Stop Losing Time on Capital Projects with Outdated Commissioning Processes. If your commissioning processes haven’t changed much in the last 10-20 years, then I’m willing to bet:

• You’ve tried to plan early for commissioning, but it never seems to turn out the way it should
• Construction and commissioning groups are not aligned, with confusion on what is required and when
• When the commissioning guys get to site, there are lots of snags with testing
• Commissioning ends up delaying your project’s in-service date as you try to complete testing in half the time
• Missed dates on projects damage your organization’s ability to deliver the intended benefits of projects

This is common, the construction industry has been slow to adopt new ways to manage commissioning. Most project teams are not implementing optimized commissioning processes to save time on projects. With this level of inefficiency at the end of projects during commissioning, your projects can’t be completed on-time.

I’ll show you the modern processes being used to successfully complete capital project commissioning. There are five specific aspects of project commissioning to include in all stages of projects.

Commissioning Requirements in Contracts

The first aspect is your contracts. When contracts are first signed, they set the rules of the game for how groups work together to get the job done, and this includes commissioning. Not only are contracts used to get the work started, but they are also used to get the work completed, and the contract terms for how this takes place during commissioning must be defined upfront. The problem is, most project teams focus on getting contracts issued to get the work started, with not much thought of how project commissioning will be completed. Contracts may include technical requirements for commissioning, but are often missing the commercial requirements for commissioning. And when only the technical requirements of commissioning are included in contracts, the commercial aspects of how the technical work will actually be completed are completely absent. Project teams are forced to figure this out on-the-fly later in the project, which leads to disputes and delays in completing the technical work. Without the commercial commissioning requirements defined in contracts upfront, there is no structure for how construction completions will take place, how each subsystem is completed and handed over to the commissioning team, how commissioning workflows are established for all groups to follow, and how commercial milestones are incorporated into workflows. These details are specific to each project, and must be established in contracts right from the start.

There are two types of contracts that must be considered:

• Commercial commissioning requirements for design and construction contracts
• Commercial commissioning requirements for equipment procurement contracts

Commercial commissioning requirements define how the last stage of your project will take place in a methodical and structured fashion so that nothing gets missed, everyone knows their role to complete projects, so the work gets completed on-time. And these must be defined upfront in your design and construction contracts (or EPC contracts, depending on your project delivery strategy). Missing commercial commissioning requirements in contracts cause delays and additional expenses when these details are determined later.

The technical and commercial commissioning requirements in procurement contracts are important as well, so that proactive tests are completed in the factory to ensure equipment arriving at site is defect free, and to ensure off-site testing aligns with on-site testing. When tests are missed in contracts, it is expensive to add them after the fact, which most often means tests are skipped with the risk of issues being encountered during site testing that should have been identified earlier in the factory.

There are a lot of technical and commercial commissioning details to specify in contracts, and this is something we help project teams define. But I wanted to point you to these two critical aspects of contracts so you can review the commercial commissioning requirements in your contracts before on-site commissioning starts to see if there are any gaps that need to be addressed before it is too late.

Commissioning During Off-Site Testing

The second aspect is off-site testing. This is the first physical testing of equipment and must be fully completed to ensure defects do not get transferred to site where they cause delays to critical path commissioning. Also, off-site testing must be planned and coordinated with the testing to take place on-site. The level of risk you are comfortable with will determine what is tested in the factory and what tests are repeated on-site. The mistake most project teams make is that when factory testing is not properly specified, they think testing can be deferred to site. This is not a good approach, and often costs more than testing in the factory once issues are encountered during on-site testing that cause delays.

Particular attention is required for Integrated Factory Acceptance Testing (IFAT) of control and protection cubicles. It is no longer appropriate to integrate PLC logic on-site for the first time due to the complexity of complex controls. A more sophisticated approach to integrate hardware and software in a simulated environment in the factory is required to mitigate the number of issues on-site. Most project teams don’t do this though, because specifying IFAT requirements in procurement contracts is challenging, and it’s easier to defer integration to site and figure it out in real-time. This approach invariably leads to delays as software is still being developed as it is being integrated for the first time. The delays accumulate as teams try to get the logic completed and get it functioning to allow commissioning to continue.

Project planning for integration of complex controls requires upfront attention at the beginning of projects, and we help project teams prepare low-risk off-site testing to avoid delays later in projects. If you’re planning projects, be sure to consider your integration risks and don’t leave this to the end of your project during commissioning.

Commissioning During FEED

The third aspect is commissioning involvement during your Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) activities. We have all heard that commissioning involvement during FEED is important, but this is easier said than done. Commissioning expertise is hard to find, and there are rarely commissioning guys sitting around waiting to provide input to design packages. What often happens is design packages are completed with very little input from commissioning or operations groups, which creates a disconnect from what is expected at the end of projects. When the end of project activities are not aligned with the beginning of project activities, it is tough to pull subsystems together in a functional manner during commissioning. This causes you to lose time during commissioning as the details that should have been sorted out a few years earlier during design are instead sorted out during your critical path commissioning activities.

There are lots of smart technical engineers working on projects, but their expertise is with the technical activities, not the commercial aspects of commissioning. Getting the technical commissioning requirements to fit within the commercial commissioning framework of contracts requires a different skillset. And without guidance from a commercial perspective of how the technical commissioning activities will be completed, there is too often a disconnect between early project expectations and end-of-project expectations.

Looking at design packages through the lens of commissioning instead of the lens of engineering also gives a different perspective of what is required to actually complete projects. With a view of the end of projects during commissioning, design issues can be identified earlier that would cause costly delays later during commissioning. There are specific design reviews to be completed (particularly for control systems) during FEED that save significant time later in projects. Skip these reviews and there will be delays later during commissioning without this input.

Structuring commissioning input at strategic points in the design phase is something we help our clients with, to avoid costly delays during commissioning. Have a look at your project delivery strategy to ensure you have a feedback loop from the end of your project during commissioning to the beginning of the design phase activities. When this loop is closed, you lose a lot less time on projects.

Construction Completions

The fourth aspect is your construction completions. This is not as straightforward as many project teams think. The last 10% of any activity is always the hardest, and there are a lot of details to keep track of to complete the last part of the construction. What happens on a lot of projects is that it is assumed that construction will be completed per the contract, and then systems will be tested to confirm they work. Simple as that, build it and test it. But there are a lot of commercial and logistics details required to make this go smoothly. We discussed earlier the need to define these details in contracts, but the execution of this transition for each subsystem needs to be meticulously planned so that nothing gets missed. Even the smallest detail that is missed can cause significant delays during commissioning. Without handover workflows established early in projects, construction completions are delayed and impact the success of commissioning.

An organized and methodical approach to complete construction and start commissioning is required for each subsystem to make sure that nothing gets missed. Construction and commissioning activities must be aligned with the startup sequence at the very beginning of your project. When subsystems are correctly identified and organized in your project delivery processes, early in your project, then subsystem handovers between construction and commissioning groups become much easier. All design, construction, and commissioning groups are able to work together much more collaboratively since the correct commissioning processes are established early in your project. But when construction completion processes are established on-the-fly during your project, there will be lots of delays and disputes as each group tries to protect their own interests.

Construction completions align much better with your overall project objectives when these are planned early in projects, and we help project teams define these requirements so that on-site processes are easy to follow by all groups.

Commissioning Workflows

The fifth aspect is your commissioning workflows. These define the sequence of testing and the milestone to achieve before moving to each next step. Each subsystem follows the same workflow, while multiple subsystems are worked on concurrently at various stages in your defined workflow. There are a lot of details to manage during this time. The problem is most project teams do not fully define their commissioning workflows or try to keep track of them with customized spreadsheets that they have developed over the years to manually track the work. This is a guaranteed way to miss details, and impossible to coordinate multiple concurrent work fronts at various stages of testing. Invariably issues are encountered during testing that disrupts the plan and it’s difficult to adjust to changes in manually tracked spreadsheets and schedules, with project teams quickly losing track of where things are at, and a scramble at the end to try and get commissioning completed.

Instead, defined commissioning workflows are required that can be easily tracked and adjusted to change as issues are encountered and addressed. All big details and small details are all tracked so that nothing gets missed, and the work can be tracked dynamically to ensure everything is completed as efficiently as possible. With industry best-practices embedded into your commissioning workflows, it’s much easier to complete commissioning, instead of just crossing your fingers that the commissioning guys will figure it out and get you to the end.

A systematic approach is required on capital projects to complete commissioning, so this fast-paced stage of projects can be completed efficiently. Contact us if you would like help getting commissioning best-practices for your workflows established on your projects.

Capital Project Completions and Commissioning

All 5 of these commissioning aspects must be included in projects. If one or more of them are missing, it becomes challenging to complete commissioning, and causes project teams to lose time on projects. A systematic approach to commissioning is required right from the start in order to set commissioning and the completion of your project up for success.