BL Companies Director of Energy Engineering Ian McPhillips wrote an article for Pipeline & Gas Journal on how the environment has changed when it comes to the construction of energy facilities. In a piece titled, “Collaboration Gaps in Facility Design Lead to Costly LNG and Pipeline Errors,” Ian explains how technological advancements, regulations and streamlining have reaped benefits, but an unintended consequence is a widening disconnect between the people who design the facilities and those that will operate them.
As Ian points, that gap is more than a nuisance — it’s a source of cost overruns, delays and, in some cases, outright failures. Here is an excerpt:
In earlier decades, projects often ran through contractors who carried institutional knowledge. A new plant was built in much the same way as the last one, with incremental improvements, but operators had little voice. That model was rigid, which meant it was also predictable.
Today, the picture looks very different. Process safety management, citing requirements and environmental standards have created new expectations. Jurisdictions may have multiple authorities jockeying to weigh in with their input or added requirements. In addition, engineers are now much more likely to go straight from school into an engineering design role without the benefit of any hands-on working experience in the field, as was much more typical in the past.
Organizations also often have more specialization within their job titles, and in some cases, the goals of one line of business may be in conflict with those of other departments. Owners demand input from multiple perspectives: engineering, safety, process safety, operations and construction. The result is more people in the room, more opinions to reconcile, and more risk that projects stall while preferences are debated.
The irony is that greater collaboration was supposed to solve these problems; in many cases, involving operators early helps ensure the facility will work in practice. However, collaboration without leadership is just noise. Someone — typically the asset owner or project manager — must have both the authority and the responsibility to make final decisions. Without that, the process becomes endless and, in many ways, counterproductive.
Read the full article here.