The development of a methodology to quantify the impacts of information management strategies on EPC projects

Abstract

This research develops and demonstrates a methodology to quantify time and cost impacts on Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects resulting from information management driven process changes in design related activities. Many companies have implemented information technologies expecting to save time and effort, gain competitive advantage, improve productivity, better align objectives, and improve product quality. The premise of this research is that these benefits can be quantified in terms of time and cost project performance measures. While previous efforts to quantify benefits have been function-or technology-specific, and have provided sub-optimal results, the methodology presented allows quantification at a total project level. A schematic representation of the EPC Process was developed and field data from both owner and contractor companies was collected to serve as a baseline condition. Fifteen specific design related activities were modeled in detail and also loaded with associated field collected time and cost data. Potential process changes from increasing levels of information management were investigated. Monte Carlo simulation was used as the means by which time and cost impacts of the process changes were observed and measured. The impacts found in the specific design activities were used to adjust the baseline condition of the EPC process. Resimulation of the total process enabled quantification of impacts at a project level. The results of the research demonstrated that potential impacts from information management can be quantified. The results also showed that very aggressive levels of information management improvements may potentially improve total project activity time and labor cost by 7% and 8%, respectively. More conservative changes showed impacts to the same parameters at approximately 3% and 1%. The research also provided an indication of the relative impact various level of information management may have on project elapsed time. Finally, the research illustrated the importance of measuring the impacts at a total project-level. That is, the magnitude of impacts at the project-level were much lower than those observed at the activity or task level, thus providing a more realistic approximation of information management impacts.