The Hull Contractor needed a way to integrate their veteran engineering/design and document control teams, with the fledgling procurement team. ProjecTools Documents automated the document approval/revision control workflow and held the engineering team accountable for on schedule creation, review and approval of documents with automated notifications, look ahead and late action reporting. Easy access to documents approved for issue to bidders were then linked to the technical REQ with controlled revision updates that were live linked to the package through the RFQ phase and Purchase Order issue. This eliminated the need for confusing emails and phone conversations between Document Controllers, Engineers and Purchasers to ensure that the updated revision of each document was included in the bid package at each phase of the procurement life cycle, as well as at each the following phases (expediting, onsite QS inspection, etc.).

ProjecTools also allowed the EPC Contractor to receive Vendor Documents online and enforce automated approval processes for quick turnaround. The contractor was able to hold vendors and clients accountable throughout the vendor document life cycle with automated workflow, notifications, look ahead and late action reporting.

The EPC contractor for the FPSO project required a system to maintain and manage 80,000+ design and technical documents. The required system had to account for and manage revision control, approval workflows, progress and status reporting, permission-based document access to globally dispersed team members, etc..

After implementing the proper tools to manage document processes, the contractor’s document controllers attributed an estimated time saving of 5-15 hours per week per document controller by using ProjecTools automated client report generation. This added the benefit of more accurate reporting of progress, status, and late actions.

The EPC contractor also previously had no reliable method for managing supplier data capture, approval or revision control. ProjecTools allowed the contractor to standardize the classification of documents required from vendors for each Purchase Order, communicate requirements to suppliers, and collect vendor document submittals directly into ProjecTools from the vendor interface. The system then enforced the automated approval and revision process, reducing vendor data processing and reporting by 2-10 hours per week, while providing unprecedented visibility and accountability.

The overall effect was a significant reduction in vendor document turnaround time and an effective data based method for tracking, measuring, and logging supplier performance.

The EPC contractor needed a system that would standardize the WBS and Budget Items, and report budget performance against a fixed budget baseline. They also needed a system to push commitments to, and pull actuals from their accounting system (Microsoft Dynamics). They were pleased that ProjecTools collected activity data, and organized that data into Cost, Change Order, Man-Hour, Commitment, Overage, Cash Flow, Progress, Earned Cost, etc. reports.

The EPC contractor had no formal system to manage and integrate Equipment, Construction, Commissioning, or Punchlist data. Having experienced overruns in the completions and commissioning phases in previous projects, the EPC contractors suspected they were losing money by having poorly organized data. They were right.

Executing the project using ProjecTools, all tagged equipment was logged with standard numbering formats and formal rules for TAG metadata. The EPC contractor was then able to assign engineering interns from local universities to manage TAG data rather than highly-paid engineering resources. This allowed them to save money and perform a public good.

With all TAG Data populated in ProjecTools central register, the EPC set themselves up to gain the tremendous benefits of efficiency and precision in construction and commissioning. After loading their checksheets and populating them with live TAG data – the team then defined system enforceable progression dependencies and constraints for Certs, ITRs and Punchlists. This allowed them to efficiently assign batches of sensible inspection activities with a few clicks in the application. This contributed huge time savings over the previous Excel and Word-centric process they had outgrown. They no longer relied on a small army of clerks to organize inspections. Automated workflows ensured the critical path was followed exactly as defined.

As inspections were completed, Optical Character Recognition features in ProjecTools logged each completed ITR in the system and updated the status automatically.

ProjecTools Construction Punchlist application also allowed the EPC contractor to log punchlist items into the system and enforce predefined constraints on ITR or CERT completion according to the configurable rules in the application. This prevented the improper completion of ITRs and CERTs with outstanding critical Punchlist Items and gave supervisors and managers the ability to identify and assign them for resolution before they affected the completions schedule.

The end result of using ProjecTools Engineering & Commissioning on this FPSO project case study was significantly fewer delays and overruns caused by rework, communication errors, and organization deficiencies. The completions team also found that the system reduced the administrative overhead for each ITR and CERT by at least two hours.