Technical commissioning is not actually what’s missing on projects. There are lots of smart people working on projects, and they’ll get the testing done one way or the other.

What’s missing on projects are the project management aspects that are supposed to go “around” the technical commissioning. What’s missing are the systems and controls to manage commissioning starting much earlier in projects.

Your projects may have one or more of these problems:

• Your transition from construction to commissioning is disorganized/incomplete
• Commissioning is delayed due to constant snags
• Commissioning is squeezed into half the time (16 hour days to try to recover)
• You lose time during commissioning, and miss your project in-service date

And I’m willing to bet it’s because you’re making one or more of these mistakes:

• You’re not managing commissioning using PM systems/controls
• You have no systems-based approach through all stages (starting during FEED)
• You plan your projects from left to right
• You’re still using paper and spreadsheets to manage commissioning
• Only a handful of people on your project understand what’s required for commissioning
• You use contracts to get the work started, but not as a tool to finish

This is due to a gap in the construction industry. Project managers must know how to complete capital projects during commissioning. However, commissioning project management is not included in any of the project management literature that exists. When such a critical process (completing projects during commissioning) is not explained to people working on projects, it’s no wonder 9 out of 10 projects are late and over-budget.

That’s why we created the Commissioning Academy – to help project managers and commissioning managers understand commissioning project management, so they can complete projects during commissioning, using systems and controls to lead/manage commissioning, with much better outcomes to meet project cost and schedule objectives.