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A small privately held transmission and distribution utility in the Northeast sought to improve its capital project planning and management capabilities.
The client was amid an enterprise-wide strategic planning effort whereby each business unit developed initiatives to present to the board. The operations group needed to focus on improving the capital project planning process. Questions were raised about the appropriate planning horizon for transmission and distribution projects and the accompanying level of engineering performed for each stage-gate of the planning horizon. In addition, the client was interested in learning more about capital project examples: industry benchmarks, and lessons that could be learned from the best practices of peer companies.
Prioritizing capital project management and planning is challenging in any organization, and this client was no exception. It can be exceedingly difficult to establish project-scoring criteria and then objectively evaluate projects against these criteria. However, effective capital deployment requires that transmission and distribution utilities prioritize these efforts.
As part of the initial engagement, our consultants worked with the client to assess their current performance, benchmark the company against leading practices, and ultimately refine the strategic initiatives related to capital project planning. This effort focused on identifying the issues in the company’s current processes, prioritizing critical areas of concern, and developing recommendations to address these concerns. Based on our findings, we recommended a series of strategic initiatives and ultimately assisted in implementing several of them.
ScottMadden conducted a series of interviews with the client’s staff to develop an understanding of the current capital project planning processes. Through this effort, the team reviewed existing documentation, procedures, and key performance indicators (KPI) related to these processes. It was important to understand the client’s current performance in capital project planning and how it was reflected in cost and reliability KPIs. In addition, our expert consultants reviewed tools used to support the management processes being assessed. Through these interviews, reviews of documentation, KPIs, and other data, ScottMadden developed preliminary findings and recommendations about issues and challenges to be addressed by strategic initiatives.
ScottMadden also identified areas to be explored through external benchmarking. These included:
ScottMadden conducted leading practice interviews with select organizations, which were a mix of the client’s and ScottMadden’s contacts. The following criteria were considered in selecting the panel of companies:
The benchmarking highlighted some important findings for the client:
The participants received a blinded copy of the benchmark findings.
Through the findings and recommendations developed during the current state assessment and benchmarking, ScottMadden revised the client’s high-level list of strategic initiatives and suggested a priority order in which they should be implemented. Upon agreement on the set of initiatives and prioritization with the client, ScottMadden developed implementation plans. The initiatives appear in Table 1.
Upon approval of the above set of recommendations, ScottMadden was asked to assist in implementing several of them. The team started by focusing on the project development process, for which they developed a stage-gating process.
Large capital projects cannot be accurately scoped and planned without significant engineering performed; to that end, stage-gating enables management to approve expenditures related to engineering and long lead-time items with the understanding that final approvals will be issued as project details evolve. Stage-gating ties the approval of project stages to the availability and quality of data.
Graph 1 provides a high-level description of the stage-gating process we designed with the client team.
As part of these capital project management services, ScottMadden worked with the client to develop a set of objective criteria against which to score projects. The categories were agreed upon, and we subsequently worked with the client to team score a series of projects. This exercise proved extremely valuable, as the client team debated why projects should or should not receive certain scores. Though prioritizing capital expenditures is often a mix of art and science, establishing a straight-forward process allowed the client team to better understand and communicate their rationale for prioritizing these selections.
Estimating is key to planning a large capital project. This client identified estimating as a challenge for the organization and requested that ScottMadden’s consultants help refine the process. Through extensive work with the engineering and project management staff, we were able to develop an estimating procedure and a series of templates based on a common work breakdown structure. This enabled the client team to use a common set of templates to provide estimates in support of the stage-gating process described above.
The key inputs to a good estimate are a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which follows the project from planning to completion, and historical information on compatible units. The WBS and compatible units are used as the basis of an estimate, and they can be tailored to the estimate for various factors such as technical difficulty, economic order quantity, and schedule.
A separate initiative focused on improving capital project management best practices. In order to assist the client in this area, ScottMadden performed an objective assessment of strengths and weaknesses by comparing the client’s existing practices to Project Management Institute (PMI) standards.
ScottMadden conducted interviews with the client’s planning, engineering, and project management staff to understand the manner in which key processes are performed, the individuals responsible for various aspects of the work, and the use of contractors for parts of the construction management process. We reviewed project-related documents and procedures and attended project status meetings. We then compared our observations to industry practices identified by PMI and developed our findings and recommendations.
This objective assessment enabled the client to prioritize those elements of the PMI model they wished to focus on. ScottMadden then assisted in developing a project management manual, including select procedures (i.e., project scoping, risk management, and change control) currently being implemented in the organization.
Once the client’s management agreed to the appropriate solutions, ScottMadden established a joint team with the client to develop the tools, processes, and procedures needed. This approach ensured that the tools were practical and would be easily adopted. The goal was to have a set of tools and practices to solve the challenges raised in the assessment, which would largely mirror the work done on the capital project planning process.
The project involved multiple departments (operations, engineering, planning, substations, lines, finance, and accounting) due to the multi-functional nature of project work. The work described here was a collaborative effort between ScottMadden and their client. Client teams were established for each of the initiatives described, and all processes, procedures, and templates were reviewed and vetted multiple times to ensure they would be usable by all. Engaging the end-users of the processes and tools developed through these initiatives was critical to the project’s ultimate success.
The work described above significantly changed the manner in which this company plans and manages capital projects. Stage-gating provides increased levels of approval and control through the capital project planning process.
Our client can now improve estimates, gain tighter controls on capital expenditures, and develop better forward-looking plans and budgets. It also enabled the client team to agree on a methodology whereby projects are scored and prioritized based on objective criteria.
Our capital project management process created the framework to improve both the estimates for capital work and the ability to manage them.
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