Report from the Global Construction Summit 2010
- Paris, June 2010
PMForum, a Media Partner reports back on the the ECI’s Global Construction Summit on “Construction Project Management Best Practice 2010 – A Springboard for the Next Decade“, held on 24th & 25th June 2010 at the Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel in Paris, France.
This event was the result of a partnership developed between the European ECI and the American Construction Industry Institute (CII) in conjunction with other organisations involved in different aspect of construction and project management such as, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB), Constructing Excellence in the Built Environment, and the International Project Management Association (IPMA).
As the result of such an association, the Congress effectively reflected a real willpower of the participants to generously share knowledge of leading edge construction practices.
The event has incorporated an intense programme of speeches, workshops and presentations by leading project management professionals with many opportunities for discussion, debate and networking.
The distribution between speakers coming from the educational and university world, consultants, and the effective project construction practitioners was harmonious.
This balance creates an interesting place where the first one exchanged ideas and studies’ results, while the others profited of this interlude in their everyday professional activities to share their experiences, proposing to their peer interesting cases studies, techniques, or management tools.
Thus, as a sample to illustrate the quality of this congress, we can reflect on the very interesting case study presentation proposed by Steve Hamman from Fluor Corporation on a successful story around risk management of a project portfolio and supply chain concerns.
Steve Hamman from Fluor Corporation
In few words, the risk exposition analyse of a set of refinery expansion projects bring the project portfolio management team to a close study of one particular bottleneck of their supply chain, common to all these projects: coke Drums.
Anticipating a possible overheating of the fabricators’ capacity of production, The Fluor team has studied the construction process of the coke drum and its market. The team also remarks that coke drums are made from special clad plate material, also in limited supply.
The mitigation solution developed brings the company to transform the supply chain by integrating it vertically, allowing the management team to strongly reduce the probability of its break.
This initiative becomes a project in itself: secure of the clad plate supply, qualification of additional coke drum fabricators, standardization of the coke drum design, contract with ship-owners in capacity to transport those giant equipments, and so on…
By this open-minded initiative which in fact has increased the scope of the project portfolio, the management team has not only mitigate a supply chain break risk, but also deliver substantial cost and schedule benefit, creating a real competitive advantage, and even developing new business opportunities.
As Steve Hamman says in its conclusion:
“The initiative has demonstrated that added value to clients can be accomplished by thinking “out of the box” and by collaborative teamwork of experienced and dedicated professionals”.
Other interesting exposures addressed by their themes some other interesting best practices or techniques used by the construction industry to develop their project.
Many other topics were addressed as reflexions around contracts and procurement, or still about safety health and environment concerns in construction projects.
We can notice some interesting presentations around project governance and decision making.
Photo: Steve Morgan, from BAA, exposing a reflexion about stakeholders Management, inspired from Heathrow’s Terminal T2 project.
Some consultants and companies also present their tools as Patrick McGowan from IDENTEC solutions presenting a tool based on RFID technology to manage assets on construction sites, or Chris Why from Intergraph, presenting a reflection around integration in a same tool of construction work-packages’ definitions, planning data and their progress control.
Phil Holland’s explanations about project management organisation evolution in Shell Company were listened with attention by several of his peers.
Photo: Phil Holland from Shell, explaining the way his company has increased its project management maturity level over the years.
Awards ceremony
The day ended with an award ceremony presented by Michel Virlogeux, the ECI president, well renowned designer, famous for the Normandy Bridge and the Millau Viaduct.
Photo: Michel Virlogeux, the ECI president,
opening the Gala Dinner with the awards ceremony
Ed Wilson was awarded a well deserved honorary fellow of ECI for his outstanding contribution and personal involvement and support to the development and dissemination of knowledge of best practice
in Engineering and Construction.
Photo: left to right
Michel Virlogeux, Ed Wilson, Rick Donehoo
The winners of the ECI awards and further information about the awards can be found here
Final conclusion
The ECI 2010 Global Construction Summit was the first of its kind on a global scale given the diverse nature of topics covered and the range of major companies and organisations from all sectors of the construction industry worldwide participating.
As speakers or as delegates, in a global context still marked by consequences of the recession, Major Construction Clients, Contractors, Suppliers, representatives of Construction Best Practice Organisations and Academic Institutions have played the game and effectively used this meeting to share their ideas their preoccupations and their vision of the future.