CII Value of Best Practices Report

Owners implement Front End Planning, Zero Accidents Techniques, and Change Management more frequently and better than they implement other best practices. Contractors implement Zero Accidents Techniques, Project Risk Assessment, and Change Management more regularly and effectively than they implement other best practices. (BMM2010-4, p13)

Figure 10 illustrates how well the best practices were implemented by the owners and contractors.
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Figure 12 presents the percentage of projects that scored a high level of use for each best practice. The numbers next to each best practice represent the sample size. The score ranges from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating no use of the best practice and 10 indicating full implementation. In Figure 12, a VBP score greater than or equal to 6.67 is considered “high use” or “well implemented.” By using this definition for “high use,” the team found Change Management, Zero Accidents Techniques, Planning for Start-up, and Front End Planning to be the four best practices that were well implemented. Figure 12 shows the percentage of projects implementing each best practice at a high level.
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A company with a strong improvement culture tends to implement best practices more effectively than does a company lacking an improvement culture. Significant benefits were observed on projects that implemented best practices well, in comparison to projects that minimally implemented best practices. Figure 13 shows the distribution of projects by their best practice use level and according to whether the respondent companies have good improvement cultures. (BMM2010-4, p18)

(See Table 1.) In general, projects submitted by organizations with good improvement cultures tend to implement best practices at higher levels than do projects submitted by organizations without strong improvement cultures. The average project cost growth decreased from 6.3 percent to –1.2 percent for the projects using Planning best practices at the fourth quartile level and the first-quartile level, respectively.
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The VBP study concludes that owners should focus on project planning (i.e., FEP, Alignment, and Planning for Start-up), while contractors should focus on project execution (i.e., Constructability, Project Risk Assessment, and Change Management). Owners reported benefits on cost, schedule, and safety related to the implementation of best practices, while contractors primarily observed significant cost benefits. Although contractors often are not involved in Planning for Start-up, analysis shows that contractor involvement in Planning for Start-up leads to significant project cost benefits. Figure 15 shows that the 29 projects with high best practice use had an average cost growth of –2.3 percent. This outcome is better than the average cost growth (8.6 percent) of the 25 projects with low best practice use. (BMM2010-4 page 23)

The use of best practices also indicates a significant difference on project schedule growth The projects with a high Best Practice Index (i.e., projects in the first quartile of best practice use) had an average schedule growth of 1.8 percent. In contrast, projects with a low Best Practice Index on average had 11.5-percent schedule growth. 
For contractor-submitted projects a significant impact was observed regarding Execution best practices. As can be seen in Figure 18, the projects with a high Execution best practice score achieved an average cost growth of –3.0 percent, whereas the projects with a low Execution best practice score had an average cost growth of 9.2 percent. 
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Best practices may improve performance not only in terms of cost, schedule, and safety, but they might also increase the consistency and predictability of project performance. By improving the consistency of project delivery, a company will have a better chance of improving project performance over the long term. This combined benefit of best practice use will likely give companies a distinct competitive advantage.  (BMM2010-4, p27)