For project owners that are preparing for projects, there is more to consider for commissioning than just the technical testing details at the end. There are critical commercial requirements to be included in contracts before they are even awarded and required project management processes to be established for your project commissioning to be finished successfully at the end of your project. 

Unfortunately, most project teams aren’t thinking about finishing projects when they are drafting contracts to get them started, and these important commercial and PM details for commissioning are missed. When this happens, it is very expensive to fix later in the project, which is why 9 out of 10 projects are late and over-budget.

These are some of the commercial aspects to consider for commissioning when drafting contracts:

Roles and Responsibilities – who is responsible for each stage of commissioning, both during the design and construction phases, as well as during on-site testing? This gets complex when considering all the various stages of testing, both off-site and on-site testing, who provides every little detail such as a VFD setting, and who is responsible to plan and coordinate each activity so everything fits together nicely at the end of your project.

Equipment Procurement Requirements – purchasing equipment seems like it should be straightforward – issue a PO with technical requirements and determine a delivery date to site. But for a lot of equipment, there are important aspects to be tested in the factory. Miss any of these requirements, and it will cost millions of dollars more to fix equipment on-site that was not tested properly in the factory. 

Construction Completion Milestones – these are critical commercial and technical milestones to be defined very clearly in contracts. When these are not clearly defined, this leads to disputes and delays as everyone argues what they think is complete. The commissioning team does not get what is needed and delays are encountered as groups argue about what still needs to be done.

These are some of the PM aspects to consider for commissioning when preparing for projects:

Gated Commissioning Process – what are the workflows that subsystems will follow for completions and commissioning so that nothing gets missed? Who is responsible for verification at each step of the process to ensure project owners get what is needed at the end of projects?

Subsystems/Systems – How is your project split into separate groups of equipment for completion at the end of your project? This can be confusing on projects, as there are thousands of tags, and which tagged piece of equipment belongs to each subsystem? Without a structured process to complete each subsystem, everything gets mixed together and nothing gets completed.

Software Tools – projects are complex, and there are a lot of details to keep track of. It is not possible to manage all the details using paper and spreadsheets, and we require software tools to manage everything. But what tools are needed, how are they used, and how do you get everyone to use them? If they’re not included in contracts, it may not be possible to get project-wide adoption.

These are some of the commercial and PM aspects to consider as a project owner when planning for projects. Commissioning is complex, and there are a lot of details to plan for that may not seem important at the beginning of your project, but get these wrong and your project is guaranteed to end up late and over-budget, just like 9 out of 10 projects do.

Protect your project investment with the industry-best technical, commercial, and project management commissioning processes being used by all successful projects. Contact us to see how you can structure your project for commissioning success.