainly not the reputation that you want to have on your projects. You want to follow a proven process to deliver projects on time and on budget, and we can get that with the ICA Commissioning Standard. So then, moving into the next document in our series here the standard is IC – 007. This is the ultimate goal: to hand over functional and reliable system assets that can be used for decades of reliable operation for the life of the facilities. Handover, In-Service, and Closeout is an important document here on how all these complex assets are going to be handed over to the operating team- all the physical assets, all the documentation, everything that’s needed by the operating team, including training, so that they’re ready to go for operation and maintenance of the plant facilities for many years to come. This is the formal transfer from the project team to the operating team, where the responsibility for the day-to-day activities of the plant assets transitions to the plant operating team.
They need a whole host of documentation to be able to do their role: they need all the test results from commissioning, we need all the as-built drawings so they can troubleshoot assets if there are issues, and they need operational procedures. So this whole aspect of operational readiness is very important to make sure that the plant operators are ready and prepared for operation and maintenance during the last part of this project here for handover, closeout, and in-service. There’ll be several punch list items that may be remaining; the process to close those out, how those are drafted and closed out, either tracked for in-service handover or closed during warranty, all those issues need to be resolved before the plant can be placed into service. As I mentioned, training and competency, competency is an important aspect as well. A lot of the plant operators won’t be familiar with this new technology or new systems; they need to be familiar with what’s required for the operation of these complex facilities, they need to be familiar with how to maintain these assets so that owner can get the best value, the most value out of the systems over the long run. Then, commissioning closeout and archiving—where is all of our documentation going to be placed? How is this going to be transferred into asset management systems? All of this is defined in ICA-007 so that plant operators get everything they need at the end of the project.
Often, after systems go into service, there’s a period of performance monitoring. If there are clauses in the contract for performance guarantees, then systems processes need to be put in place to gather that information over a few years of performance monitoring to determine things like performance guarantees, reliability targets, those types of items, so that if there’s any penalties or awards in the contract due to performance monitoring and performance guarantees, those are all tracked and closed out in the contract. The next one, ICA 008, is Safety and Risk Management. This is, of course, one of the more important documents because everything that we do during commissioning must be done safely. We want everyone at the end of the project to celebrate success, and there’s several very strict safety processes that must be followed. The commissioning team is relied upon heavily to ensure that startups of plant processes are, in fact, safe. This ICA – 008 defines all the commissioning-specific safety processes that go into your HSE plan, your project plan for safety, for all of the aspects that are required for control of the work to manage risks. That includes all of your lockout-tagout and permit-to-work processes—how those are all defined—some of your earlier activities during design for hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs), identification of simultaneous tasks that may be taking place on-site that present specific hazards, or any hazardous operations that need special consideration or special safe work procedures put in place to manage the operation of those facilities. That’s all defined here: your pre-startup safety review (PSSR) processes, how to verify system readiness before proceeding with energization or startup of any of the systems, what that PSSR process looks like, and how to implement that in the field that’s all defined in ICA – 008. And then, should anything go wrong, we always need plans in place, OK? So that would be your emergency response planning to ensure that teams are prepared for incidents should something occur.
The last part of our Global Commissioning Standard is ICA – 009: Lessons Learned and Continuous Improvement. I’m sure you’ve been part of a project that has gathered lessons learned. Lots of project teams are great at gathering lessons learned, but they’re actually terrible at applying them on the next projects. Why do we gather these lessons learned and then put them on a shelf and then forget about them? ICA 009 is the document that defines more robust processes to put in place so that you’re gathering these lessons learned and that you’re actually applying them on the project that you’re working on and on the next projects that follow. The only way to get better at this stuff and to improve project performance is to implement robust lessons-learned processes on your projects so that, incrementally, each day, each project, each time that we’re going through commissioning, processes are getting better, and we’re improving the maturity of commissioning on all projects. We really want to improve on future project success and build off the success of this project so the next one is even more successful. This is done in a few ways: this is done by gathering lessons learned as you’re going through your integration activities for commissioning and capturing these insights at each commissioning stage, not just at the end of the project, but at each of your gated milestones—going through a lessons learned process where, if you learn the lessons gathered at one gate at the milestone, you could apply those to the next one, even on your same project.
There are lots of data collection and documentation that’s available on projects, but we often don’t take advantage of this and use it to full advantage to apply lessons learned and improve productivity on projects. That is the feedback loops that need to be created as we’re gathering these lessons learned—establishing these feedback loops on projects and applying these lessons learned in a continuous process. This is how lessons learned are applied within the gated milestones on projects and within the overall larger project experience of when a project is finished, going back to the beginning of the next one, applying those lessons learned during FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) processes so that we can learn and improve project performance. Really sophisticated organizations will develop performance metrics and benchmark a lot of their targets that need to be met on projects. This, of course, is often done for safety but needs to apply to quality and system performance as well so that all aspects of projects are continually improving. One of the goals of the Industrial Commissioning Association is knowledge transfer. Our wise commissioning experts are retiring quite frequently, and this expertise is going out the door with them.
One of the goals of the Industrial Commissioning Association is to gather this knowledge and have a place where people can learn from these experts before they retire because knowledge transfer is important. Forty years of commissioning experience is certainly very valuable; we need to transfer that knowledge to the new people joining the industry so that they can learn and grow from others’ experience and get a head start in their careers as they’re starting out with commissioning. Alright, so that’s an overview of the last parts of the commissioning standards, but some additional resources for you here as well. If you went through the standard and you’re noticing that there are aspects of the standard that aren’t being implemented on your projects, then it may be beneficial for you to have a commissioning project audit. This is where we’re going through your processes for your digital management- what are your commissioning software strategies to gather data and apply lessons learned on projects?—review your commissioning strategy, maybe from an execution perspective or from a contractual perspective. What is your strategy to implement robust commissioning processes on projects from a contract precision perspective? A lot of the projects we see that run into problems have a fundamental problem in their contract structure and definition of commissioning in contracts, so that’s something you may need an audit on as well to make sure you’re setting your projects up for success. And then, of course, standardization—every other industry in the world has standardized its processes and procedures, but the construction industry got left behind for some reason.
When we standardize our commissioning process, that’s going to help us all excel and exceed what’s needed on projects for better execution. These are some of the things we can look at during the commissioning project audit. You can reach out to us at icxa.net/audit; we can help you implement the strategic commissioning work, optimize commissioning execution, and ensure a seamless project end. The second resource you might be interested in checking out is our commissioning leadership programs. We’ve got an intermediate leadership program and an advanced leadership program, and this gives you more than just the technical skills because the technical skills alone will not get you into commissioning success. There are lots of other aspects that are required to manage commissioning when it comes to contracts and digitalization, your strategy, your project management, leadership, and planning—all of these aspects go into successful commissioning. It’s maybe just a question of where you want to be on projects. If you want to be the follower on projects that are filling out the checklist and testing in the field, that’s fine because we need those roles on projects, but if you’re looking to be the leader, that go-to expert to plan and execute project delivery, then this is for you to get all the aspects you need for commissioning success, and you can check that out at icxa.net/leadership. Here are some more resources too: if you haven’t already gotten a copy of the commissioning standard, there’s no cost to get it; you can go to icxa.net/join—that will get you access to all nine parts of the commissioning standard. You can get a copy and start applying that to your projects right away. We’ve also found that this shareable brochure is somewhat helpful if you’re discussing with your project management the need for commissioning processes or a standardized approach.
This shareable brochure is a good option to discuss with your project manager; you can get a copy at icxa.net/brochure. Use that as a starting point for discussions when talking to others—show them what the standard is, and how it works, and that will hopefully lead them to then go get the full standard and all nine sections of the document. Check out those resources as well; that should hopefully help you out with some of your commissioning discussions too. Alright, so the next workshop session should actually say March 26th—I’ve got some more great topics to discuss on commissioning. As I mentioned at the beginning of the discussion, we need to get into even more depth on commissioning topics: contractual implementation of commissioning, commissioning responsibility models and how to structure that in your contracts, digitalization of your commissioning processes in commissioning software—we’ve got lots of very detailed topics that we need to get into, and I’ll be sending out those endpoints shortly for the next workshop session on March 26th. By all means, if you have other topics that you think we need to cover, give me a suggestion and shoot them in the chat; I’ll make sure that we cover the topics that you need to excel with commissioning.
Alright, the first question here is: “I believe static and dynamic commissioning differ based on specific company standards. Some standards, such as the first, is static commissioning before permanent power to the equipment and mostly conducted on the test bench within laboratory or workshop prior to installation.”
Yeah, and that’s the problem: there has never been one comprehensive standard that governs how to properly apply or standardize the commissioning process, right? What we found is there’s lots of building commissioning information that’s out there, but that’s not necessarily helpful when it comes to more advanced industrial plant process commissioning. Because of that, a lot of the big companies have had to develop their own commissioning processes. For example, Total has developed its internal processes, and BP, Shell, Siemens, ABB, and all the big companies have developed their own commissioning processes. What that means is it’s become a very disjointed industry, right? Everybody’s got their own unique, special way of doing commissioning, using different terminology, and it’s made it very difficult for people to move from one project to the next because you have to reinvent the wheel every project, right? It makes no sense; no other industry does that, and that’s one of the things that prompted us to create the Industrial Commissioning Standard. For the first time, finally, there’s a commissioning standard that you can use to follow when you’re writing your contracts to align on a standardized approach. It’s not helpful when everybody’s referring to static commissioning or pre-commissioning or pipe flushing or something different; it gets very confusing and complex, and you have to relearn everything again depending on what’s in each contract. So now, finally, there’s a commissioning standard people can use when writing their contracts to align on a standardized process, and maybe, just maybe, over several years, we could finally get to a standardized approach rather than the chaotic approach that’s taken on projects right now.
“Yes, it’s your toolbox.”
Absolutely, this is your toolbox that’s required to use as the map through commissioning, starting right from the beginning of the project. If you missed some of the earlier sessions we went through in the last few weeks, we talked about ICA – 001, 002, 003, those cover the commissioning process that’s required right at the beginning of projects during project concept and during project FEED stages. Yes, this is your map that tells you how to govern and manage commissioning through all stages of the project.
“I think carbon intensity should be included in commissioning. What do you think?”
Carbon intensity, yeah, for sure. I’m assuming you’re referring to, like, the carbon capture type systems and any type of industrial plant process that needs a commissioning process, a project management approach to commissioning, and that’s what the ICA Commissioning Standard provides to you. So absolutely, yeah, grab a copy of the ICA Commissioning Standard; it will definitely help you on your carbon projects.
Most projects don’t get delivered on time and within the schedule for new technologies always, it seems, for new technologies and old technologies. The industry is very backwards; it’s very much a construction-led process, and when you think about it, that’s not the goal of projects to install a bunch of equipment, right? The goal of projects is to have fully functional systems that can be used for decades of reliable operations. If your main focus on your project is construction, then you’re not focusing on the right goal. Pulling your project as successful commissioning and you’ve maybe heard before Ben Clifford from the University of Oxford always refers to planning projects from right to left. If you’ve got your in-service date, then the first thing that’s required to meet that in-service date is successful commissioning and startup; that needs to be your goal, right? In order for successful commissioning, this is what’s required from construction; in order for successful construction, this is what’s required from design. Nobody does that; everybody plans projects from left to right, and that’s why most of them fail. But when you focus on the end goal of commissioning and make that a priority and give everybody a clear vision of what success looks like during commissioning, that keeps everybody focused on the real goal of the project rather than just focusing on construction and bolting a bunch of equipment to the floor that never ends up working correctly.
Your project might seem like it’s going well through design and through construction, but where things start to fall apart is when you’re going through your integration activities during commissioning, and lo and behold, nothing works, things are missing, there are lots of delays, and what seemed like a successful project for 80% of the project then falls apart and can become years late. You need to focus on commissioning right from the start of projects and make that the fundamental goal of the projects to have everybody aligned on the real goal of the project.
“The lessons learned are one of the most precious things in a project.”
It absolutely is because that’s the opportunity for organizations to improve the maturity of their commissioning processes. The problem is, though, that as I mentioned, project teams are great at gathering lessons learned but terrible at applying lessons learned on the next project. So you have to actually learn from the lessons that you have on projects and not just gather them, and that’s why feedback loops are so important—to make sure that you’ve got robust processes in place so that you’re not only gathering lessons learned but you’re actually applying them on projects to end with a structured approach to lessons learned and built-in systems. This helps people working on projects manage the lessons learned and implement these lessons learned rather than just creating a nice document and then forgetting about it.
“What should lessons learned be shared before the execution project by company or contractor? How to implement this? Can this be put in a deliverable document?”
Absolutely, yep. ICA – 009, the last document of the commissioning standard, explains exactly how to do that—how to document lessons learned and when to share lessons learned. We would actually encourage right at the beginning of projects, during the project kickoff and then again during the commissioning kickoff meeting, there’s an actual topic for lessons learned that are discussed: How are lessons learned going to be managed on the project? Outlining to all the project groups how lessons learned can be gathered, how are they going to be applied on projects, what feedback loops are required, what lessons learned templates to use, what processes are going to be followed, what are the meetings to include at each of your gated commissioning milestones, how are you actually going to implement lessons learned on your project? When you outline that in some of your kickoff meetings right at the beginning of projects, that helps everyone understand how the project team is going to approach lessons learned and apply them to projects. So definitely check out that standard, ICA – 009, and that will help you put a framework in place that you can use to apply and implement lessons-learned processes on your projects.
It can often be the case that many companies don’t want to share their lessons learned with other companies; everybody thinks this is proprietary and secret knowledge, but you know what? Most projects I would say all projects are not unique, right? Unless you’re building the James Webb Space Telescope, it’s never been done before your project has been done before. Your project is not a unique, special snowflake. LNG plants, power systems, substations, HVDC systems, these are systems that exist all over the world, and your project has been done before. So I’m not sure why everybody is so hesitant to share their lessons learned. We’ve actually created a repository for lessons learned in the members’ area of the Industrial Commissioning Association. You can drop your lessons learned in there as well; you can gather some of the other projects’ lessons learned that we’ve gathered over time, and it’s pretty easy. Maybe you can’t share any proprietary information I understand that, but it’s pretty easy to scrub documents of names and titles and project-specific details, but those lessons learned are still very valuable to others working on a similar project. For example, if you’re working on a wastewater treatment plant project and you’ve got a set of lessons learned, take out the names, take out the specifics of the projects, take out sensitive things like IP addresses—nobody cares about that—and upload your lessons learned to help others understand and learn so that we can use this knowledge and expertise to help others on projects.
“I’ve been in this business for more than 30 years; in the last years, mostly to do reviews. Sad to say, but you’re correct; most people do lessons learned but never take the lessons learned onwards. To me, this is the reason why lessons learned do not work.”
Yes, without robust processes to actually implement the lessons learned, it’s a waste of time to gather them, right? We don’t just want to gather lessons learned; we want to apply them to the next projects, and it takes strong project leaders to make that happen. If you just gather them and throw them on the shelf, then yeah, they get forgotten about and not used, and that’s kind of a waste of time, right? I’ve seen projects do that where they complete the next project very similar to the one they just created and make the same mistakes. It’s a cultural problem for sure, but when you drive a culture of lessons learned and actually demand some of the benchmarking and key performance indicator raises on the next projects held accountable by leadership. There are ways to make this work. I agree with you that that’s not always the case because often we lack that strong leader to drive the process.
“I would appreciate this session on pre-commissioning and commissioning HSE considerations for safe commissioning execution.”
Yes, definitely check out our commissioning standard on Safety and Risk Management—that document goes through all the aspects of quality HSE. We actually call it HSSE—Health, Safety, Security, and Environment and the document outlines all the processes that are required for pre-commissioning and commissioning, such as SIMOPs, HAZOPs, PSSR processes, control of work, lockout-tagout, PTW (permit-to-work) everything is in there. Have a read through that and let me know if you have any questions. If you do, then for sure we could arrange a future discussion, and we can go through some of the specifics of that. Good question.
“I think the only way to get it done is to stick your head above the field and lead. When you’re in commissioning, you’re not going to be the most loved person on site.”
Yes, sometimes the commissioning folks aren’t necessarily the most popular because nobody likes being held accountable, right? If you’re doing poor quality or poor construction or something’s not working, and the commissioning guys are telling you that your work is wrong, well, people get sensitive, and they don’t necessarily want to hear that. But that’s the reason that commissioning is there to hold people accountable, right? And make people perform their jobs and do great work. It’s definitely a balance and definitely a challenge. I’ve worked with some amazing people, and some incredible commissioning teams that were an absolute pleasure to work with, so it depends on your approach. I think that the nimble aspects of commissioning are really just a small part of what’s actually required for commissioning, right? All the people skills, all the communication skills, all the contractual planning at the beginning of projects—these are the things that will make commissioning successful.
These are the things that true commissioning management leaders need at the beginning of projects so that the later technical commissioning aspects can be successful. If you’re only focusing on the technical, then you’re missing out on a lot of the aspects that make commissioning successful.
“Lessons learned are very important, but companies don’t take it very seriously.”
And I think that’s because there’s just a lack of leadership or a lack of continuity between projects to make sure that lessons are applied to the next project, right? It’s too often that the lessons learned are gathered, everybody scatters on their own way, there’s a different project team, and nobody is even aware that the lessons learned even exist, or leadership doesn’t actually know how to bridge that process and have lessons applied on the next project. I agree with you that companies don’t necessarily take it very seriously, which is strange because this benefits companies, right? If we’re learning and improving commissioning processes and improving the efficiency of completing projects, that’s only going to help the company’s bottom line, right? But commissioning is unfortunately not very well understood and not very well applied on projects, and lessons learned are often missed and ignored, and it’s costing companies significantly. What does the statistic say? Right now, the construction industry is a $13 trillion industry worldwide and is expected to nearly double by 2040 to, like, $22 to $26 trillion, something like that. There’s just a massive amount of work ahead of us for electrification and climate initiatives EV batteries, everything that’s required to power and run our societies—and we’re not going to get all that stuff built if we don’t take this seriously and improve commissioning on projects.
There’s wasted billions and trillions of dollars because people aren’t taking commissioning seriously or lessons learned seriously, so we need to get better collectively as an industry if we’re going to be able to tackle some of the challenges that are ahead of us and complete this infrastructure needed for society.
“Any lessons learned must be moved to an action plan list at the management level.”
Absolutely, and that’s where it falls apart, right? At the management level because at the technical, working level, everybody’s doing their best and documenting lessons learned and passing these up to management with the right structures and processes in place for the next project, but it never happens, does it? That’s where things fall apart; you’re absolutely right.
“Is this ICA – 008 section?”
Yes, 008—Safety and Risk Management—I think that’s the one that you’re looking for there. That will have everything listed from a health and safety perspective. Go through that and have a look at what’s in there, and you know, if you have any questions…
“Mostly, commissioning is a loved department after the project ends.”
Sometimes a lot of the groups have already left the project, and it’s just the poor commissioning guys left at the end there that have a whole bag of problems to fix. Sometimes commissioning doesn’t necessarily get the respect that it deserves, but that’s why we’re here and have created the Industrial Commissioning Association to help people better understand commissioning and the value that it provides to projects and elevate the importance of commissioning so that all projects can succeed. Good point.
“I feel the understanding gaps.”
Absolutely, that’s one of the problems that always shows up in lessons learned and is always repeated again and again in every project preservation. This will be highlighted during the pre-commissioning phase. It’s often the case that on mechanical projects, preservation is a big deal, right? It requires close attention to make sure that construction groups are building and preserving and maintaining cleanliness so that commissioning can proceed uninhibited. You see lots of times when things aren’t flushed properly or preserved properly, and the strangest things come out of flushing later or flushing wasn’t done right. You start up a pump; the pump’s not getting the flow rates that are required. You open it up and find the strangest things in the pipes like a five-gallon pail or a 2×4, hard hats, lumber, sheets of plywood, anything, animals and snakes! The strangest things are in there, right? And it’s very important because if you’re leaving this debris inside your process piping, your plant’s never going to operate as it needs to; flows are restricted, and maybe issues aren’t even discovered in the first few months of operation, but over years, things accumulate, pipes are clogged, and then the plants aren’t working. you’re right. Preservation isn’t given enough attention that’s needed on projects. When it comes to electrical projects, there are not so many mechanical systems; there may be smaller cooling systems, and preservation isn’t quite as prevalent, say, in an electrical substation or HVDC substation.
But a lot of the projects I would say, like, 80% of the projects are mechanical projects with pipes, pumps, motors, valves, and preservation is a big deal to make sure that it’s going to start up.
“Is there an ICXA chapter in Europe?”
There is a chapter in the UK. If you’re looking for mainland Europe, we do have a Europe chapter lead and actually have a discussion with a very interesting individual from Italy later today looking to set up a local chapter in Italy. We are branching out into Europe for sure. If you’re interested in setting up any of the other countries’ local chapters there, we’re certainly interested—in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and others interested in setting up local chapters in Europe—we would be more than happy to have you. So please reach out, and we can look at setting something like that up.
“When I was working with Bechtel, they take it in their website system—lessons learned. Anyone has experience with lessons learned they had information in the website company? I think this should be captured by an internal company website and not through emails.”
Yeah, definitely not through emails. We encourage people to share in our members’ area of the Industrial Commissioning Association to drop any lessons learned there. Some people are sensitive to that type of information, so it’s still good with a company like Bechtel that’s doing that internally and allowing internal individuals to access those lessons learned processes that’s ideal as well to help share. We encourage, from the Industrial Commissioning standpoint, everybody to share lessons learned because commissioning is not well understood, and the more information we can share and help others succeed, then the better project success will be.
“After 50-plus years, my perspective on lessons learned is the following: EPC providers are in the business of selling man-hours, so capturing the lessons learned is of no benefit to them because systems completion is simply not their core.”
Yes, and I’d take it even further than EPC contractors aren’t necessarily interested in lessons learned—they’re not interested in commissioning because it doesn’t benefit them. When you think about it, they’re not going to benefit from the operational efficiencies or reliability of the project, right? They have no skin in the game; once they’re done with the project, they’re off to their next one, so they couldn’t care less if the systems ever work or not, right? The construction group is not the group that’s going to solve this problem with commissioning, right? It’s just not their incentive; it’s not their interest. They’re motivated by time and money and contracts; they’re not motivated by quality, and quality is often not well enforced in projects or reliability, those types of items. I agree with your comment there for sure.
“Yes, we do have a local chapter in Norway.”
James has recently set up a local chapter in Norway; definitely reach out to him if you’re in Norway. And all this since we’re looking at all the individuals to help grow and spread the commissioning message because anyone who gives great dedication there has to. Good to see you, James.
“Does commissioning fix or highlight the gaps for construction and ops to resolve? I’m supporting a critical facilities commissioning inspection company; need to know who addresses the shortfalls raised from the commissioning inspections.”
That’s a good question. There are several steps in the commissioning process at each of the gated milestones; it’s going to depend on what issues are discovered, right? The first milestone is construction completion, that milestone if there are any gaps in construction, then the construction group needs to go fix those items before it passes through the construction completion milestone. The same with any of the static commissioning or dynamic commissioning milestones, if there are deficiencies that are noticed that are construction deficiencies, those are classified as A, B, or C type deficiencies that the construction group is then going to have to go back and resolve. Not so much for ops, we don’t want to pass a whole host of issues to our operating teams; we want to deliver reliable systems to them. All of the items that are noticed during the project for type A, B, and C deficiencies need to be addressed by the project team. Sometimes, if there are C-type deficiencies and it’s agreed that operations may be in the best position to resolve those items, that can be an agreement made, but construction groups will have to go back and fix construction deficiencies—or if there are automation deficiencies, those types of things, those groups would be involved to fix those particular items.
“A big part of my challenge is changing the construction mindset to include commissioning. This has been a great presentation and discussion. Thank you, Paul.”
Absolutely, yeah, and where that mindset shift starts is in contracts because it is very tough to change people’s mindset, and they don’t want to change their mindset. The construction industry is, unfortunately, very lagging behind the industry that has refused to adapt to the times and take on the efficiency gains that almost every other industry in the world has undertaken. People just love the way it’s always been, right? The only way you’re sometimes going to be able to change that mindset is in contracts. When we look at any contract on large projects, they’re usually pretty light on details not only just the commissioning technical details but the commissioning process as well. We need to be using contracts not only as a tool to start the project but also as a tool to finish the project. When you put in the upfront effort and write decent contracts, then everybody has a clear vision of what success looks like during commissioning, and everyone is aligned on the true goal of the projects whether they like it or not, whether they have some screwed-up mindset that doesn’t align with commissioning but when it’s in the contract and it’s enforced, right? If it’s not in the contract, then it’s not going to happen.
A big aspect, in my mind, of changing the construction mindset is to lead with commissioning—lead projects with commissioning records, start to incorporate commissioning into all contract documents, and then that’s the guide, that’s the enforceable map to guide the project to success. My best advice is to take the ICA Global Commissioning Standard and use that as a tool when you’re writing your contracts. The commissioning standard goes through the eight aspects that must be included in construction contracts to align with commissioning at the end, and if you’re missing even just one of those eight items, your project’s already in trouble even before you award that contract. So that’s my best advice: start at the beginning and plan for commissioning success in contracts.
“I’m certainly interested in Local Chapter, the Netherlands. Let’s get in touch.”
Absolutely, reach out to us at info@icxa.net, you can email us, and we’ll get you hooked up in the Netherlands and be happy to have you on board, info@icxa.net, and we’ll get in touch.
“Can you send me a document to guide us through the steps of how to write better lessons learned?”
Absolutely, and if you log into the members’ area of the Industrial Commissioning Association, then you can get access to the lessons learned standard what this one up here again. If you go to icxa.net/join, then that’ll send you the login details. You can log in there and get access to all parts of the standard, including the lessons learned and how to structure them. Just check that one out. Alright, yes, if you haven’t already checked out the Norway local chapter, there’s the link; you can go to our website, icxa.net, all of our local chapters are listed there. If you’d like to set up a local chapter, absolutely, please reach out to any of the existing local chapter leads and get in touch and get involved in the commissioning community.
“I work from the construction stage then jump into the commissioning team. I always pushed the importance of strict cleaning, blowing, and drying very early on from production hydro testing so you’re not going to lose time off the months of delays due to debris or water both prevalent in LNG projects when it comes to commissioning.”
Fantastic, well done, Samuel. Absolutely right. But it’s all too common that everybody wants to kick the can down the road, right? “Not my problem; let the commissioning guys deal with that. We don’t need to worry about flushing or cleaning, because we need to get on to our next job; someone else will figure that out later.” I love your approach, Samuel, that’s absolutely right. Enforce a strict cleaning and blowing and drying process so that there’s no splintering in commissioning.
“Hi from your local chapter Southeast Florida.”
Hey, good to have you.
“Big challenges are for those managers in the organization and development who don’t value the commissioning efforts and still think that it is about the last two weeks of the project.”
Yeah, the last two weeks or last two months or even, like, six or nine months on big projects, if you’re going to ignore that last phase of projects at the beginning, then you’re going to have a pretty tough time, right? Everything might seem like it’s going great until you hit that last part of the project, and what should take two weeks takes six months or a year because it wasn’t properly planned for. Definitely want to avoid that.
“My experience in the construction industry, only data center construction has taken serious importance to the commissioning from design to lessons learned.”
I see that in some data centers and then in others, not so much. I would say that I don’t know if there’s any industry that’s truly mastered commissioning. From the projects that I’ve worked on, the best commissioning I’ve seen is in the aerospace industry because when you’re launching a satellite into space, it must work, right? You don’t have a reset switch, so testing and commissioning and verification of those systems is, thank you, that’s precise and very, very high quality. That was where I started my career in the first 10 years that I was working. Then when I went to the power industry, I did not see anything close to that level of quality being undertaken on our ground-based projects, and it was frustrating and appalling that everybody was just delaying things later and kicking the can down the road when I was used to much higher quality standards. I could see where things were going wrong; I could see that issues weren’t being dealt with and that problems were being kicked down the road later.
Yeah, the aerospace industry, I’ve seen, has the highest quality standards. Then the industry that’s kind of been the next leader after aerospace is the oil and gas industry because there’s some money involved, and there’s lots of logistics and safety hazards involved, so the oil and gas industry seems to be a little bit more advanced. Some of the other industries haven’t gotten that sophisticated in commissioning yet. From the power industry to the data center industry, it might be kind of hit or miss on some of the big players that are repeatedly doing data center construction, I’m sure they’ve gotten it down to a science and are top staff on various data centers but lots of other industries, the wastewater treatment plant industry, the power industry, are not at the sophisticated levels that are required for leadership in commissioning. That’s why we’re helping all industries succeed with commissioning by introducing the ICA Commissioning Standard to give everybody a map, a guide of what high-quality standards look like for project success.
Lots of good questions; I appreciate everyone’s involvement. I appreciate all the questions and good to see others from the commissioning community, and I encourage you to get involved. Definitely watch your email for our next session at the same time next week. I think I’ll be talking about commissioning responsibility models or project delivery strategies for commissioning, so that would be a very in-depth and good topic, definitely check that out. Check out the resources that are on the page here for a commissioning project audit or leadership programs; get a copy of the standard if you haven’t already, and our shareable brochure, all the links are right there; you can check them out. I hope to see you a week from now at our next session. Have a great day!
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