Teams Drive Detailed Construction Planning Into the Design Phase
"Plan the work and work the plan," contractors often say, but the strategy is often easier said than carried out. To improve productivity, some owners, engineers and contractors in the industrial sector are rethinking established planning concepts to remove constraints from the field, improve predictability and better enable crews to "work the plan." Through early alignment of engineering and construction planning, these firms carry better certainty from design through project execution, helping crews spend less time on non-productive tasks.
During the past three years, the Construction Industry Institute and the Construction Owners Association of Alberta have partnered to review case studies, collect best practices and standardize a model for implementing early planning techniques. Under the title "Advanced Work Packaging: Design Through Workface Execution," CII published its findings in late 2013 and showed how implementing its AWP model could yield remarkable results. Teams using AWP techniques have realized a 25% improvement in productivity, a 10% reduction in total installed cost and better safety performance on projects. Teams have claimed improvements in quality and better predictability of schedule and cost.
William O'Brien, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, who served as a principal investigator for the CII study, says that, in many ways, advanced work packaging is a "back to basics" approach. "Advanced work packaging adds extra discipline in the front-end planning phase to force you to very carefully think through your path of construction and your execution planning," he says. "It promotes an early alignment of engineering planning and construction planning. Many of these techniques shouldn't be unfamiliar to good practice, but we are offering a model to formalize that good practice and make sure it happens effectively."
O'Brien says projects often fail because engineering planning isn't optimized to support field execution. Ultimately, teams need to drive more detailed planning early in the process to reduce or eliminate incomplete portions—or clouds—in drawings. "In our lingo, an engineering work package is a deliverable to construction," he adds. "You want to manage the design process to support construction execution—that's where the money is spent and that's where you can win or lose a project."
Glen Warren, who has chaired research teams on work packaging with both CII and COAA, says the recent push to rethink planning processes was driven by a critical need to improve the performance on projects in the Alberta oil-sands region. Warren notes that moving manpower and materials is a major undertaking on multibillion-dollar projects, especially in remote locations with long, harsh winters. Any delays can be extremely costly. More than a decade ago, COAA and its industry partners looked to improve productivity by breaking down tasks at the jobsite level into work packages that could be given to a foreman on a shift—a model now known as "workface planning."
"After a few years, we found that [firms] could get a 25% boast in productivity from workface planning but not consistently," Warren adds. "Where it was breaking down was at the front end. They couldn't get the engineering deliverables, materials and equipment to construction [teams] as they were supposed to. We'd have engineering firms claim the design is 95% complete and that [designs] will be released in a month. Then months go by, and it's still at 95% because they are waiting on vendor data. If you mobilize crews from around the world based on that initial estimate, you're in trouble. That's a very costly mistake."
Standard Practice
Already, AWP has become standard practice at firms such as JV Driver, an industrial contractor based in Leduc, Alberta. Scott Wilson, a project manager in JV Driver's operations group, says its process is ultimately about supporting installation work packages in the field. "Quality, safety, project controls, scheduling, cost coding, materials—all of those departments support the construction team," he says. "If you have all of that information in the field, you can execute safely, on time, and give your crews more tool time."
Wilson maintains that the process can be compromised from the start without early alignment of engineering and construction. "People need to remember that an engineering work package is a piece of a construction package," he says. "I might have five different engineering work packages supporting one construction work package. That means I need all of those packages completed by the same end date so that I can get my CWP out by a set date."
This strategy allows the team to better monitor progress and control the process, Wilson says. By having the engineering team report on progress by individual EWPs, it gets the engineering disciplines "out of their silos and working together."
JV Driver currently is applying advanced work packaging on the $1.4-billion JACOS Hangingstone Expansion 1 project in Alberta. Working with owner JACOS, a subsidiary of Japex, and Toyo Engineering, the team aims to triple oil-sand extraction capabilities at the JACOS site by 2016. JV Driver has been working on the project since 2011, and major construction is now about to begin on-site.
The process began by deciding how to integrate the team. The firms created a construction execution document that, "at its core, speaks to advanced work packaging," Wilson says. It established that the integrated Toyo and JV Driver team would develop together the engineering and construction work-package sequencing. "Construction provides the sequencing, and engineering will deliver per that sequence," he adds.
Wilson arrived on-site in 2012 to work on constructability. With large piping modules a key component of the project, the team wanted to optimize the design to enable crews to work on modules in controlled environments. "The general thinking is, if it costs $1 in the fabrication facility, it costs $10 in the [module] yard and $100 in the field," he says. Thus, they design so that as much as possible can be done in the steel and pipe shops.
Site coordination is a critical component, too. On tight industrial sites, the team has to be extremely disciplined in coordinating scaffolding erection, crane movement and other equipment needs. "We have a 500-ton crane on this job," Wilson says. "We need the movement of that crane to be as sequential as possible."
A shared 3D software platform with 4D and 5D capabilities helps the JACOS team work collaboratively and track progress on individual aspects of a design. Because the design model is highly detailed through early collaboration, it has become the main tool for the construction team's planning. Wilson says the team can go into the model and isolate a specific area, such as a stair tower, and create an installation work package from that portion of the model.
As the project progresses, Wilson plans to use Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags and global positioning systems to leverage tracking data. JV Driver has used that technology on previous projects to monitor materials all over the world. "We will send GPS tags to manufacturers so that we know where that piece of equipment is at all times," he says. "We can see if it's on a boat, on a train or on the way to the yard. We can look weeks out at where that piece is and decide if we should mobilize crews or not."
Based on performance from previous projects, JV Driver believes its combination of AWP practices and tools has improved field productivity by between 10% and 15%, increased tool time by 50%, reduced turnover time by 50% and reduced time to locate materials by a factor of 10:1.
Improving Safety
Advanced work packaging also has shown it can significantly improve safety performance. By preplanning the timing and materials for a scope of work, teams can track and locate materials, reducing materials searches and injury risks. One Alberta project studied by CII and COAA compared work on a multi-year mining project with an annual budget of roughly $400 million before and after the project team used AWP. When AWP was used, tasks that previously ran four months behind schedule were delivered on time. The owner saved 10% of planned budget, and the contractor reported a 300% increase in profit, thanks to reduced rework and improved use of major equipment. Perhaps the most notable aspect was the project's safety record. The project, which logged more than 1 million man-hours annually, went from averaging one recordable incident per month to zero incidents in the 12-month period after AWP was implemented.
Improved safety through AWP also goes a long way toward improving manpower retention. Kirk Morrow, vice president of construction services at S&B Engineers and Constructors, Houston, says producing safe and productive jobsites is critical in light of the manpower shortages forecast for industrial projects along the Gulf Coast. "I asked a [craftsman], who has been with us for while, why he chooses to stay," Morrow said. "The No. 1 thing he said was safety. The second is that, when he goes out in the morning, he knows the tools and materials will all be there for him to do his job."
A COAA study shows that, on projects using traditional methods, workers spent 37% of their time on tools. By comparison, on projects that implement workface planning, workers spend 46% of their time on tools. With billions of dollars in additional projects planned for the Gulf region in the coming years, Morrow says, "We need to be using the workforce we have today more efficiently."
Expanding Applications
As advanced work packaging is gaining momentum in the industrial market, some are looking to use it in other sectors. DTE Energy is applying advanced work packaging to projects ranging from power work to office renovations. DTE started two pilot projects using AWP in 2013 and plans to apply it to all new projects by the end of the year. Stanley Stasek, director of quality management for major enterprise projects at DTE, says the company is expanding its in-house construction-management capabilities and sees AWP as a key component in that initiative. "We need our contractors to be as efficient as possible," he says.
One of the pilot programs involves dry-sorbent injection upgrades at multiple DTE powerplants. "They will install on two plants in parallel and then move on. Work packaging makes sense because you can build [packages] up front, then make adjustments due to location, but the core work remains the same."
The second pilot is treading in less familiar territory. The company is employing AWP on a program that will renovate 54 floors of DTE office space in four buildings on its Detroit campus as well as numerous service centers and powerplant offices. As a new application of AWP, Stasek acknowledges it is more of a struggle. "We are working with contractors that do office renovations for a living," he says. "This is new to them. What kind of work packaging do they need? We are trying to work through that." DTE says that, since its office spaces aren't as complicated as its powerplant projects, it is applying AWP more selectively. "We're not using the whole model. We're taking the portions of it that we can do, and we will add portions as we go." he says. Ultimately, the company plans to develop a scalable AWP model that can work on large and small projects. "We can still follow the AWP model—we just need to consider how detailed and how complex … we need to make it," he adds.
Ted Blackmon, CEO of Construct-X, Houston, a consultant specializing in AWP services, says he also sees potential for AWP in other project types, especially complex projects such as hospitals, airports and other infrastructure. Under current practice in the traditional AEC world, however, he says that would be a challenge today. "Right now, there is too much disconnect between the schedule, the engineering models, the early architect model and the detail modeling conducted by subs and fabricators," he says. "On most [non-industrial] projects, general contractors are just barely dabbling in materials management. Once you can connect those in an electronic fashion and then tie that into detailed plans, it can happen. It may be five to 10 years before it proliferates the AEC world."
Innovations in planning software tools have enabled deeper implementation of the AWP model. CII notes that AWP can be done without software tools. However, using such digital tools can save significant time and allow for greater connectivity between various disciplines on a project. Robin Mikaelsson, a former workface planner and current construction consultant with Bentley Systems, estimates that manual planning averages eight to 12 work hours per package to complete; by comparison, Bentley statistics suggest that package planning can take one to three hours per package using software (see box, p. 37). "When you consider that some projects can have 15,000 packages, that's a tremendous time savings," he adds.
Still, technology can represent a barrier for some users. Mikaelsson says one of the biggest issues he sees with implementing AWP is resistance from people who do not want to use the technology. "Some superintendents fight the technology aspect," he says. "They want to be able to put it on a notepad in their pocket."
That is one of the reasons why CII recommends using a dedicated workface planner. This individual facilitates collaboration among departments and supporting field staff, such as a superintendent or foreman. O'Brien says the workface planner should be a contractor staff member who carries out the detailed planning for installation work packages. "It needs to be someone with field experience," he says. "If they don't have that knowledge, they will have zero credibility."
Adding a workface planner will free up foremen and superintendents to spend more time in the field. "We already have workforce issues and concerns about the skill levels of new craft," O'Brien says. "This increases the ability for senior people to supervise in the field."
Morrow says S&B has built a staff of planners, allowing the company to keep those skills in-house. "As these tool sets get more sophisticated, there's a big learning curve," he says. "We want a core group of craft planners on staff who can maintain that continuity from job to job." With some owners now expecting AWP on jobs, that could force the needed cultural change. "We see a number of clients where there is a full expectation that this will be implemented, and they want assurances in the [team's] capabilities to do this," Morrow says.
Stasek counts DTE among those owners. He says the company plans to consider a firm's proficiency in advanced-work packaging when reviewing bids. "As an organization, we are committed to this," he says.
