If your plan is to leave commissioning to the end of your project and get your commissioning guys to fix everything, you’re in for a sad disappointment. They’re not magicians, they can’t make up for errors and mistakes that were made earlier in your project.

This is unfortunately the industry-norm – to leave commissioning to the end. It’s not anyone’s fault – commissioning is a complex problem to solve on projects. And when there’s an overwhelming amount of work to do on projects, it’s easy to defer commissioning while you focus on the immediate tasks. It is common for capital projects to get lost in this complexity, so I understand if this has been your experience on projects in the past.

When you’re cooking, do you figure out what to cook while your food is on the grill? Or do you start preparing before you light the BBQ? Have you ever skipped ingredients? It doesn’t really turn out how you want it to, does it…

Similarly, completing projects requires a proven methodology that gives the steps to take during all stages of projects – the proactive steps to ensure your project turns out how you want at the end. You need the CSU Frameworks to use when preparing contracts, completing designs, performing off-site testing, completing constructions, and integrating systems, so that all pieces of your project successfully come together at the end. Leave completions out of any of these steps, and you’re unlikely to achieve your project objectives.

Without a project management completions methodology to follow, you can’t possibly know how your project will turn out. The technical details will bog you down and you’ll get lost in the complexity of completing projects.

So how do you effectively plan and execute commissioning so you’re not late and over budget?

The Integrated Completions Methodology gives you the project management frameworks to follow through all stages of projects so you can have confidence that the right actions are taking place and your commissioning guys have what they need later in projects.

There are 5 aspects of Integrated Completions to incorporate into your project delivery:

CSU Frameworks 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.

CSU Frameworks in FEED – commissioning and operational input are 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 see design packages for the first time.

CSU Frameworks 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 Completions – 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 commissioning suffers from expensive delays.

CSU Completions Workflows – 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.

All 5 components of Integrated Completions are required – leave one or more of them out of your project delivery and your project will experience delays.

When Project Managers take a proactive approach using this methodology to completing projects, their project teams are empowered with the right tools and processes to deliver their best efforts to complete projects. When project teams are functioning within proven frameworks, they can accomplish great things together.

But when project teams are guessing at what steps to take to get to completion, not following standardized commissioning frameworks, or missing important actions early in projects, bad things happen:

• Project teams quickly get sidetracked as projects meander off the path to completion
• Time is lost on unnecessary and self-defeating tasks that do not align with the end-goal of achieving the project in-service date on-time and on-budget
• Project teams get lost in the complexity of completing projects

Project Managers can ensure their commissioning team is successful with a proactive approach to completing projects. Start with the end in mind and integrate CSU Frameworks into everything you do on projects.