ES Project
Description of the issue
- The unique nature of the system created challenges in managing the construction of the major components. Scheduling and managing delays was the most significant challenge. Two critical path issues were the delivery of the switchgear and scheduling the crane to assemble the turbine. The switchgear manufacturing had a significant lead time which was unforeseen at the beginning of the project causing the final commissioning to be delayed for several months.
- Availability of the specialized crane was also a challenge due to the limited supply of such services. The project schedule was therefore at the mercy of the crane supplier’s schedule, which caused further delays in construction and commissioning. An additional unforeseen event was a failure in the crane controls which caused a one week delay during the middle of the assembly process and held up other construction tasks. The turbine supplier was able to reschedule some work tasks to mitigate the delay, but a few days were still lost. Additional contingency and possibly some schedule compression may have helped to reduce the effects of the delays.
- Weather is always a factor in outdoor construction projects in Saskatchewan, but the winter was especially difficult during construction. Record breaking snowfall resulted in additional efforts during construction. Original plans were made to avoid the winter challenges, but the major issues described previously pushed much of the construction into the winter. Nothing can be done to control the weather so future projects should consider this risk and plan the contingency accordingly.
- Management of the project was a challenge due to the many stakeholders involved. The primary challenge was managing, tracking, and reporting for several funding agencies with different requirements. Each agency had its own breakdown of work and tasks, and therefore the work had to be tracked and reported differently. Attempts were made to synchronize the reporting and tracking to improve the efficiency. Although the management efficiency did see some improvement, additional gains could have been realized by coordinating work breakdowns and tracking systems more completely from project initiation.
Project Stage
Storage Technology