High-Tech Tools Help Airports Keep Projects On Track, But Simpler Equipment Also
An Integral Component By Evonn Gibbs
If construction projects were an entrée, the recipe might well include decision-making
tools, scheduling software and good communication. Those are the components consultants
and airport operators say facilitate on-time, on-budget project delivery.
Consultants say construction-scheduling software has evolved into something more
intricate, as well as more user-friendly, products; at the same time, non-computer-based
decision-making tools have remained low-tech, but a vital first step.
“World-class project managers ensure they are very clear in their project definition
before they go into project planning, and when they go into project planning they
can choose whatever software tool they want to use,” says Debra Evans, partner and
senior consultant with Kepner-Tregoe, based in Princeton, N.J. She adds that KT
has been used by five major airports in North America, and several overseas.
That includes MS Project, made by Microsoft Corp., based in Seattle, Wash., or Primavera
Project Planner, made by Primavera, based in Bala Cynwyd, Penn., Evans says.
“But what’s most important is that first they have asked all the right questions
to make sure they are clear on the purpose, objectives of their project and the
measurements around their project,” she says. “Then they simply use a good robust
scheduling tool, whatever that may be to keep track of that data.”
Project Clarity Vital First Step
“The project-planning phase is normally where people jump in, which is why folks
end up not meeting project expectations, going over budget and over time,” says
Evans. “They jump right in with a software tool and they don’t spend the time where
the world-class project managers spend time, which is in the project definition
piece.”
Once that piece has been completed, the planning piece can be addressed, she says,
and the pieces of the KT model – “responsibility sequence, deliverable schedule,
deliverables” – can be accomplished with software.
“It is as important for the company hiring the contractor to know what questions
to ask as it is for the contractor to know the process in order to answer them,”
she adds.
SEA: Finishing Fast And Smart
Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) is one of the airports that has used KT processes.
Excitement has been brewing at the Port of Seattle, which runs the airport, as its
100th anniversary draws nigh with a celebration planned to coincide with the opening
of the airport’s new third runway.
Like SEA’s Concourse A and the Gina Marie Lindsey International Arrivals Hall project
completed in 2004, the third runway is expected to finish under budget and on time,
and Bob Riley, SEA’s director of the aviation capital improvement program, says
KT was a major reason for that.
Officials became convinced of its value in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he says.
“Concourse A development at SEA was 30% done with construction with 9/11 happened,”
says Riley, “so we did a Kepner-Tregoe ‘decision analysis’ to see if we should continue
the way it was designed, or stop construction and redesign, or try to continue construction
and make changes to accommodate all the new security regulations that came along.
It was a tens of millions of dollars type of decision.”
The airport decided to keep construction on track and make the necessary security
changes.
“We then issued a change order to the contractor, and at that time we increased
the budget. The final approved budget was $580M, and we’re completing it for $560M,”
says Riley.
“KT is straightforward and pretty simple,” Riley notes. “You have little plastic
cards that can list the types of steps you follow, and once everybody was trained
in how to do this – it takes about two or three days of training – we had a common
understanding.”
Since 1998, SEA has been using various KT processes, and Riley says they help stakeholders
make “correct decisions in a timely manner based on facts and reason, and it helps
remove personalities from interfering with reaching the right decisions.”
“By having the KT analysis process, by the end,” he says, “maybe not everybody was
completely happy but they understood and bought in to the decision that was made,
which meant we didn’t have to come back and remake decisions.”
SEA is using KT in planning its 100-year celebration, says Riley.
“Again, you have the stakeholders who have different points of view, and you start
by going through and figuring out what the project is going to achieve. The concept
doesn’t have to be strictly formal,” he adds.
“If you have a major issue, probably you want to fill out the forms and do kind
of a pure process, but lots of times if we’re having a meeting and somebody will
just get up to the white board and say, ‘it looks like these are our criteria and
these are our options,’ and just do it spontaneously,” he says.
RDU On Time With Primavera
On Oct. 26, Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) expects to open the north end of
Terminal 2, the first phase of its terminal reconstruction project.
Since 2002, Parsons Transportation Group, based in Washington, D.C., has been the
project management team for the airport. In charge of the project is Chuck McCloskey,
program manager for the company, a subsidiary of Parsons, based in Pasadena, Calif.
McCloskey has proved his airport chops in many projects, including the initial phase
of the $1.2B McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW), and at
John F. Kennedy International’s (JFK) construction of a co-generation power plant
in the middle of the terminal in the 1990s.
Parsons has worked with several contractors on various projects at RDU, says McCloskey,
using P-3 to maximize scheduling techniques. He describes P-3 as “as critical path
method scheduling software.”
“CPM is a generic term and is just a standard way to calculate project schedules,”
explains Nicole Styer, vice president of marketing with Primavera.
Primavera Project Planner is, “a high-performance project-management software.”
P-3, like its latest upgrade P-6, is “a software tool that supports the creation,
development and management of a project plan producing a CPM schedule,” she says.
Parsons’ contract with RDU requires contractors to use Primavera, says McCloskey.
At the beginning of the project, they must submit “a baseline schedule of how we’re
going to build the job beginning to end. Then we review and approve that schedule,
and then that is the base schedule used for the balance of the project. So [P-3]
really reflects the reality of what’s going to happen. And the next month the cycle
is repeated again.”
McCloskey says it’s up to the client how they want to interact with the software,
and if airport officials don’t need or want to be involved in deeper levels of detail,
then project managers can digest it for them.
BIM, LGS Add Dimensions
McCloskey says one of the most recent “tweaks” of construction-planning software
is building information modeling. It has come into favor within the past five years
as a tool for construction contractors to draw models of buildings on computers,
to optimize scheduling of construction activities and “marry materials deliveries
with the desired construction schedule,” he says.
Styer says Primavera has the tools to support BIM.
“There’s not something called BIM per se, but we integrate with other 4-D and 3-D
modeling applications to support business information modeling,” Styer says.
BIM and a similar technology known as linear graph scheduling are generic concepts
that each depend on some type of scheduling to produce their respective results,
says David Giardino, vice president of PLEXUS Corp., based in Providence, R.I.
“They both try to portray the logical sequence of how the project will come together.
BIM, is in three dimensions, LGS is in two. LGS requires no sophisticated third-party
software, just a trained staff that knows construction and scheduling,” he says.
BIM is usually used on larger projects because it is more expensive to use than
LGS and needs to be justified, Giardino says, whereas LGS “is just a method of graphically
displaying the critical path in a different form that is easily understood.”
It’s Not About The Tools
“A consultant using BIM and the architect or engineer would need a lot of coordination
to sync their technology and drawings,” says Giardino. “This is where a project
has to be careful not to be a slave to the technology.”
Delivering a low-tech version – just the meaningful data – will produce the results
“as fast as possible with the data as soon as it is available, not when it is ready
to be inputted into a system,” he says.
Giardino says his company, which has its own software-development department, tries
to distinguish itself by “taking high tech to low tech” so clients don’t have to
get involved in the minutiae of the software data if they don’t need to.
“We bring it to the level that is needed [for the] owner, contractor, politician,
financial people, etc.,” he says.
PLEXUS consulted for T.F. Green Airport (PVD) on construction projects, and Giardino
says he would like to work with more airports.
“When we work on a project, we collect the same data most consultants or project-management
firms collect. However, we collect a little more and store it in a way that we can
show trends, metrics, potential impacts, etc., all without having the client do
any extra work,” says Giardino. Thus, when a client needs to speed up an activity,
or when problems arise, he says, “the client gets straightforward answers in a meaningful
way without having to interpret data.”
“We caution clients not to get too reliant on the high technology to run your project;
it should be there to support it,” he says.
All New IND On Track
“Everything but the runways will be brand new,” says the Web site of Indianapolis
International (IND).
Since 2002, a project has been under way to build the first completely new commercial
airport facility since Denver International (DEN). More remarkable is that is has
stayed on schedule throughout one of the most trying and uncertain periods of U.S.
commercial aviation, says Richard V. Potosnak, a principal with Aviation Capital
Management, based in Indianapolis, Ind., and president of its transportation consulting
and management division. ACM has managed the project since inception of the $1.1B
program.
The project is winding down on time, he says, and on Veterans’ Day, IND will likely
make headline news in the region when its doors open to serve the public.
As at RDU, project managers at IND used Primavera’s P-3 construction-scheduling
software, but since it was a new airport they didn’t have to “worry about existing
operations,” notes Potosnak.
He calls P-3 “more user-friendly” than past versions.
“It allows people who aren’t used to dealing with it on a daily basis to put together
data in a more user-friendly environment that can easily be transported into a Primavera
schedule,” he says.
“We receive schedules from multiple sources and then we download them into a master
schedule,” he says, “which enables us to take a schedule from a contractor, for
example, or a concession vendor that would be done in P-3 format and easily import
it to the master schedule.”
Because the project was an entirely new facility, Potosnak says the biggest challenge
was the lack of incentive for concessionaires to complete their spaces well in advance
of the opening.
“In this airport environment there’s no existing operation, so if you’re open a
month or two before the terminal is open you have no ability to sell your goods,”
he says. “So the tenant likes to time it as closely as possible – in terms of completing
their construction – with the first day of commercial service.
“You have to keep after them because it’s important to make sure that what the tenant
says is doable from a construction standpoint, actually is doable,” he adds.
“Primavera helps in terms of identifying what their schedules really need to be
and how many days it really takes them to outfit the shop. And then when they do
begin construction, [we can] monitor it based on that schedule,” he says.
In working to deliver construction projects on time and on budget, Giardino and
Evans both caution project managers not to rely solely on computerized scheduling,
and McCloskey sums up the bigger picture.
“There are different techniques,” he says, “but basically you want to have a sound
contract you’re working from and have good communication with the client and with
the contractor and designer. There will be issues that come up on these complex
projects, and if you have a good communication system, and a good means of managing
the design and change aspects of it, you’re going to do all right.”
Back
Providence, RI – November 26, 2008 – Two Roger Williams University students
will compete in the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) National Competition
in San Diego following their recent victories at the Northeast student competition
on November 8. Current intern Pat Morse and former intern Nate Rosenkner of PLEXUS
Corporation (www.plexuscorp.com), a Providence, RI-based construction management
and software solutions company, earned first place in their respective project categories.
PLEXUS Corporation today announced that David Giardino, PLEXUS Vice President, has
been selected to speak at the Primavera 25th Annual Conference, November 16-19,
at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
PLEXUS Corporation, a Providence-based project management and IT consulting firm,
has was selected by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) to
create a new, interactive web portal for its Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Math (STEM) Education Program.
