Projects need leadership, and projects that take a commissioning-first leadership approach are the projects that are able to deliver on successful outcomes at the end of projects. Projects that do not have a commissioning-first leadership approach are the projects that fall apart at the end and scramble during commissioning. This is the manifesto of Commissioning First Leadership.
Welcome, everyone. Today we’re going to discuss the manifesto of Commissioning First Leadership. This is what the Industrial Commissioning Association stands for. All right, so just to be clear, this isn’t a technical presentation. This is a call for leadership. This is a shift in how capital projects are led and who’s actually leading them so that we can achieve successful outcomes on projects and not just focus on the activities.
Haven’t already joined the Industrial Commissioning Association? You can do that at icxa.net/join. You can get access to all of our commissioning standards and many other specialized resources to help you with commissioning. This is the Commissioning First Leadership Manifesto. This is what we stand for at the Industrial Commissioning Association, and this is what we believe.
We believe in Commissioning First Leadership—that projects must start with the end in mind. All projects need a clear vision of what success looks like during commissioning, right from the start, if they’re going to have any chance of achieving that outcome on projects. Now, I’ve been involved in lots of projects, and some projects have worked well, and some have been an absolute disaster. And the one thing that’s been common is the strong leadership or the lack of leadership on projects. And it takes a strong commissioning leader to lead projects to success.
That leadership must exist right from the beginning for projects to be successful. Some of the projects I’ve been on have had missing equipment, missing documents, untested systems, and lots of finger-pointing everywhere, right? And that’s only the result when there’s no strong commissioning leadership to lead integration and the outcome of the projects.
So this is how we approach projects: we approach with a commissioning-first leadership approach. And that’s why we’ve created the ICA Global Commissioning Standard—to give commissioning professionals the blueprint for how to lead projects and not react to problems on projects.
Our belief is that commissioning is not a task; it’s a leadership function. An important commissioning-first leader is required to be that guiding light to guide projects to success in the end. This can be at the beginning of your project. This can be the project commissioner—the overarching individual who’s responsible for delivering this project. Project managers, project sponsors, project executives, commissioning managers, these are all examples of commissioning-first leaders. And this one idea changes everything on projects.
Commissioning isn’t something you do after the fact and do testing at the end. It’s how you lead your projects from the beginning. Like I said, that beacon—that guiding light to guide projects to a successful finish. What we do instead is we have a commissioning-first leadership approach that starts on day one.
Commissioning is embedded into design. It’s integrated into every aspect of the project life cycle to focus on the outcome of projects. It’s that strong leadership right from the beginning that guides the team and calls the plays, just like the quarterback on the team.
The quarterback is guiding the team, calling the plays, executing, and guiding the team to a successful win at the end. When we lead with commissioning-first, we don’t scramble to catch up along the way or at the end. We build towards a stable, on-time finish right from the start, and that gets the team across the finish line to win at the end every time.
When you have that strong leader focused on outcomes, we are strategic integrators. We’re not the technicians. We’re not doing the energizing of equipment. We energize the entire delivery ecosystem for the successful delivery of projects. We’re the conductor overseeing all instruments and making sure that every instrument is in tune, that all project groups are contributing their best for a successful outcome. We make sure that all instruments are playing in harmony and that everyone is working as one team.
This is a challenge, which is why you need a strong commissioning leader to lead projects to successful outcomes. We’re not just checking breakers and pumps. We’re leading the handover. We’re aligning vendors. We’re coordinating construction, operations, and engineering so that everything comes together with harmony at the end of the project.
We are the strategic leaders who see the big picture with commissioning-first leadership. Commissioning is integrated into all aspects of the project, starting right at the beginning with your project governance, your project governance structure, in how the project steering committees and oversight groups are managing the project. Commissioning is embedded right into those functions, into the design phase, into all aspects of procurement, all aspects of construction for systems-based completions and everything that’s required for startup and performance verification. This is commissioning-first leadership, to pull all of these aspects together for a successful finish in the end.
It starts with a strong leader who starts with the end in mind right at the beginning of projects. Because commissioning touches everything, and when it’s embedded in every phase of your project, you reduce risk, you prevent failure, and you’re able to finish projects with confidence.
This is the role of commissioning-first leadership. Commissioning is your first line of defence to protect against problems on your projects and protect your project outcome. Commissioning-first leadership is the voice of system integration for the successful completion of systems, not just tasks. We are the owner of project readiness to place assets in service and deliver on the project outcome. We are the strategic oversight that, while others are just focused on their slice of the pie, we’re focused on the whole project altogether.
When everyone is protecting their piece of the scope, the commissioning leader protects the whole system. This is leadership under pressure, and it matters more than ever. Projects need strong leaders to lead project teams to success. This is what commissioning-first leadership is—leading projects to successful outcomes.
Our commitment is we build projects that are set up for success right from the start. Projects that are designed for maximum value and seamless integration at the end. That’s the goal right from the beginning of projects, so that we can deliver assets that are more reliable in operation, more affordable, sustainable, and more profitable in the long run.
And this isn’t just idealism. This isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky idea. This is what happens when commissioning-first leadership is in place. I’ve been part of projects. I’ve led projects. This is what happens with a commissioning-first leadership approach. This is how you finish projects, which is the most important part of projects, isn’t it? Actually finishing them.
This is what commissioning-first leadership is. So this is the tipping point. Commissioning isn’t just a checkbox. It’s the moment where everything comes together on projects with a commissioning-first leadership approach. This is the final pressure test. It’s where all of the planning that was done earlier, all of the systems, all the planning, and the people—finally prove themselves in one integrated operation on the projects to deliver successful outcomes.
This isn’t just my belief, either. This is a movement. This is a group of people who are frustrated with projects and know that there’s a better way. This is for people who are begging for better leadership on projects. This is for people who want a strong commissioning-first approach to lead projects to success.
So I encourage you to join the movement. If you believe what we believe, then you belong as part of the Industrial Commissioning Association. I encourage you to sign up and join this movement for people who want to do things better, smarter, and with integrity the first time. And if that’s you, then I invite you to join the Industrial Commissioning Association and join this movement for better project performance.
You can do that at icxa.net/join. Become a member. Join this movement. You can get access to all the standards, specialized resources, and everything to help you take a commissioning-first leadership approach on your projects.
And for others who might be struggling with this on their projects, sign them up for training. Get them to enroll in our commissioning course leadership programs to show not only yourself but others, everyone working on projects—what Commissioning First Leadership looks like and how we’re going to lead projects to success.
We’ve got course modules that help everybody working on projects understand what a Commissioning First Leadership approach looks like, so that everybody can be working toward a successful outcome and be able to lead projects with confidence.
You can check that out at icxa.net/courses. So these are the links that we talked about here. Check out our courses at icxa.net/courses. Join this movement. Join the Industrial Commissioning Association at icxa.net/join. And you can download a copy of this manifesto at icxa.net/manifesto, where you can see what we believe at the Industrial Commissioning Association for a commissioning-first leadership approach on your projects.
All right, if there’s any questions, let me know in the chat. I’ll go back up to the top here and see what we’ve got. The project commissioner is effectively the team’s head coach. That’s absolutely right. And that’s what projects are begging for—projects need strong leaders. Projects need leadership. When everybody’s scattered and doing their own thing, of course, projects aren’t going to end successfully. But when we have strong leadership with a commissioning-first leadership approach, that’s the head coach and that’s the individual who’s going to lead projects to success.
And it’s not just our projects that we’re working on. Everywhere you look in the world is begging for leadership, right? In politics, in the news headlines that you read, everywhere you look—the companies that you work for—everybody needs strong leadership. And projects are no different.
We need project leaders who can lead projects to successful outcomes, not just focused on the activities of projects, but the actual end goal outcome of projects, which is to deliver successful projects that can be used for decades of reliable operation.
So this is the commissioning-first leadership approach that needs to be taken on projects. I love the voice of the system integration. It’s brilliant—absolutely. And that’s what’s required of the individual to guide projects to success for successful integration.
When we focus just too much on the activities, if we’re focused too much on, say, construction, then that’s certainly a very important activity that we need on projects. But it’s not the end goal. It’s not the outcome. We need an integrated system that functions reliably, and that’s commissioning.
Commissioning must be the focus right at the beginning of projects with a commissioning-first leadership approach if we’re going to deliver successful projects. Great presentation, appreciate it.
Yep. So this is the strong message that the Industrial Commissioning Association is about. It’s about commissioning-first leadership—leadership that is so badly needed on projects to lead projects to success. And that’s what we’re doing at the Industrial Commissioning Association: we’re creating the next generation of commissioning leaders who are able to lead projects to success.
So if you believe what we believe—that projects need stronger leadership—then join us at the Industrial Commissioning Association. Get involved. Become a member. Download all the resources. And you can apply a commissioning-first leadership approach to commissioning on your projects as well, so that you can deliver success.
All right, thanks for joining, everyone. Appreciate your comments. And we’ll see you again next week for our next live presentation. Have a great day.
Thanks for listening. To become a member of the Industrial Commissioning Association, visit icxa.net. Members get access to commissioning standards, procurement specifications, commissioning training and certification, plus many more specialized resources to help you with the commissioning of your industrial plant, process, and energy systems. Visit icxa.net for more information.
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