Planning for Startup: Overview of Research
Industry participants need to realize that project success depends not only on pre-project planning and well managed project execution, but also on a successful startup. The importance of startup planning is more critical than ever, given such challenges to today's business environment as pressures to increase profits by reducing costs and demands for shorter project cycle times.
The Construction Industry Institute (CII) sought to develop startup procedures that can be integrated into the life cycle of a project. To accomplish this, it created the Planning for Startup Research Team. The overall work of the research team is summarized in this publication.
After reviewing this research summary, the reader is encouraged to seek out CII Implementation Resource 121-2, Planning for Startup. That publication provides the key product of this research, the Startup Planning Model. The model was developed to help plan startups in a more thorough, effective, and efficient manner. It provides full details of the 45 startup planning activities identified by the research team. These activities have been organized by eight typical project phases and are supported with 26 tools.
Some of the keys to successful startup identified by the Startup Planning Model include:
- Management commitment
- Startup objectives
- A startup execution plan
- “Quality gates” or time-outs for analysis
