Getting into Project Management Services

In 2018, Petrofac’s Engineering & Production Services (EPS) East division secured a 3-year project management services contract for KPC Gas Debottlenecking (KGDBN) Project for Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO), the consortium formed by ENI, Shell, Chevron, Lukoil and KazMunayGas. The Karachaganak field produces oil, condensates, and natural gas, and is located in the western part of Kazakhstan, near the city of Aksai.

The Project consisted of the installation of additional gas treatment units to increase the gas treatment capacity. The project’s engineering phase had been completed, and procurement, construction, and commissioning phases remained. KPO wanted Petrofac to manage the internal project management team and the main EPC contractor, as well as over 120 vendors.

Using Smart Technology as Business Advantage

Petrofac had been using Wrench SmartProject and hence decided to setup it up for the project. With the three-year plan looming, the company proposed to KPO that along with standard PMC services they would bring in an integrated IT system that could manage the EPC process, integrated all the stakeholders namely the Main EPC contractor and vendors, enforce the quality process and align seamlessly with KPO’s existing systems.

To sweeten the deal Petrofac even offered to augment KPO’s existing internal project team. The strategy worked.

Reassuring Clients and Proving Value

KPO insisted on doing their own investigation of this new system. They spent 6 months using SmartProject and evaluating it to their satisfaction. Only when they were sure that their process and requirements would be properly addressed did they give the approval.

Said Petrofac’s Project Manager Chimbu, “At first we didn’t have a very clear definition of KPO’s requirements but were able to work around that because of the stability and consistency we gained from the SmartProject system. I believe that’s also why we had no complaints at all from the client, except for a few minor issues during integration with internal systems, which were easily resolved”.

SmartProject was hosted on cloud and was used by Petrofac at Sharjah and by the client at Kazakhstan.

How SmartProject enhanced Teamwork

• IFC Engineering drawings created by the engineering company based in Italy were imported into the system in bulk and released to the construction contractor through the system.
• Procurement, which was done by the client’s team using Petrofac’s internal system were integrated into SmartProject.
• Deliverables from the Italy based Construction Contractor and 120 other vendors were submitted through SmartProject before being reviewed in a seven-stage workflow which included KGDBN resources and Petrofac engineers. Once the deliverables were approved, they were released for construction through SmartProject.
• Correspondence was handled through SmartProject and was automatically tracked and monitored by the system.
• To monitor the cost breakdowns, the project budgets, commitments (PO with payment terms), and VOWDs from monthly contractor submission-review-and-approval were imported into SmartProject, with variations shown on SmartProject’s dashboards.
• The project S-curve was generated automatically by the system, by importing the data from Primavera.
• Client, Consultant, Contractor and all 120 vendors were able to work as a single unified team thanks to the SmartProject platform. They had clear definition of responsibilities.
• All the project information was captured and stored along with relevant audit trails.
• Accurate reports helped the project control team take proactive steps to prevent delays and budget overruns.
• As this was a brownfield project, the Shutdown work could be planned and monitored with minimum downtime, and all the necessary documentation for this was maintained systematically.
• Vendor and Contractor Email notifications were sent through SmartProject, and were integrated with the internal email system