More tech, more tech, more better tech!
FOR PROJECT DELIVERY TEAMS:
- Allocate more time to think, supervise, question, teach, analyze, research, ask, utilize peer reviews, find out how other industries do it, etc., such that a effective answer has been found that is technically and financially sound. Yes, this will cost more money in the shop -- but there will be big savings in the field and in overall execution time gained. As important, ROIs will improve and management may once more beckon engineers to the top positions instead of thinking of engineering as a necessary evil. Every technologist should never forget that engineering without economics is a meaningless term.
- To ensure that lessons learned during startup are retained in the knowledge data bank of each organization, it should become standard practice to have the owner/contractor process designers and other team members lead the startup efforts, and not leave the field until all the design objectives have been met. After startup, a Process Design Considerations Memorandum should be mandatory, including all the lessons learned in the field.
- The measuring sticks for success must be revised from "On Time and on Budget," to "Our turnover ratio on this project is higher than our competitors," or "Our net margin on this project is better than our competitors," or even "We achieved the expected return we promised to the owner based on the total capital invested," and other similar goals that link our performance to real world results, such as "We made saleable product on the date promised initially" and "We gained the following valuable knowledge that will help us improve our returns on future projects."
FOR CONTROL MAGAZINE:
- I think you are doing a very good job educating the reader. You have two places every month where learning can take place. Béla Lipták's column, “Ask the Experts,” and the informative work by McMillan and Weiner in Control Talk. My suggestion is to expand these columns to include even more technical details, with added emphasis on how various technical equipment/instrumentation options can be adapted to differing project economic realities.
- It might be instructive to start a Lessons Learned column targeted to finding what did not work and why, where readers would be invited to tell in some detail what they learned, anonymously if they so preferred. If printing costs do not permit such page expansion, then perhaps you can do it on the electronic version only.
FOR OWNERS/CONTRACTORS:
Support existing or initiate new Operational Excellence Forums, where peers could hold videoconference discussions on technical issues, guided/facilitated by knowledgeable teachers. The thrust of such Forums would be "what's best techno-economically for this case?" A summary of the problem and the understandings reached would be available on the web as a Case Study. Case Studies have been valuable teaching tools to train people on how to solve business problems. Over time we would build up a knowledge library, which will be helpful to future learners.
FOR INDIVIDUAL ENGINEERS/TECHNOLOGISTS:
Keep learning, keep asking, keep advancing. Believe that you can add value. There is beauty and pleasure in digging for the truth and the facts, even the mundane ones that we deal with. Teach others.
In summary, we need a new way to design and construct plants. The old way is not working.