Chaos to Performance: Production Planning for Cable Pulling

[00:00:00] Gary Fischer, PE: Oh, I got to meet Juan at the last ECC conference. We, James and I made a presentation. He came up afterwards and he started telling us his story. And it’s wow, man, you’re a natural production thinker. You got to come to our symposium and tell your cable pulling story. He went from chaos to performance.

[00:00:19] Gary Fischer, PE: He said, yeah, I’ll do that. So Juan, thank you. He’s the operations executive at Clayco with over 17 years of extensive experience on major domestic and international capital projects, oil, gas, power generation, heavy industry, food and beverage manufacturing, providing operations expertise that spans the full cycle of a project.

[00:00:41] Gary Fischer, PE: Efficiency through project execution. So one will give you a full half hour.

[00:00:45] Juan Jurado: Okay. Thank you, Gary. Afternoon. Really happy to be here with you guys. As you guys see chaos to performance and pretty sure most of you or all of you have been part of a project where we.

[00:01:06] Juan Jurado: Find ourselves into chaos. And part of my experience, and part of what, I wanna bring to the table today is my field experience. So when I started my career, I started from the trades from the field. And that led me to be hands on and under and to understand the processes on how things get built.

[00:01:36] Juan Jurado: I remember, and I wanna walk you guys through my journey in my construction career and how I went from my first day in construction in a $8 billion refinery project as an electrician, and 13 years later in 2019. All that experience and all those eh, change events through those 13 years allow me to convert chaos to performance because at the end of the day, what drives.

[00:02:10] Juan Jurado: Production and productivity is feel the workforce. Todd was saying earlier today, we can try to implement processes systems. We really need to be able as leaders to transform the environment. And be able to give the, to the people in the field, the tools and resources to be able to produce the productivity and production into a measurements that can change the projects and how they are executed.

[00:02:47] Juan Jurado: I remember my first day, that project as an electrician. And I walk into the gate and they told me, you’re going to be working with the. Cable pulling crew. So I show up. I was expecting the first day to be pulling cable and I asked my foreman, my supervisor. Okay, what? What cables are we going to be pulling today?

[00:03:11] Juan Jurado: He said, I don’t know. I don’t know. And I couldn’t believe it, right? So the next day I was expecting to pull cable again. I show up the first day. He said, just go do some cleanup. And try to hide somewhere. We were not productive guys. And I went home and my relatives, they asked me, what did you do today?

[00:03:36] Juan Jurado: I was like I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe it. Next day I asked the same question, what cables are we going to pull today? He said, wait a second. I’m going to go to the trailer. He came back with a little piece of paper. He said, can you go and look for this cable in the cable yard?

[00:03:54] Juan Jurado: And I went, took me two hours. You can, you guys can imagine 8 billion project. Cables everywhere, took me forever to find the cable that I was looking for. Two hours later I came with, came back with the cable there were six guys waiting for me. It doesn’t take that much when or, it doesn’t take that long.

[00:04:15] Juan Jurado: When you try to think outside the box, and you want to think different, and you want to bring innovative ideas, it doesn’t take years for you to identify the gaps. It took me two to three days. And guess what I did? I talked to my supervisor. I said, Why can’t, why we cannot do something different? And he said, shut up.

[00:04:42] Juan Jurado: Just go pull the cable or do whatever. That’s the reality. Because I was at the bottom. And I thought when I’m a foreman, I’m going to be able to make it happen. A few months later, I was doing okay. I was pulling a lot of cables. So they promoted me. I was a foreman. I talked to the superintendent.

[00:05:01] Juan Jurado: Hey, can we change the way we do it? I have ideas. Shut up. Go do what you have to do. So the point that I’m trying to make on this probably long introduction is how real world works in the field. The reality. You can sit in an office and go through Excel files and graphs and all you want.

[00:05:29] Juan Jurado: The reality of what’s happening in the field, that’s what drives the production. And that’s what drives productivity. And the morale. Of people when they want to bring innovative ideas and they get shut down some that’s happening everywhere So how to break through those situations and how to keep moving ahead Even when the industry is shutting you down And I think that’s the journey that I want you.

[00:05:59] Juan Jurado: I want you guys to know about me. So now I think I’m going to move to the next slide. So as I was, moving up on my career, identify some of these challenges on as you guys might know. Electrical is always like a separate company of the project. Nobody wants to talk about electrical.

[00:06:21] Juan Jurado: They love piping and they, because it’s the bulk of the main hours and everybody talks about isometrics, but electrical just by the, cables and we’ll let, the superintendent and electrical manager deal with it. And sometimes they become the bottleneck towards the end of the project.

[00:06:38] Juan Jurado: So I identify all those deficiencies, challenges. And I highlighted some of the, key aspects one of the biggest complex aspects of the electrical is really hard. To plan electrical pool, a pool, pulling cable through areas because you can’t break a cable. It’s not like a piece of pipe that you can assign to a certain area.

[00:07:03] Juan Jurado: So that’s one of the challenges. And that’s why it’s really hard to find work packages and processes that allow people to plan the work. Cable management, always a challenge. You run out of cable, then it’s six week lead time. So you go to the cable jar. Then you will find the cable, then you have to tell them that you are going to have a delay of X amount of weeks because you don’t have the cable.

[00:07:29] Juan Jurado: So as, I was going through all these processes through, again, 13 years moving up, and I couldn’t make a change. When I was a project manager, I tried to do it, I couldn’t do it. And every, in every step and every year, I was told that I was crazy. I was crazy because what I wanted to do, I wanted to change the way we were operating and the standard process to, to pull cable, but I didn’t give up.

[00:08:02] Juan Jurado: So I know it’s like a, abstract, a concept. So I made a video myself, like a cartoon that I would like to show you guys to see what a day, for electrician is. So let me go to the next slide and hopefully we can. Play the video. Okay. It was on me.

[00:08:29] Juan Jurado: So this is the electrician 6 30 a. m. Asking What cables is going to pull today? And his boss told him that’s pretty much me asking.

[00:08:41] Juan Jurado: And he just leave this up to the supervisor, 8 30 AM. He’s I need to find these seven cables to pull today while the other guys are waiting. He goes to the cable yard. That’s me trying to find those seven cables in a place full of cables. So it’s, challenging. Two hours later, he just finds three, four cables out of the seven.

[00:09:10] Juan Jurado: The reality is the other guy has the other three cables in another part of the plant. And he said I’ll, be done later. So you can pick it up later. So at 10 30, he actually goes back to his crew and say let’s pull the four cables. We don’t have the seven. So let’s get going. That’s when they actually start to be productive.

[00:09:34] Juan Jurado: So at 2 PM, the other guy say, Hey, I’m done with the cables that you needed. He said, it’s too late. I don’t have the four lift. We’ll do it tomorrow. No, there is no rush at 4 30. It goes back to his boss asking how many cables he pulled today. He said, I pulled four out of the seven, and we’ll pull the rest tomorrow.

[00:09:56] Juan Jurado: He said, sounds good job.

[00:10:00] Juan Jurado: Non productive time, four hours, from 6. 30am to 10. 30am. Productive time, six hours. You earn, and maybe depending on the productivity factor, but you actually work six hours, productive work. The other four hours, you were trying to find the cable. You were trying to define what you were going to pull.

[00:10:22] Juan Jurado: And then the other guys were just hiding somewhere. That’s the reality. And that keeps happening, guys. It is happening. It keeps happening. So when I noticed, all this I started to think about how can we improve this process? I remember there was one day I was in in a, duck bank pulling one cable through one conduit.

[00:10:52] Juan Jurado: And then two months later, I was in the same duct band pulling another cable through the same conduit. And then three months later, I was in the same duct band pulling a cable through the same conduit. And I was thinking, why we’re doing it this way, where I can pull the three cables or four cables or five cables at the same time and improve my productivity because there was no planning.

[00:11:14] Juan Jurado: And, I started to think about paralleling cable reels. And how to maximize the productivity through this approach. And there is some valuable information there. But basically, throughout those 13 years, I was just thinking on this. Thinking, how can we do it? And you see the cable reel and several cables and a guy pulling it.

[00:11:45] Juan Jurado: And I’m, going to play this other video where, you can actually take this approach and take it even further to the suppliers where you can maximize and plan the, plan your pulls and then you can send it to the manufacturer on how you want to, how you’re going to pull these cables and they will, re pull it and they will send it to you already complete.

[00:12:09] Juan Jurado: So, you just have to pull it. We’ll, show it later. Okay. So we’ll go next. So now 13 years later, I’m in North Carolina. I’m actually in Pennsylvania and there was I was building a power plant in Pennsylvania and. It was this other project that was about to start in North Carolina power plant 2019.

[00:12:37] Juan Jurado: I got a phone call from one of the lead executives of that company at that time. And they had a big problem as you guys can see on the left, side. They, the project was bid or bidded with 1. 2 million feet of cable. So that was their estimate. Linear feed of cable that they had at the beginning for that project with a hundred and twenty two thousand main hours when they finally finish the design.

[00:13:09] Juan Jurado: They realized that they needed 3. 1 million feet of cable to build that power plant. It was a two by two combined cycle. So guess what? One of those top leaders on that company. I think he recall that one day he heard a crazy guy talking about he could do something different with cable pulling. So I got a phone call and I say can you come, down here right away and help us out?

[00:13:36] Juan Jurado: We have a big, problem. And I went out there and 13 years later I had the opportunity to make it happen. They gave me all the resources. We have to go back to engineering, reroute the cables. And. We were able to implement production system and operations process that will allow the guys in the field to better understand what they needed to do.

[00:14:07] Juan Jurado: And as you guys can see the outcome on the right side at completion, we pulled the 3.1 million feet of cable and we spent 132,000 men hours, which is it was a, big milestone. And just to give you guys some context. And the power market power industry at that time, 2019.

[00:14:30] Juan Jurado: The average progress or weekly progress for cable pulling was about 50,000 feet of cable a week with a 50 50 crews, or 50 people, 50 electricians pulling cable. And I was able, at peak, I was able to pull 170,000 feet of cable with the same amount of people just implementing these tools. So as you can see I this slide because that kind of reminds me when I got to the project, I sat down with the, executive leaders and we technically in their mind, it was just two options.

[00:15:07] Juan Jurado: Option A, we finished late, 60 weeks late, because we kept the same production, the same installation unit rates, we were going to finish 60 weeks late based on the schedule that was part of the contract. And that will, represent around like 18 million dollars on, LDS. Or option B, we bring more manpower and that’ll, be like 190, 000 man hours that is roughly another 20, 20 million dollars, but the crazy guy came up with a option C, and the option C is let me implement something different. Let me try to forget about being an executive or project manager or whatever. Let me be an electrician and let me play with it. Let me apply my experience, hands on experience, to change how we do it. And we did it so It took, I would say the biggest challenge is being able to transform the idea and the concept and, translate that to the guys in the field so they can execute it.

[00:16:20] Juan Jurado: But if the message comes from someone that has done it, it’s easier to break through because you speak the same language and you can go out there and translate what you want to do and basically saying in the same, in the way that they can understand it and that’s how, we did it. This is just an example of how we build this pool packages and how we were respawning the cables.

[00:16:46] Juan Jurado: And it was really good to see that the foreman in the morning, instead of coming to side to trying to find the cables and guess what he was going to pull the next day he was given this pool package in a weekly basis. So he knew what he was going to pull. And I had about two crews on nights where they were just respawning cables.

[00:17:12] Juan Jurado: The picture that I showed you guys earlier where you have multiple cables in one reel. So the, day that the foreman was getting ready to pull the cable, he will show up to next to the manhole. The reel was already there. So he doesn’t have to go. So he doesn’t need to go and look for a forklift to transfer, transport the reel from the reel jar to the manhole.

[00:17:34] Juan Jurado: It was already there. Cables were ready. Only thing he needed to worry about was pulling. So that’s how we maximize our productivity. Yeah. Because there were specific tasks assigned to each one of the the, crew and, they knew what step they needed to complete and how it was going to be completed.

[00:17:55] Juan Jurado: So it was like a assembly line process. So when, I refer to the assembly line processes I wanted to represent this in a way that this is how the idea developed in my mind through, throughout those 13 years Because we needed to start from the design and how we route the cable. So I identify that engineers, they route the cable based on service level and how they were developing the design based on the PNIDs and systems, et cetera, but not necessarily a construct, with a constructability input.

[00:18:37] Juan Jurado: So that’s the first step. We have to engage with engineering and design and being able to reroute cables to make it easier for the guys in the field. Then through our procurement, engaging suppliers being able to implement those cable pull packages and pull, cable pulling, pull planning with the supplier so they understand what we’re trying to do and support the effort.

[00:19:06] Juan Jurado: And then cable management. So one of the biggest advantages also from this approach is we didn’t run out of cable. We have some challenges obviously, but we were able to get ahead of those challenges and we never came across of an issue where We ran out of cable and we were waiting five weeks to get cable because each cable is already assigned, is already identified, and you can’t just use it for whatever.

[00:19:35] Juan Jurado: Because each cable reel has a tag and is already assigned to a certain pool. And obviously in the logistics side, it helps tremendously because then you reduce the cost for rental equipment. So you don’t need that many, you don’t need that many for lifts, you don’t need that many. And you don’t need that many people running around trying to find, the cables and then the wait time.

[00:20:03] Juan Jurado: So in logistics, we were able to, improve tremendously too. And the last step is just pulling the cable, which I already explained that the foreman just needed to, he just needed to worry about pulling cable. And, it created a really really good competition between people. Between the groups that were pulling cables because each group had, they knew that this week my package is 20, 000 feet of cable and the other one has a 19, 000 feet of cable and they were trying to accomplish that and they would, they were being measured by those metrics.

[00:20:38] Juan Jurado: So basically we transformed the subjectivity of their planning to have an objective planning through our process that allows them to know what they were going to do. And not let the planning to the guys in the field with lack of information and lack of resources to do it.

[00:21:06] Juan Jurado: In this specific project, we were able to improve the productivity by 134%. We reduce the equipment, rental equipment cost by 35%. The on, on, on those Costco’s are located to the electrical division. We have cable procurement savings of 18 percent and the on site man hours for electrical were reduced by 42%.

[00:21:36] Juan Jurado: So after, the project was nearly complete, the same guys that called me crazy for, a few years. By that time I was working for a big EPC company worldwide, had people flying from all over the world to meet me and talk about this. And I think like the biggest message for me is you, no matter how impossible it looks like, no matter how difficult it seems like, and if people doesn’t listen or you don’t feel like you’re being part of something bigger, don’t give up.

[00:22:19] Juan Jurado: And, throughout this process, I was able to not just improve on electrical. But I have been able to implement the same tools and the same approach on other type of, systems and disciplines and projects, going through different variety of projects and advantages to owners. So like Gary was saying when I was at the ECC conference, I heard about the operational science and, the concepts and, how things are being done.

[00:22:53] Juan Jurado: Yeah, that made a click to me. It was like, it’s intentionally click and I knew that basically what I was doing at that time it was I was analyzing the production process and how to optimize it and how to engage the teams to be able to get it across, the line. That’s, pretty much The experience and the journey, and

[00:23:19] Gary Fischer, PE: Alright, we have time for a few questions. I told Juan when he told me his story, he said, You found your tribe, Batman. You’ve got your tribe, so you need to work together. You might even have some ideas on how to how to improve on what you came up with there. That’s another conversation. Yeah. Any questions for Juan?

[00:23:42] Juan Jurado: That’s, the video. Thank you.

[00:25:30] Juan Jurado: So in that video, instead of moving five reels, instead of pulling five, five cables at a different time, you’re pulling the five cables at the same time, and you’re just moving one reel. Not once.

[00:25:43] Gary Fischer, PE: Yep. Great to see. Any questions for Juan?

[00:25:47] Audience Member: More than a question is your reflection around many project manager or director don’t really know how the work really happened.

[00:25:59] Audience Member: What really happened in the field? We do big plans, as you say, express shit. And then you say, how many feet of cable have you pulled today? How many feet of cable are you going to pull tomorrow? What is your reflection about how really close the gap between The big guys and the guys in the room and what’s really happening in the field.

[00:26:25] Audience Member: What’s what, is people like you are really special. You have field experience and you’re a manager. How do you what, do you think should, really happen?

[00:26:37] Juan Jurado: It’s a very good question and complicated question. I think the biggest challenge that we have in our industry, and I think it’s unfortunately, it’s just getting worse, is that now some of the leadership, and some of the, even the traits, and some of the we talk about supervision, superintendents, project managers, directors, you name it.

[00:27:06] Juan Jurado: That there is a gap right now, and I see that gap is getting worse because we’re not. We’re not having the same group of people coming through the trades. So so execution is the key and feel experience is very important. So we as an industry, we need to find ways to incentivize the market incentivize.

[00:27:27] Juan Jurado: Young people and incentivize the, trade so we can attract people and they can go through that ladder instead of just going directly to an executive position and demand things. And, I asked for productivity and production and asked for so many things where they don’t really understand how it works because that’s the key.

[00:27:49] Juan Jurado: You have to be on the trench. So, I think that’s the answer. The answer is we as leaders and as a companies that are in the. Leading this effort, we have to find ways to be able to create a programs where we can get people through the trades and then they become leaders and they can do this type of things.

[00:28:08] Juan Jurado: I think that’s the key.

[00:28:13] Audience Member (2): In your example, actually, you said you had four unproductive hours and six productive hours, but they stopped working at two. It seemed like there was only like three and a half productive hours, unless I missed something.

[00:28:23] Juan Jurado: No, so the, 2 pm., and I’m sorry, like I said I, did that video, so it’s probably a little bit confusing.

[00:28:28] Juan Jurado: But, the 2 pm. is, what happened in reality is the guy went and he was looking for seven cables. He couldn’t find the seven cables, he just found four. Because another guy Earlier that day or the day before, he grabbed the other three cables, and that happens all the time. So he might be working on the water treatment building with the three cables.

[00:28:47] Juan Jurado: So that guy told this other guy, I’m done at 2:00 PM you can come and pick up the three cables that you were looking for. But the guy is it’s too late. I’m gonna do it tomorrow because it’s, it is been, is the availability.

[00:29:02] Audience Member (2): Works from 11 or 10?

[00:29:03] Juan Jurado: They work from 10 30 to four 30.

[00:29:08] Juan Jurado: And the other guy they just were able to do the work.

[00:29:10] Juan Jurado: They was just able to pull four out of the seven because the other guy had the cables.

[00:29:16] Audience Member (2): So that’s a side note, but it is what it is. So on that project that you mentioned that was 120,000 man hours, you had the AVC options you mentioned like there was the C option, which obviously was the parallel cabling that you innovation.

[00:29:34] Audience Member (2): So if they didn’t have that option. What were they going to do? Were they going to actually lose money?

[00:29:40] Juan Jurado: Actually actually that company went bankrupt.

[00:29:44] Audience Member (2): Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, that’s probably the option.

[00:29:46] Juan Jurado: I’m not going to say the name of the company, but the company went bankrupt two years later.

[00:29:51] Juan Jurado: Because when it was a huge company so when you deal with big LNG projects five billion, eight billion dollar projects. And, in this particular case, the heat cap was the electrical side of things. But if you’re not able in, large companies and large projects, you’re not able to scale this idea so quick to be able to do it.

[00:30:15] Juan Jurado: To get caught up with big projects. So what happened is that the trend of getting projects because I beat the project, I want to get the project. So I lower my bid and then you lower your unit rates, installation in a race to be able to match your budget, and then you leave it up to the guys in the field.

[00:30:32] Juan Jurado: So yes we’ll be, losing ton of money, but we didn’t lose money on that project, but definitely that trend of how to buy out those projects led the company to getting bankruptcy.

[00:30:46] Gary Fischer, PE: And that’s not a unique thing. Thank you again very much for sharing this

[00:30:48] Juan Jurado:  No, thank you. Thank you.