Theoretical approaches to projects execution

• Over the Wall
• Through the Wall
• Concurrent Engineering + Enhanced overlapping strategy

The continuous updating of our approach to project execution

The Trap of Thinking: Breaking paradigms in project execution through the Concurrent Engineering approach.

Basic goals of concurrent engineering execution

Basic goals of concurrent engineering execution:

1.            Guarantee that downstream concerns are considered upstream

2.            Projects on time and budget

References:

“A Decision Analytic Framework for Evaluating Concurrent Engineering”

A. Yassine, K. R. Chelst, and D. R. Falkenburg.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 46, NO. 2, MAY 1999

“A Framework to Re Organize Design Activities During Engineering Change Process”

M.Z. Quertani, K. Grebici  and L. Gzara

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING DESIGN, ICED’07

Goals of Concurrent Engineering execution

One of the most challenging items in the concurrent execution is to achieve effective execution of dependent overlapped activities without losing control of the budgeted costs due to rework as result of discarding preliminary design premises implemented early.

Equally challenging it is to achieve effective recovery of the delay that may present a project in its execution versus schedule at a certain stage of progress (as a Catch Up Plan), without losing control of the costs due to rework.

In both scenarios for controlled execution costs, the following could be implemented:

1. Firstly, a schedule with no overlaps for critical activities (critical path) should be developed.
2. Within critical path with no overlaps, should be identified upstream Fast Evolution activities (upstream activities with fast development that could release the information early to its downstream delivery), upstream Slow Evolution activities (upstream activities with slow development that could release the information late to its downstream delivery), downstream High Sensitivity activities (downstream activity with high exposure or sensitivity to changes in upstream information, involves high risk to rework) and downstream Low Sensitivity activities (downstream activity with low exposure or sensitivity to changes in upstream information, involves medium risk to rework).
3. Introduce overlaps in critical path and proceed to maximize overlaps of upstream Fast Evolution activities with downstream Low Sensitivity activities and reduce overlaps (or none) of upstream Slow Evolution activities with downstream High Sensitivity activities.
4. Then, apply the overlap strategy to reduce design delivery time:
   Preference order:
   - Early freezing of design criteria.
   - Overdesign (based on conservative assumptions).
5. Finally, implementation of control and monitoring of costs due to rework.

Improving project execution using Concurrent Engineering + Enhanced Overlapping Strategy

Planning:

1. Assembling preliminary schedule based on classical (sequential) execution.
2. Identify the critical path activities.
3. Identify the evolution and sensitivity characteristics of each critical activity.
4. Identify the best overlapping strategy that could be implemented (rework risk versus time execution savings).
5. Modify the schedule adding the overlapping strategy to the critical path activities.

Key items of Concurrent Engineering for FEED projects, improving lead time and cost.

1. Implementing the Multidisciplinary Concurrent Engineering (CE) Team.
2. Implementation of Enhanced Overlapping Strategy Framework (information evolution upstream versus information sensitivity downstream) in order to balancing expedited design with risk rework.
3. Implementing of early contact between design team and downstream specialists, suppliers and subcontractors.
4. Ensuring early procurement of the long lead items.
5. Improvement of turnaround time for internal inquiries.
6. Reduction or Eliminating of non value adding activities.