CII 2009 Annual Report
As I write this note to the CII membership, the global engineering and construction industry continues its decline: recent reports count 1.9 million U.S. construction jobs lost since December 2008, and put the U.S. construction unemployment rate at 24.7%. We haven’t seen such daunting industry statistics since before CII’s founding, yet we continue steadily toward our purpose of measurably improving capital project delivery.
Seven research projects reported out at the 2009 Annual Conference, with topics ranging from refreshments of two CII Best Practices—Quality Management and Materials Management—to one on improving capital delivery through information integration and another on craft productivity (the first report-out from CII’s innovative six-year productivity research program). CII also initiated five new research teams in 2009. Three standard research projects were kicked off in the fall: Enhanced Work Packaging—Design through Workface Execution; Innovative Project Delivery Processes; and Applicability of CII Best Practices by Industry Sector and Project Type. Also, the CII Academic Committee initiated two special research projects: Tomorrow’s Construction Industry Graduate and CII Products and Academic Applicability. These special studies will further our mission of creating vital industry knowledge and enable us to better understand and ultimately improve the important link between academia and industry.
CII’s knowledge dissemination efforts were also strong in 2009. Highlights include successful Performance Improvement Workshops in the spring and fall, and the interesting case studies at the annual conference presented by Saudi Aramco on pitfall prevention and by the U.S. Department of Energy on the CII Project Health Indicator. The conference report-outs of the Implementation Strategy Committee and the Professional Development Committee were among the highest rated programs at the event. Most exciting of all our dissemination efforts was our expansion of the graduate-level CII Best Practices course. Taught by executives from CII member organizations, the course gave 186 graduate students from 12 universities important real-world insight into CII practices and Best Practices. I believe this partnership with the academic community will be key to developing the young leaders who will sustain our industry in the future. We are already working to expand the course to reach over 300 future construction industry leaders at 20 universities in the fall of 2010.
Our research on creating new performance metrics for engineering, procurement, and construction contractors in the offshore oil and gas industries moved forward in 2009 as we opened our first Performance Assessment Laboratory (PAL) at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil. From this collaboration and other work with the pharmaceutical/biotechnology benchmarking team, CII envisions more PALs at other select universities worldwide. Gathering data on performance—a complex and well developed research methodology—is critical to CII’s mission to measurably improve capital facility delivery. Launching the Brazil facility is a big step toward realizing our global benchmarking vision.
In 2009, CII also completed two years of collecting data on CII Best Practices implementation, and the results of this research were recently compiled to make the CII Value of Best Practices Study. The study makes it clear that effective best practice implementation improves project outcomes. This is not surprising, but the study further strongly links organizational culture, the responsibility of top leadership, and effective practice implementation. It finds an undeniable relationship between the organization’s active upper-level support of implementation and best-in-class capital project performance.
I know you will enjoy reading about CII’s 2009 accomplishments in this annual report. You should also feel proud. Each of you has contributed greatly, and CII is indebted to you. It is only through your efforts that CII can continue its mission to improve this great industry.
Thanks to you, CII is leading the way.
