There are 4 major phases of capital projects:

• Procurement – projects need to make the formal arrangement to have the people and equipment available to implement the project
• Design – engineers need to define the details of what needs to be installed and how the systems need to function to implement the project’s intended outcome
• Construction – the design on paper needs to be installed in the field
• Commissioning – the equipment and systems need to function as originally intended in the design to meet the project requirements 

There are many more details that make up a project, but these are the 4 major phases at the highest level that make up the start to finish of a project once it is approved.

However, many projects are missing the last phase of projects and take this approach instead:

• Commissioning is lumped in as a sub-activity to construction
• Commissioning is not included in sufficient detail in contracts
• Commissioning is forgotten about or ignored until the end of the project
• Commissioning is thought of as another subcontract to construction, similar to any other installation subcontractor, as just another group to mobilize to site

When this happens, most of the commissioning processes that should have taken place during earlier stages of the project are missed. There is no opportunity to proactively plan for commissioning to ensure it is successful. And by taking this approach, all of the risks during procurement, design, and construction, are deferred to commissioning when there is no time to recover.

This can be deceiving to how well your project is going. It may seem that procurement, design, and construction are going well – everyone is diligently completing their part of the project, due dates for deliverables are being met, and the project seems to be going on-track.

But all of a sudden, your project starts to see issues as commissioning starts. This isn’t because of something wrong with commissioning – this is because of things that were done (or not done) during procurement, design, and construction that are now being realized during commissioning. Stages of the commissioning process that should have taken place earlier were skipped, and the project risks are now being realized as issues during commissioning.

Think of projects like a string of Christmas lights. Projects are big moving machines with lots of people involved, lots of information being generated, and lots of activities taking place on-site. As your project starts, there are a lot of activities taking place in parallel, and very soon, all the parallel activities resemble a big knotted mess of many strings of lights.

However, towards the end of the project, this ball of lights needs to be untangled and pulled back into a single string of lights to get to a single sequence of activities to achieve the project in-service date. In essence, all the strands of light need to be untangled into a single strand with one connection to the project end date. This is the role of commissioning, to untangle the project and bring everything back together as one system to ensure everything is functioning together as one functional plant process.

This is no small undertaking, to untangle all the design and construction tasks of the project and bring them back together as one functioning system. And this needs some thought and planning to make sure it goes well to achieve the project’s in-service date. Projects that are successful take a proactive approach to sorting out the tangled mess early in the project to ensure there is a robust plan to complete commissioning.

And have a well-functioning system in the end.

But leave this too late in the project and there is no opportunity to proactively address issues and plan to complete the project on-time. All the risks that could have been mitigated during design and construction now become issues that delay critical path activities during commissioning.

Projects that approach commissioning as a sub-activity to construction have a difficult time making sense of the knotted activities – there is no dedicated commissioning team to properly plan how the project will end. And leaving commissioning as an activity for the end of construction does not allow any time to plan for the specialized work and ensure the project ISD can be met.

The industry-best approach that saves your project from schedule delays and cost-overruns is by structuring your project with a dedicated commissioning phase at the end, starting right at the beginning of your project. Start with the end in mind and don’t leave commissioning as an after-thought to be determined after contracts are awarded. This gives your project the best chance of success to deliver on-time and on-budget.

You may hear things like:

• We don’t have a budget to engage one or two commissioning team members that early in the project
• Commissioning is in a few years, we have more important activities to focus on now
• We’ll figure out commissioning later
• Our design consultant will advise us on commissioning (hint: they’re focused on design, not commissioning, and the roles are different)
• The contract doesn’t include commissioning in their scope of work (hint: you better fix the contract now before it costs you even more later)

What this means is that your project was never set up for success from the beginning. It was not set up with the end in mind. And problems will likely arise later in your project that will cause significant schedule delays and cost overruns far in excess of the money saved at the beginning of the project by not starting with the end in mind.

This isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s human nature to focus on immediate activities. Projects are huge undertakings with lots to do. And with an infinite list of things to do, all you can do is focus on the urgent items to be addressed. This is all the more reason that a dedicated commissioning team is required to help guide the project to a successful finish during commissioning.

All 4 phases of projects are required:

• Procurement must be meticulously executed in detail to define the rules of the game for all phases, especially for how the project will end during commissioning
• Design needs to prepare all the details to define what installation activities must take place during construction and how the systems are to function during commissioning
• Construction quality needs to be exact with every small little design detail included to set commissioning up for success
• Commissioning needs to be executed flawlessly and snag-free to be able to meet the project’s in-service date

Could you imagine skipping the design phase or leaving out 20% of the design details – how would construction know what to install or commissioning know-how systems are to function?

Could you imagine skipping the construction phase or only installing 90% of the equipment – what chance would the project have to ever work properly?

The same applies to commissioning. How can the last phase of projects – the most important phase to make sure everything works per the contract as it’s supposed to – be skipped or poorly executed? What would be the point of many years of everyone’s efforts to finish a project to only 95% complete with systems that partially function and don’t really work, or are unreliable and riddled with bugs and deficiencies, and remain that way for the life of the plant? It makes no sense, not good value for the money invested in projects!

Projects don’t have to end this way when you follow a structured commissioning process starting early in your project. We show you the structured commissioning process to follow through all stages of the project that successful projects are using to improve their project commissioning processes.

Get started right away with our free 3-Day Mini-Course that shows you the commissioning process to follow.

Long live Christmas Vacation, definitely a Christmas classic!