An Integrated Approach to Project Planning: Reducing Uncertainty to Improve Safety and Cost

Abstract

Project execution cost and safety have been traditionally approached as independent areas of study. The argument for a separate treatment is that the most effective way to improve safety is to add safety barriers, resulting in added scope and increased costs. However, a novelty view of project planning as an integrator of cost and safety outcomes of execution demonstrates both objectives may simultaneously be achieved. This study proposes a method to characterize the socio-technical system of project execution to assess the impact of planning on cost and safety. The effect of additional planning is studied in the proposed model to find optimum levels that render economic value and yet improve safety. In the absence of project data for analysis, and because of the fundamental similarities with regular projects, interventions in industrial or process facilities (i.e., maintenance, modifications, repairs, and tests) are studied as small-scale or pseudo projects. The analysis shows effective planning efforts during interventions can reduce the likelihood of safety incidents and the expected execution cost.