Managing Transitions between Construction Completion, Pre-Commissioning, Commissioning, and Startup
The graphic below depicts the CCSU project phases, milestones, and handover/transition events.
In response to the challenges of CCSU, RT-333 developed a 17-step implementation process that integrates the key findings from three CII research teams that addressed commissioning: RT-121, Planning for Startup; RT-312, Best Practices for Commissioning; and RT-333 itself.
RT-333 developed a flowchart of 124 CCSU activities, organized by project phase and four thematic categories. Twenty CCSU “hot spots” (highlighted in yellow) surfaced from research-based screening efforts. The team documented the Heidelberg Spar case study to demonstrate the substantial value that can result from timely and effective mitigation efforts for targeted CCSU hot spots.
The hot spots provide further insight into the challenges associated with CCSU transitions. The hot spots identify activities that generally have unclear responsibility assignments, recurring problems or deficiencies, or that often fail to deliver on expectations. Surprisingly, three-quarters of the selected hot spots occur in the Construction phase, emphasizing transition challenges and indicating a need for greater involvement by the project management team at that time.
Each of the 20 hot spots is characterized with 10 fields of information, including common impacts, causal factors, and prevention/mitigation strategies, for which trend analysis has been conducted. RT-333 cross-linked the hot spots with the 16 CSU Critical Success Factors identified previously by RT-312 (IR312-2, Vol. I, Table 2, pp. 14-16). This analysis underscores the particular importance of alignment, execution planning, and check-sheets, among others.
RT-333 developed a matrix to show Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed assignments for all 124 CCSU activities, mapped across 60 common project organizational functions. While the CSU manager is generally responsible for 49 of the activities, 39 other activities are generally the responsibility of three other key managers: project manager, construction manager, and operations manager.
RT-333 developed the RACI matrix only to serve as a point of departure for in-depth project-specific management-team discussions. The ultimate objective is for the project team to achieve full alignment of understanding of who is responsible for what.
RT-333 tabulated the activities for the four major management functions that are responsible and/or accountable for a large share of CCSU activities.
RT-333 identified 20 Hot Spots, then characterized them with information collected from industry experts, including causal factors and prevention/mitigation strategies.
