Everything That You Should Know about Startup of Advanced Work Packaging

Advanced packaging is known as the best practice for projects by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) and by the Construction Owner Association of Alberta (COAA). While good project planning has always been an important aspect of successful projects formalization of the best practices started to take shape in Alberta in the late 1990s and early 2000s. When COAA recognized the need for standardization and improvements in construction planning, it formalized the workforce planning best practices. Simply put, the only goal of workforce planning is to provide constraint-free, well-planned construction packages to construction field supervision and construction crews so that they can get an opportunity to safely build with a high level of productivity.

The important contributions of the COAA Workface Planning Committee to document the field of workface planning laid the foundation for continuous research. To complement this work, a CII research team has initiated in 2009 to build upon workforce planning. The CII research team established the best practices for the entire project lifecycle from front-end loading through detailed engineering and into construction planning, and lastly to commissioning and startup with advanced work packaging.

Moreover, the team tested the process, and then data was collected on project performance. For projects executed with a high level of Advance Work Packaging maturity, great results can be achieved. The result shows that there is a chance to achieve:

·        Up to 25% percent increase in productivity

·        Up to a 10% decrease in the total installed cost

·        Improve schedule performance along with projects delivered on schedule

·        Most importantly, improved safety performance

Fundamentals of advanced work packaging

Many people don’t know what advanced work packaging is. The answer actually depends on the audience.

For the projects owners

Advanced work packaging is an opportunity and thorough improved planning to improve project safety and construction productivity. Thus, it reduces the cost of the project. Advanced work packaging is gaining popularity with industry peers and it is known as an industry best practice.

For engineering

Advanced work packaging can support the engineering team for success and through early construction input for better design. Planning will be required for every level of project detail. It is efficient to plan with support from the engineering team. Effective engineering tools can be used in the field including great engineering models.

What’s more about advanced packaging

Construction workers are known to spend more time on breaks rather than working. However, they aren’t the ones to blame. Ineffective upfront project planning and lack of coordination between engineering, procurement, and construction make an average construction worker spend less than 40% on productive work while they spend the rest of the time waiting for missing equipment or materials and coping with incomplete or out-of-date information. Here the advanced work packaging can play a vital role. It is a methodology that can improve capital expenditure execution.

The approach of advanced work packaging goes to the root cause of project overrun and overspending by defining the path of construction at the beginning of the project and then optimizing that plan through a clear, consistent, and repeatable process.