Upstream Oil Gathering System
Across this megaproject, a mass rollout of visual performance boards, and the associated cascade of information from planning to front line leaders and teams, enabled significant gains in coordination and productivity.
“RLG played the key role in the cultural shift of the pipeline’s construction team and its business partners. During this project I have seen RLG acting as cultural change agents, facilitating, guiding, and motivating our team.”
— Gathering Systems / Pipeline Construction Manager
Context/Challenge
This industrial megaproject involved a massive construction scope for over 100 pipelines spanning over 400 km. Averaging 170 active work fronts, and expansion from 1000 to 3000 workers, productivity needed to improve to prevent further slippage of key milestones.
- Low Productivity: Productivity factor was averaging 0.5 and most crews were failing to achieve their weekly targets.
- Lack of Tools for Engagement: Crew leaders were talented in their trade but lacked tools and experience to engage their front-line crews in field-level planning and execution day to day.
Approach
An RLG team was deployed across this project to work directly with owner and contractor teams in a multi-national setting. The team was comprised of both in-country nationals with cultural and language capability, and experienced international coaches. The RLG team quickly engaged with the gathering system construction front-line crews, as follows:
- Started with a Pilot: 36 work fronts were chosen as pilot sites. These helped the client and RLG teams tailor the approach to achieve acceptance and results.
- A Bold Goal: Seeing the initial success, the Project Director set the bold goal of rolling out performance boards, tools, and processes at all work fronts.
- Training and Rollout: A consistent approach meant all supervisors used the same tools in the same way across all crews.
- Optimization Sessions: For critical scopes, RLG conducted 29 full-scale optimization sessions, compressing contractor schedules by an average of 15 days per work front. Lessons-learned programs helped cut durations even further.
Result
Over an 18-month engagement, productivity improvements saved at least $27 million.
- Productivity factor rose from 0.5 to 1.2, a 140% improvement
- 450 construction, contractor and engineering supervisors trained and monitored to an 80% sustainability level, when support was handed back
- 200+ work fronts were covered by the new Operating Rhythm system
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