Views on Capital Project Management which may not be in text books
Engineering is the work involved in designing equipment and structures
Procurement is the acquisition of the services, materials and site works to successfully complete a project from start to finish
Construction is the site work of installing a plant, structure or building
Raising purchase requisitions is a key procurement skill for project engineers and others making commitments to project budgets
I reviewed and approved many and suggest the following good practice to anyone raising a capital purchase requisitions
Design standards are needed to carry out engineering on capital projects and some of these can only be provided by Clients
The UK’s Construction (Design and Management) Regulations came into force during my career
Sometimes my interpretation of the latest Regulations (CDM 2015) seemed to be different to that held by EPCM contractors. Six examples that come to mind are:
I recommend that Engineers should get involved in car park layout design and it should not be left solely to Architects
I found that getting key people together to collectively carry out design reviews was very productive
Meetings picked up improvements that individual reviews did not
The four design reviews I found most useful were:
I felt on many projects, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) solutions could have been better
I found that asking Engineers and Buyers to forecast costs for post-order modifications an excellent cost control tool and procurement skill
I had various success with encouraging modular builds (sometimes called pre-assembled units) to maximise workshop assembly and minimise site construction
Equipment vendors supply two items – the equipment and associated vendor data
I found that many equipment requisitions had little specific thought for vendor data
Many projects suffer design delays due to this not being sufficiently addressed early enough
Project Engineers are key to capital projects but the role is rarely acknowledged in project management publications
They possess both project and engineering skills which I found were not covered by any one professional body’s professional development information