2010 Energy Project Roundtable to Focus on Collaboration for Mutual Benefit

Through its Roundtable initiative, PMI-SAC is proud to provide a neutral forum to facilitate healthy discussion of project issues within the energy sector. PMI-SAC encourages an active dialog among our members, and we look forward to your thoughtful suggestions and insightful observations. Today’s capital constrained energy market is focusing Owner, Engineering and Construction companies toward working more collaboratively in their commercial relationships and project execution strategies. These behaviors and practices will help ensure energy projects remain viable from conception to completion.

The roundtable will take two forms:

1. An internet-based open dialog through a LinkedIn group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2792527&trk=anet_ug_grppro)
   
   
2. Two half-day workshops for Roundtable participants to be held in Calgary.

To register for the PMI-SAC EPC Roundtable please email pmisacepc@pmisac.com with your interest.

Current discussions on the LinkedIn site involve the following topics:

1. What is the right level of Owner involvement in the Engineering Design Process?

Based on feedback from the EPC forum that was conducted at the 2009 PMI-SAC Professional Development Conference, we have selected the above topic to initiate our EPC Roundtable discussions. The intent of this topic is to address the level of involvement required by owner engineering organizations when engineering is contracted to an Engineering Contractor. For the purposes of this discussion, lets select Basic/FEL 3 level engineering. What many are seeing is that the owner engineering organizations still get involved in doing the engineering rather than providing an oversight role. What is your perspective and what do you believe is the “Best Practice”?

2. Structuring Contracts for Success - Reimbursable vs. Lum Sum - Pros and Cons

Looks like we have exhausted our comments on the Owner Engineering Oversight topic. Related to this issue is one of appropriate contracting strategies for large scale projects in Alberta. As the world-wide construction activity slowed, contractors became more willing to take on EPC Lump Sum contracts which takes some of the execution risks away from owners. However, due to the historical execution issues in Alberta, contractors still seem to be less interested in EPC Lump Sum contracts. Do Alberta Oil Sands owners have the internal experienced resources to self-manage large-scale projects in a reimbursable mode?

We will conduct the first face to face Roundtable on May 6, 2010 from 8:30am – 1:00pm in Calgary – lunch will be included. Details for this meeting will be forthcoming.