(97b) Driving Capital Projects to Success

Building ?Grass Roots?, ?Expansion? and/or ? Modification? capital projects in the refining, chemicals processing, power and manufacturing sectors is by no means a new concept to Owners, Architect-Engineers (A&Es) and Constructors. Yet, time and again we encounter issues and problems in successfully meeting the intended financial, technical, and operational goals and expectations of a capital project in a timely manner. Cost overruns, schedule delays and meeting promised plant performance manifest themselves and, often times result in lawsuits. Over the years, analysis of project issues has identified various factors that can drive a project to its final success or failure. More often than not we find that technical, financial and schedule assumptions as well as expectations and decisions made in conceiving and formulating a project, drive most of subsequent the project activities and are the key contributors to a project's success or failure.

This presentation reviews the key steps in project formulation and development, which form the basis of a capital project and, how the steps impact and drive the subsequent project activities through completion, commissioning and operations. Experience-based examples of projects are presented to show how early expectations and decisions based on technology, economics and completion schedules can and do impact engineering, design, procurement, construction, commissioning and operational performance of a plant.