Cross-industry lessons to advance capital project delivery
Investigate how other industry segments engineer and execute projects and products with the goal of identifying opportunities for step change in planning, engineering, and execution of capital projects. From a strategic level, these may include concepts like productization, modularization, and standardization, as well as business models.
Why It Matters
- Deliver a step-change in capital project performance by moving beyond traditional execution to a holistic, cross-industry innovation model.
- Integrate proven strategies and practices from shipbuilding, aerospace, manufacturing, commercial construction, and military projects to drive agility, scalability, and execution excellence.
- Provide data-driven frameworks that combine concepts like productization, modularization, automation, and digital execution to transform how capital projects are engineered, planned, and executed.
Related R&D:
Question:
What are the core principles and practices adopted for project and product engineering and production/execution in key industry segments (including but not limited to aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding, commercial construction and military projects) that can be translated to the unique requirements and constraints of heavy industrial capital projects?
Expected Outcome(s):
- Cross-industry cases (using primary data rather than literature revie only)
- Paper with strategies and insights for the capital projects industry
- Presentations that CII can use to position these ideas in events across different segments
Expected format:
Traditional 2-year Research Team.
Notes
- What this project is not:
- It is not primarily focused on modularization as originally proposed.
- Not literature review based – rather focusing on primary data collection.
- Not a report on the state of other u=industry: it needs to establish tangible parallels and generate tangible insights (what would it take to move in a specific direction?).
- Suggest potentially leading with "productization" instead of modularization, in order to be broader
- Stay positive (avoid referring to problems and seek to establish an opportunity for transformative ideas (or getting stuck in all possible ways in which an idea may find barriers in the construction segment).
- The scope should be broad, not limited to modularization.
- Lessons from manufacturing segments, lean principles, and project production management are relevant.
- Productization theory (moving from projects to products) is a key area of interest, especially in commercial building.
- The initiative could yield insights into capital projects and help reshape delivery models.
- Dimensions:
- Industry segments: Aerospace, shipbuilding, commercial construction, military
- Delivery models and aspects: Supply chain and materials handling, contracts
- Concepts: Productization, standardization, modularization
- Year one should focus on one or two industry segments and provide tangible results. A one-year extension can be provided to explore additional segments.
