Re-Engineering the EPC Process (Archived)

Re-engineering is a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of a process to achieve dramatic improvements in performance. The projects which are reengineered due to short schedule, tight budget, or technical complexity by adoption of extraordinary approaches are labeled as “Crisis Projects” or “Exceptional Projects.” This topic investigates and evaluates whether the techniques and methods used for the “Crisis Projects” could be adapted to re-engineer the existing EPC process. In today’s competitive global marketplace, Owners, EPC contractors, subcontractors, and material suppliers will benefit tremendously by re-engineering the EPC processes. They concluded that in many cases, individual projects were executed by adoption of extraordinary approaches that made them “Exceptional Projects.” With this idea, 30 case studies of “Crisis Projects” were closely analyzed and their extra-ordinary approaches were identified as best practices to be followed by the EPC industry.

RT-124 concluded that re-engineering the entire EPC process was insurmountable and unrealistic. The purpose of this research is to investigate EPC processes to:

1. Take advantage of existing methods used by owners and contractors in exceptional situations and projects.
2. Evaluate these methods by incorporating them in existing models of the EPC process.

This research topic does not provide a specific re-engineered EPC process but it provides compelling evidence that fundamental changes in the process can lead to dramatic results and deliver guidance to the industries and organizations for implementing re-engineering efforts. The research clearly demonstrates that dramatic schedule and cost improvements are achievable for EPC projects. It also suggests rules and barriers to change can be broken. For successful change, organizations must take ownership of process re-engineering.