The key to managing commissioning is excellent process design and control. The problem is – lots of projects are missing the project management processes to manage commissioning and have limited ability to control the processes they are using.

This may be because commissioning eventually gets completed on projects, so everyone assumes some sort of commissioning process was followed (rightly or wrongly). The process may not have been well documented, or maybe not defined at all, but commissioning got completed and the project was eventually finished.

But projects often get stuck in the way things have always been done, never taking the time to intentionally design their commissioning process, or not adapting to the new ways to manage the work, costing time and money on projects due to inefficient processes. It’s not anyone’s fault – when the next project starts, you get to work and start managing the project the same way the last one was managed. Unless someone says differently, it’s status quo and the cycle continues.

The same applies to controlling commissioning. With a poorly defined or undefined commissioning process, project teams are not able to control the outcome of projects and quickly get lost in the complexity of completing projects. During the last 25% of projects, all project teams can do is cross their fingers and hope the commissioning guys will show up and magically make everything work.

What if pilots didn’t have a process for pre-flight checklists or airlines did not require pilots to use them, would you be confident getting on a plane? No way! The process to confirm flight-readiness, and the confirmation that the necessary checks are completed prior to each flight is strictly controlled by the air companies. This step and many other controlled processes are the only way to have confidence that your plane will get to your destination safely.

There are 5 key elements that make up all successful commissioning processes. We see these in all on-time and on-budget projects across all industries:

Commissioning Processes in Contracts – technical and commercial completion requirements must be in engineering, construction, and equipment procurement contracts, specific to your project and industry. Miss any of these, and you’ll have expensive change orders and claims while completing your project.

Commissioning Processes in FEED – commissioning and operational input is required during preliminary and detailed design reviews, especially for control system and HMI user interfaces. When feedback is not provided, there are lots of delays when later groups are seeing design packages for the first time.

Commissioning Processes in Off-Site Testing – since these are the first physical tests of equipment, testing in the factory must align with on-site testing, particularly for control and protection systems. When testing doesn’t align, you get expensive delays while issues are addressed.

Construction Completion Processes – the last 10% of any task is always the hardest, and robust processes are required to ensure systems are 100% complete and that nothing gets missed. Do a half-assed job with this, and the end of your project suffers with expensive delays.

Commissioning Workflow Processes – commissioning is fast-paced, and you need robust methods to manage all the details and keep pace with testing. Your customized spreadsheets are not getting it done efficiently.

Commissioning processes are made easy to monitor and control using CMS Software, which has significantly improved in the last decade.

When project teams have no process design and control of commissioning, and they’re stuck with the way they’ve always completed projects:

• It is not possible to meet cost and schedule objectives, resulting in late and over-budget projects
• There is no alignment between construction and commissioning groups on-site, with delays and disputes as groups determine the processes they’ll follow “on-the-fly”
• There is no ability for project teams to manage and control the outcome of projects, given the processes during the last 25% of projects are poorly defined or not defined at all