Early Equipment Management (EEM) : Continuous Improvement for Projects

When capital projects fail to deliver, it is usually not due to technical reasons but a combination of behavioral pitfalls, unclear accountabilities and gaps in design, specification, and/or project-management processes.

Early Equipment Management (EEM): Continuous Improvement for Projects explains how well known and award winning organizations avoid these weaknesses by using:

• Project road maps setting out clear accountabilities for each step of the concept-to-project-delivery process;
• Progressive design goals for each step to assure the delivery of low life-cycle costs;
• Processes to codify tacit knowledge, reveal latent design weaknesses, and build high performance cross-functional team collaboration;
• Project governance processes that systematically raise their organizations ability to reduce time to market for new assets, products and services with higher added value and fewer resources. Hence the books title of continuous improvement for projects.

The word Early in EEM refers to the principle of trapping problems as early as possible in the project process when they are cheapest to resolve. That makes EEM relevant to all projects even those that have past the design stages. To support the use of EEM at any project step, the author has designed each chapter as a standalone topic with cross references to other chapters where relevant. This book:-

Explains

• The six EEM project delivery steps setting out the tasks and accountabilities for project teams, project managers and steering committees at each step;
• How to organize projects to increase project added value through the collaboration of commercial, operational and technology stakeholders
• The wiring up behind behaviors that contribute to the failure of traditional project management approaches and how to avoid those pitfalls;
• The use of projects as a vehicle for the development of internal talent and increase capital project added value
• The systematic development of internal capabilities to deliver flawless operation from day one in less time with less resources
• How raising project governance capability directly impacts on company wide management competence
• Uses case studies to explain how to implement the EEM methodology and
• Describes how EEM principles and techniques applied to product and service development (Early Product Management) multiplies the gains from EEM.

This book shows readers how and why EEM works so that they can design their own EEM road map and continuous improvement process for projects.

• The book will set out practical steps to enhance current capital project processes so that they support EEM principles. This will include a simple diagnostic to highlight strengths and weaknesses.
• Many of the above weaknesses that result in poor capital project performance are a result of human behaviours. The book will draw on examples from Behavioural Economics to show how behaviours such as Framing, Group Think and Urgency Addition contribute to weak project performance as well as how to counter their impact.
• The book will set out how advances in the quality of collaboration software have provide a powerful platform to increase the speed of project delivery and support cross project learning.
• EEM treats cost like any other target/parameter. Each step considers how to translate learning into additional project value to either improve the return on investment or reduce costs.
• This has implications for commercial relationships. The fixed fee lump sum approach favoured by many organisations creates a win/lose relationship. The customer is trying to pass risk on to the vendor and vice versa. To create a win/win relationship, there has to be an incentive for a vendor to deliver a lower cost or more value. The book will included examples of win/win collaborative commercial arrangements from successful projects.

Preface

Chapter 1 : Early Equipment Management : Delivering Capital Projects Faster, Cheaper, Better
Chapter 2 : The EEM Road Map
Chapter 3 : Design and Performance Management
Chapter 4 : Specification and LCC Management
Chapter 5 : Project and Risk Management
Chapter 6 : Project Governance
Chapter 7 : Implementing EEM
Chapter 8 : Early Product Management

Appendix
Index