SPE-210950-MS

Using a Digital Platform as a PMO in a Mega Project

K. Varghese Daniel, Wrench Solutions Private Ltd

Copyright 2022, Society of Petroleum Engineers DOI 10.2118/210950-MS

This paper was prepared for presentation at the ADIPEC held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, 31 October – 3 November 2022.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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How project owners used a digital platform to ensure that their project reviews focussed on proactive actions
towards the mitigation of potential issues rather than just discussions of project history.
A US$ 3,200 mega project to build a natural gas fertiliser complex at three different locations in 48
months was planned to be executed through multiple contracts by a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle). The
SPV was formed by 5 different public sector companies. This paper explores how they were able to utilise
a digital platform to take over the PMO function successfully and with minimum human resources.
Since the project was of national importance and being monitored very closely by the Union Government,
the project's management wanted the assurance of standardized reports to analyse schedule, cost, safety &
quality, and to report accordingly to the appropriate levels. They engaged a cloud-based digital platform
to ensure that, even with minimal resources (almost 1/10th of conventional manpower requirements) and
even though it was a mega project with multiple stakeholders, the platform they chose ensured that all the
typical PMO functions would be managed smoothly.
How project owners used a digital platform to ensure that their project reviews focussed on proactive actions
towards the mitigation of potential issues rather than just discussions of project history.
A US$ 3,200 mega project to build a natural gas fertiliser complex at three different locations in 48
months was planned to be executed through multiple contracts by a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle). The
SPV was formed by 5 different public sector companies. This paper explores how they were able to utilise
a digital platform to take over the PMO function successfully and with minimum human resources.
Since the project was of national importance and being monitored very closely by the Union Government,
the project's management wanted the assurance of standardized reports to analyse schedule, cost, safety &
quality, and to report accordingly to the appropriate levels. They engaged a cloud-based digital platform
to ensure that, even with minimal resources (almost 1/10th of conventional manpower requirements) and
even though it was a mega project with multiple stakeholders, the platform they chose ensured that all the
typical PMO functions would be managed smoothly.

PMO Functions
A Project Management office or PMO is like a project owner's third eye when it comes to managing the
project's business functions.
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A Project Management Consultant or PMC reviews and approves the work produced by the Contractors
for the Owners. The PMC's role is usually limited to technical reviews, quality compliance, day-to-day site
monitoring and so on, while a PMO provides Owners with an independent view of the project's overall
status (with respect to the business case) and advises them on value-added solutions to ensure the project is
completed within the scheduled time and approved budget and as per the stated objectives.
Conventionally, a PMO depends on the monthly/weekly/daily progress updates from the PMC &
Contractors to produce his own reports and to make recommendations to the Owner about required actions.
The problem is that by the time the Owner receives those recommendations valuable time will have been
lost in taking decisions because reports tends to change many hands and shapes before they finally reach
the Owner.
The kind of monitoring required to produce these reports is a difficult task in any project and in the case
of a Mega Project with a period of four years and 3 different locations and multiple types of contracts and
many Contractors and Consultants, the difficulty is compounded and the task becomes almost impossible.
Consider the actualities of the task - is it really possible to report the truth to the Owners in almost real-
time? What about the organisational and logistic challenges?
Being fully aware of all this, the owners of the SPV decided to rely on technology. They adapted a digital
platform and made it their PMO, a decision which proved extremely wise in the end, considering the fact that
in the first quarter of 2020 the onset of COVID-19 created another layer of difficulty by way of constraints
in handling physical documents and in mobilising resources at various locations.

Challenges
What were the challenges faced by the Project Management team in adopting the Digital Platform as PMO?
The owners came from different companies and used multiple Contracts to execute the project in three
different locations, so monitoring and controlling such Page 2 of 10 a project would typically require many
people to collate the data received from multiple locations and contractors, and all the contracts had different
reporting structures and formats.
Since the contractors and consultants already had their own reporting systems, the data from these diverse
platforms had to be collated before they could be analysed and reported (through interactive dashboards)
to the stakeholders, to allow them to make informed decisions.
The project was owned and managed by three public sector units and the Project Management Team was
formed from seasoned professionals from different companies who each had their own styles of reports
and monitoring tools. A consensus had to reached about the look and feel of the dashboards and reports,
in addition to the data that had to be represented. Also, a consensus had to be reached about the reporting
formats and structure for various levels of Management teams.
The quantity of data that had to be collected across all the phases of the project was huge. Collection of
data in time for verification and validation by consultants had to be streamlined before the data could be
uploaded to the system, and all this had to be done in near real time.
Another key requirement was data security.
As multiple users had access, it was important to ensure data was accessible only to the appropriate
person and not anyone else. Data security is always of prime importance in any project, and the more so in
this case, considering that it was a project of national importance and as such was viewed by multiple stake
holders starting from the Union ministry level to the designated Project Managers.
The COVID -19 pandemic caused another threat to the team as in person-interactions were severely
limited and this made it difficult to understand the expectations and challenges and to train and educate
users on accessing and using the system effectively.
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Approach
Wrench SmartProject was selected as the PMO Digital Platform after careful evaluation.
The choice was made based on Wrench's proven track record of over 23 years and the system's ability to
adapt to the business needs of the various organisations involved in the project.
Once given charge of implementing the digital platform, the Wrench team took a deep dive into the
project scope and reporting requirements via multiple online sessions with the Owners and the Consultants.
They had to use online sessions due to the COVID-19 restrictions on physical meetings. After the
requirements were captured, the team designed the system in such a way that the project data would flow
seamlessly into a common platform for collating and reporting.
Integrations from different applications were also done, so that the existing business flows of the users
were not disturbed.
The design of dashboards was done such a way that the information was presented in a concise way to
users as per each one's requirement. Key performance indicators were provided with a traffic lights graphical
system, wherein the system changed the lights based on the progress achieved or delays reported. This
helped in managing the project by exception.

Figure 1

All the dashboards were designed with a capability to drill down to the lowest element to identify the
root cause of the issue. Access to specific pages was controlled through user security rights to ensure that
sensitive data is protected always.
Ten parameters were identified for continuous monitoring of the project health by the Project
Management Team. Out of the ten, Safety, Overall Physical Progress, Financial Progress, Risk, Quality
and Issues were given primary importance and the health of these KPI's were made always available to the
stakeholders through the landing page of the portfolio dashboards.
Other KPI's were made available through drill down facilities from the home page.
Drill downs were further controlled depending on user security rights.
Monitoring the Health, Safety and Environment factors was of utmost importance to the stakeholders
(as well being a statutory requirement) so Smart Project provided a platform for recording safety incidents,
safety observation etc., through the mobile app from the work sites, with the dashboards and reports getting
instantaneously updated.
Alerts were set up to be sent to pre-configured users based on the severity of incidents. Observations
unattended or unresolved over a set period were automatically alerted and escalated for actions.
Risk Workshops were conducted, and risk registers updated and published based on the workshop's
outcomes. A Risk module feature in Smart Project was used to capture these risks and produce interactive
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risk heatmaps based on the probability and severity of impact to the stakeholders. Risk registers get
periodically updated based on the mitigation actions and risk heat maps get updated instantaneously
allowing the stake holders to manage the project risks by exception.
Project milestones were tagged as ‘on track' or ‘off track' based on schedule updates and delays.
This provided a holistic view of the project completion forecast to higher management who could then
initiate mitigation actions if needed. This gave them a clear advantage over conventional monitoring
systems because they got alerted well in advance, rather than having to wait for the monthly updates from
Contractors. With SmartProject as their PMO they had ample time to take actions to arrest or avoid project
delays, thanks to the integrations with scheduling software like Primavera and MSP and the live progress
updates from the sites.
Earned value curves and milestones status provided stakeholders with a visualisation of project
completion forecasts, which were automatically updated Page 5 of 10 whenever an individual Contractor
provided updated information to the common platform as well as when data from real-time integrations on
applicable parameters was captured by the system.
In this Mega project being executed over three locations, the number of documents generated was very
large and involved multiple revisions and multiple reviews per document.
Managing and tracking all the documents and their revisions was a herculean task for the Contractors
themselves. Each of the Contractors/ Consultants were using their own system to manage this
documentation.
One way for the PMO to get the status of a document is to depend on the reports provided by the
Contractors and Consultants and then collate and make his own report. Another way is to integrate with
each individual system and capture the status in real-time. The second is what was implemented with
SmartProject, where the Integration was done with each of the existing systems of individual Contractors
in order to capture real-time status of the Engineering documentation. The data was then used to populate
the engineering dashboards as well as to roll up the progress to the portfolio levels.
In process plants, the delivery of Long Lead Items drives the completion of the project to a great extent.
All three projects in this megaproject's portfolio had long lead equipment manufactured at various locations
across the globe. The portfolio dashboards were designed to indicate the exact status of each critical
equipment in a world map and a provision was made to view the details of the equipment from the world
map itself rather than having to browse through multiple pages.
Timely delivery of materials, irrespective of their size, cost, and type, is another key factor that drives
the completion of a project. It would be disastrous if a situation arose where people have to wait for work,
so it is of paramount importance that project teams are appraised of the exact status of the material delivery
to the site, in order to ensure the availability of adequate resources and to ensure resources are not kept idle.
With this in mind, SmartProject was designed to capture the status of a purchase order placement by
different Contractors across all three projects, and the delivery forecast was tracked in real-time, allowing
the stakeholders to take informed decisions when required.
SmartProject also provided a common platform for integrating with the different ERP systems used by
multiple contractors. The system was able to read data from these systems, avoiding the need for manual
data inputs. This enabled the stakeholders to take proactive actions to avoid schedule slippages that might
have occurred due to the delayed delivery of materials.
To address the challenge of monitoring construction progress from three different sites and to report it
on time (after analysing and collating for stakeholders review) a common platform was set up for users to
upload the progress data daily. The data updated to the platform was transferred to a SmartProject database
through integration and analysed to produce reports and dashboards.
SPE-210950-MS 5

Figure 2

Users were alerted in case they failed to upload the data into the system and escalations made to
appropriate levels. Users were given training on uploading data into the platform. This way, it was ensured
that the reporting structures and formats of individuals were re-used with minimal modifications and would
be readily adopted.
Provisions were provided for multiple contractor, PMC, and Owner teams to update the status of
inspections conducted either at the Vendor Premises or at sites. The data was analysed and reported through
dashboards, enabling Page 7 of 10 stakeholders to view the status of inspections, dispatch clearances,
and completions status in real time. Also, the quality performances of each Contractors were tracked and
corrective actions on Non-conformances were monitored.
Ageing reports aided in alerting and escalating the officials on delayed actions.
Issues and site obstructions reported by the users from various locations were categorised and reported
for actions based on priorities. Unattended issues were alerted though ageing reports, alert mails, and
notifications to higher officials.
The Digital PMO was able to track even the number of snags issued by PMC/Owner at various stages of
inspection and report them though dashboards. The data generated from this was used to accurately forecast
the handing-over dates of individual units as well to act as a data depository for future reference.
Site Progress images and videos and drone captures were published through digital dashboards and were
made available for viewing by the stakeholders through a single platform. This feature was extensively
used by higher management as well as the Government ministry to get first-hand information on the site
progress status.

Flexibility of the system

The team worked with the Owners, Consultants and Contractors and ensured that the contractors were able
to submit progress reports with minimal or no changes to their existing business process. With very close
interaction with the teams, a common platform was set up for capturing progress, including site photos and
videos captured using drones, in the shortest possible time.
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Result
Stakeholders who were located at different locations were able to view the progress of the project through
interactive dashboards which indicated the project health though identified KPI's and drill down reports
which helped them quickly identify the root cause of any issues. These dashboards were made accessible
24X7 through mobile apps and desktops.
The dynamic dashboards ensured that for each of the key elements it was possible to drill down to the
lowest possible level to get to the root cause of any delays, thereby allowing Project Managers to take the
necessary corrective actions at the appropriate time.
Project reviews became more productive as more time was available for discussing solutions to delays
and issues rather than for reviewing and understanding progress statistics, since all review participants were
already aware of the real-time status of the project.
Further access to the dashboard screens was restricted based on the defined security rights, thereby
ensuring confidentiality.
By utilising Microsoft Azure Cloud Services, it was possible to achieve zero down time during the entire
project period.
Resource requirements were substantially reduced with regard to the functioning of the PMO in
comparison with the traditional way of managing the PMO, as well as with regards to the accuracy of the
data reported, and all this was possible with minimal manual interfaces.
Dedicated resources were not required for producing the reports, as most of the data was captured directly
from the Contractors' existing systems.
Another benefit of using a solution like Wrench SmartProject as a digital PMO was the ability to archive
unlimited amounts of data and the availability of historical data for analysis at any time, which facilitated
smooth reviewing of claims and settling of disputes.
The Cloud server ensured that there was no limit to storage and that there was constant availability of
backups and disaster recovery systems in case of an unexpected shutdown.
Highly influential stakeholders, like ministers and ministry officials, were given access to the dashboards
and were able to view the progress of the works themselves, and this enabled them to provide necessary
advice and support as required during the execution of the Project.
The Owners and stakeholders were able to get full value from the interactive digital platform. Here are
their comments at the end of the project:
"The milestone trackers are accurate and help in tracking milestones across the three projects."
"The platform literally worked as a 'digital PMO' for us during this difficult period."

Conclusion
Today, the world is adopting digital technology in all walks of life and projects - be it energy or infrastructure
or any other field - are no exception. Gone are the days when project managers and project control teams
had to rush about madly to make last minute reports for presentations; now the project status is instantly
available to all stakeholders at their fingertips.

Suggestions for Improvement

There is no limit on how digital technology can benefit the field of project management. For example,
continuos innovations on the dashboards reporting systems can make them even more intuitive, and more
insights can be added to the reports. Owners can conclude on the type of reporting requirements from the
Contractors and Consultants at the early stages of Contract finalisations, which will help in standardising
the data structures army on, and so the integrations can be done more efficiently by the digital technology
solution providers.
SPE-210950-MS 7

Project Experience centers

Large organisations executing mega projects are now starting to set up project experience centers where
which are being used to display the project performances, videos, etc live. These spaces are being used
for review meetings as well. The advantage of such centres is that all the latest Project information will be
available on the screen at all times, including live and recorded pictures and videos, and Project Management
Teams can have meaningful discussions with accurate data rather than discussing a progress report with
out-of-date data.
Further, as the platform provides analysed concise data, teams will have more time to spend on real issues
and problem-solving rather than in trying to understand lengthy reports.
These centers are also being used for demonstrating the project performance to Guests as well as training
centers for new inductees to the Project. So as you can see, while it is true that there is no end to the
challenges in managing projects it is also true that thanks to digital technology there is no end to solutions
as well - if organisations are able to identify the right kind of technology at the right time. With the right
technology supporting them, companies will be able to work with real time project updates and a single
source of truth, allowing them to make good decisions and direct their projects to successful completion
within the budget and schedule.