Better project and data management

Getting ready to deliver historic levels of capital investment across the energy system isn’t just about improving relationships with the supply chain. Many energy networks also have huge room for improvement in the efficiency of their capital delivery processes. This much was clear from discussion among our focus group participants.

Distribution networks have the biggest maturity gaps to close. Several networks represented on the call are early in their journeys to establish formal project management offices internally and are also now pushing through accelerated project management training for staff. It is hoped these steps will allow for a more “programmatic” approach to handling a growing volume of work and bring greater rigour and efficiency. For networks covering multiple licence areas, this means an ongoing focus on creating centralised and standardised approaches to design, procurement and contracting. To date, this has not commonly been in place, with several participants admitting that localised differences have been allowed to proliferate, driving inefficiency. Closely linked to the focus group discussion around formalisation of PMOs and project management upskilling was a broader recognition of opportunities to standardise design and specification, up to a reasonable threshold, to unlock the benefits of project repeatability while allowing flexibility for the different needs of specific locations and installations.

One capital programme director from a DNO said they are extending this thinking to try and look differently at the way high-volume projects are stood up and executed. By bringing together a standardised package of necessary materials, designs and supply chain plans for repetitive projects they said they are realising tangible improvements in project cycles. “We’re getting from inception to site faster,” they said.

Hand-in-hand with the drive for standardisation on rigour in project management comes an emphasis on the importance of information management across a higher volume or projects, often including high degree of complexity, especially at transmission level.

“We’re very much leaning on Ofgem’s ask for data best practice and looking at interoperability, how we can share data more efficiently around the industry and also looking at new system planning and tools – very much in the design and delivery space. And we’re looking to implement BIM as standard,” said one senior power transmission leader.

This is supporting smoother working both internally and with suppliers, the same individual continued, and encouraging “full life-cycle thinking” around assets. On a practical day-to-day level, it is helping do away with inefficient, error-prone email exchanges with PDF, Excel and Word document attachments relating to scope changes and project specifications.

Others expressed a degree of envy for this more fluid approach to information exchange and change control among multiple collaborating parties. And while some challenge whether “full-blown BIM” will always bring benefits to infrastructure projects – especially lower complexity and cost projects at distribution level – there was universal agreement that better digital information management is needed across the industry to support confident infrastructure delivery. The appealing idea of a possible “BIM-light” model for lower complexity projects was floated.