Project complexities in Maintenance Projects

Project complexities might deliver a contribution to failure of projects in reaching the project goals. Research towards project complexities has been done in engineering projects, but not in maintenance projects. There is a difference in maintenance projects and engineering projects. For that reason one cannot assume that the comparable results coming forward from the research towards project complexities in engineering projects account for maintenance projects as well. The differences between maintenance projects and engineering project can be found in e.g. the schedule and cost estimations. In many maintenance projects the full scope of work is only known when the project is already in the execution phase. This is the result of discoveries that are done e.g. when equipment is opened up. Consequently the schedule and cost estimations cannot be fixed before the project has started. Other differences are the resource levelling, which is more dynamic in maintenance projects or the short execution phase relative to the planning and preparation phase. Maintenance projects are executed during the operation phase of a plant or construction. A construction project earns back the upfront investment during the operation phase. Maintenance project have therefore an influence on the Return on Investment (ROI) of construction projects. There are many organizations that are trying to save on their maintenance expenditures. This, in combination with the influence maintenance projects have on the ROI of a construction make them an important and interesting topic to research. For this research the following main research question is formulated “How can project complexities in maintenance projects be assessed and managed?” This research has an exploratory character. Exploratory research has got a qualitative nature which has as a result knowledge on attitudes, behaviours and perspectives of involved key-persons in the projects. Hence this is suitable for this research. The a qualitative research using case studies as research instrument is conducted at Hertel Singapore Pte. Ltd. Hertel executes maintenance projects in the petrochemical industry. The research is limited to planned preventive and planned corrective maintenance projects. Two of the maintenance projects are executed at an oil refinery, the others at a tank farm and chemical plant. The projects at the oil refinery were the mitigation of Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) and the shutdown of a Crude Distillator (CD-5 Unit). At the tank farm and chemical plant it was a tank bottom leak and shutdown respectively. The data for the research was collected in two ways. First a desk research was done towards maintenance projects, project complexities and the background history of the projects used for the case study. Next interviews were held with key-persons involved in the projects. Semi-structured interviews were held guided by a questionnaire. During the interviewees the interviewees were asked to assist in filling in the TOE framework. The TOE framework is a framework developed in engineering projects to assess the project complexities. Part of this research was to investigate whether or not this framework can be of value in maintenance projects. For every case study at least three interviewees assisted in filling in the TOE framework. The results of the assessment of the project complexities with the framework are briefly analysed. During the interviews the interviewees were also asked to point out three to five severe elements from the TOE framework and to mentioned complexities that are missing from the TOE framework, if possible. The results of the different cases where further processed in the cross case analysis. In the cross case analysis the high scoring elements of the combined cases have been compared with the results of the assessment of the individual cases. The elements that were present in at least three cases have been combined with the elements that were pointed out in the TOE framework as severe by the interviewees and the missing elements according to the interviewees. After eliminating elements that were not typical project complexities the following elements remained present. • Is there a strong project drive (cost, quality, schedule)? • What is the number and nature of dependencies between the tasks? • What is the required effort for communications about the project (internal)? • Are the resources (materials, personnel) and skills required in the project, available? • Are involved parties aware of HSSE (health, safety, security, environment) importance? • Are there interfaces between different disciplines involved in the project (mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, finance, legal, communication, accounting, etc) that could lead to interface problems? • Is the project organization set up from the beginning of the project? • How congested is the working area/site location? • Are there many unusual workers involved in the project? A number of these severe complexity elements evolve over the project and managed. A discussion of possible improvement to manage the most severe complexity elements has been provided. This can be mostly related to more cooperation between owner and contractor and earlier involvement of the contractor. Between them a strong project organization should be set up. From the research it appeared that not only is the management of the individual elements important, but there is also a different outcome in the perspectives of the owner and contractor. Awareness of these perspectives should be created between the both. Additionally there are less complexity elements that have been given a high grade in existing relationships. It is therefore recommended to work towards a relationship between owner and contractor to reduce the project complexities. There is more (quantitative) research towards maintenance projects and its project complexities needed. In this future research a adapted TOE framework should be created that is based on the typical project complexities that resulted from this research. The TOE framework has been of value for this research as it helped the researcher to obtain the research. However to assess the project complexities an adapted framework has more value. It is recommend to Hertel to make use of this adapted framework to create an awareness of the project complexities with the owner and to build a better relationship in addition to the set up of a strong project organization in the early start of a project.