Archived Projects

Conceptual Frameworks Underpinning Project Delivery and Implications for Optimizing Project Outcomes

Scope:

Optimizing project outcomes requires that current conceptual thinking and frameworks associated with project delivery be understood. This research proposes that delivery of projects can be best understood through three primary historic eras:

Era 1 - Productivity
Era 2 - Predictability
Era 3 - Profitability

These eras, which directly correlate to the development of modern operations management thinking, have had significant influence on how projects are delivered today, and form the basis of current trends in thinking about how to improve performance. Once this research is concluded, PPI envisions the development of a maturity model, which can be used to understand current and future state of a project delivery approach.

Framework for Optimizing MCP Supply

Scope:

The majority of investment made by an owner operator during the delivery of a capital project is allocated across a complex network of product suppliers and service providers. In the past, owner operators and their EPC’s have looked to minimize the risk of schedule delay resulting from not having the material and parts needed to ensure an effective flow of installation onsite. At the same time, other industries including automotive, retail, and technology have developed new  thought processes and methods to manage supply to the final assembly / installation point. To better understand the potential to improve supply performance for MCP’s, including the application of alternative models, PPI is funding research led by U.C. Berkeley’s Operations Research Department.

Partner:

U.C. Berkeley

Researcher:

Philip Kaminsky, PhD - Department Chair of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, U.C. Berkeley

Effective Implementation of Work Packaging for Complex Projects

Scope:

Project cost and schedule overruns in the energy and industrial sectors have reached crisis levels. These cost and schedule overruns are impacting shareholder value and the ability for energy and industrial companies to deliver and maintain their assets. Work Packaging is one area that is gaining much interest among owners, operators and EPC firms. Recently, CII and COAA released Report 272-2 Advanced Work Packaging. Building on and expanding this recent work, this PPI research project explores how the application of operations management theory and practice can optimize the execution of work packages and in so doing support better control and predictability of project cost and duration.

Partner:

Project Production System Laboratory (P2SL) University of California Berkeley

Researchers:

Glenn Ballard, MBA, PhD Research Director P2SL, University of California Berkeley
Iris Tommelein, Professor of Engineering and Project Management, University of California Berkeley

An Operations Management Framework for Project Production System Design

Scope:

As the “Project as Production System" framework continues to gain interest it exposes the need for an effective framework for modeling and optimizing project production systems. This research project sets forth how specific mathematical equations can be used to model and optimize project production system behavior and performance including trade-offs between cycle-time, capacity utilization, and other variables.

Researcher:

H.J. James Choo PhD, Strategic Project Solutions, Inc.