How to organize your next facility project to reduce risk and generate the best result.
By Jeff Eriks and Evan Williams
A project is just like a puzzle: you start with the completed image in mind, and then you take the pieces and start identifying and organizing them in a logical way so that you can get to the end goal as efficiently as possible.
Any time you are looking at a potential new project it is important to spend the necessary time up front to define what the project is going to be and what the 鈥減uzzle鈥� will look like when completed before you start organizing the pieces.
Part 1: Identifying and Organizing the Pieces
This is arguably the most important part of the project or the puzzle because the better you prepare to attack the puzzle the quicker and more efficiently you will get to the end goal with the best results.
There are many pieces that feed into any new project, whether it is a greenfield facility, expansion, or an upgrade. As an individual or as an organization, you may have been a part of one or a couple projects in your past and think you have a good handle on what those pieces are. To help de-risk yourself, it is important to bring in a partner that will help you identify all the pieces and paint the overall picture as early as possible.
As you work to build your business case, it is critical to identify revenue streams and costs that play into the overall process of getting the project approved. Internally, you likely have several resources that help to pull together the revenue pieces, however, you may not have the support to pull together the capital costs including design, construction, equipment, manpower, real estate, operating costs, and other factors that play into your proforma. This is where you need to add the right team members to assist you to accurately build your business case.
All too often we have seen people be so conservative with their cost estimates that the project never gets approved as it is too expensive. Conversely, we have seen instances where they were so unrealistic with real estate, missed scope, construction, and equipment costs that the project got approved and was never able to meet those revenue expectations, leading to unnecessary consequences for that company.
Many people do not get multiple opportunities to pull together a construction project, so it is not their expertise, and this is where you need to find partners to fill the gaps and assist you with this process.
For the sake of this editorial, let鈥檚 assume we are talking about a recycling facility addition and re-tool project. In this case, you already have the land, which is a huge benefit to you because finding the right development site can take months or even years.
For the project team, you should pull in an experienced design/build firm, process equipment supplier, internal operations team, and potentially internal or external environmental engineering support for any permit modifications as well as finance.
Working together, the design/build firm is integrated into your team to identify the overall scope of the project. It is important that they have the knowledge and experience with recycling facilities because all you are going to initially get is a high-level sketch of a site plan, floor plan, and some basic elevations. This is where their estimating team needs to be able to fill in all the gaps with the most accurate details of what needs to actually go into that building and site without having access to a full set of drawings. This includes, but is not limited to, pits, push walls, electrical drops, under equipment fire sprinklers and lighting, foundations, access points, sorting cabins, HVAC, bale storage walls, conveyor pits, baler steel embeds, equipment access points, overhead hoist points, etc. If your partner does not have experience with these types of facilities, it is likely that many of these critical items will be missed in the early phase estimates, and your budget will not be accurate.
Since we are working with an existing operating facility, it is also crucial to talk about the shutdown and construction schedule. Ideally, your facility would stay open during part of the construction phase so you can limit shutdown time and diversion of material because that is also an additional cost for you. Working with your equipment supplier, operations team, and design builder, you can develop the phasing plan to accomplish those goals and minimize the impact to your operations as much as possible.
The pieces you organize for this part of the project are the team, overall project goals, schedule for the project, budget, effect on operations, ongoing operating costs, and any additional equipment that may be needed to run the facility. That is a lot for one person to pull together without the right team in place.
Now that you are done organizing the pieces, you now have all the information to put together your full business case. Upon formal approval, you can now move on to the next part of the project, which is assembling the puzzle.
Part 2: Assembling the Puzzle
If you attack puzzles like my family does, you organize the pieces by edges, shapes or colors to easily sort through them to find what is needed. We always start with the border and then start working toward the middle.
A recycling center project is very similar in nature because you start with the potential building footprint, the 鈥渂order of the puzzle鈥� and then work with the equipment supplier to start infilling the interior of the building and the appropriate areas including the tipping floor, process area, bale storage, access points, employee areas, etc. You also need to factor in the existing operations and how that affects the short- and long-term plans for the facility.
Once the border is complete, you should focus on the various shapes and colors within the puzzle to start piecing it together. This equates to developing the project phasing, finalizing manpower needs based on the equipment parameters, modifying the operations to work around the construction process or vice-versa, and looking at the site as a whole for the development plan. The plan also includes determining whether any yellow iron, operating equipment, or utility upgrades may be needed. The existing fire sprinkler and electrical need to be analyzed to confirm whether they can support the new loads and demands. This and many other variables are identified and worked through during the design and permitting phase, so the final picture is clear when you proceed to construction. The 鈥渇ield of the puzzle鈥� is clearly identified based on what the final output is going to be. and the budget, timeline and operations goals are set in stone, and the path forward is set to finish the puzzle.
Upon completion of the design and permitting phases and the process equipment order being placed, you have now set in motion the completion of the puzzle. With the border of the puzzle completed and the pieces organized, you have started filling the puzzle in clearly identified ways; as others come up to see what you are working with, you can show them the progress and how you have tackled the project in the most efficient and professional manner leading to the best end result possible. This final stage leads to the most time-consuming part of the process, but also the most rewarding. You can see the fruits of your labor come together.
Over the next several months of the project, you will pull together the final pieces of information, start construction, and develop the timing for each piece of the project. Your goal is for the construction to be completed, the equipment installed and commissioned, your team to be in place and all your rolling stock to be ready at the same time, so when the final piece of the puzzle is put in place, the whole picture is in view. Dealing with a recycling center re-tool that includes building modifications is likely a three-year process from start to finish. The project starts with a planning stage lasting several months. The balance of plant facility design, permitting, equipment design, and fabrication continues for the next six to nine months, and the final construction and integration stage is nine to 15 months depending on the scope and phasing of the project. The way you organize it all at the start will determine how smooth the project goes.
That last construction and integration stage is when all the pieces of the puzzle start to come together and when you start seeing the results of your upfront planning pay off. Just like when you organize the puzzle pieces, it is easier to find what piece fits when you can easily decipher what you are looking for. Supporting your efforts with the right team around you is what makes your life easier throughout this entire process and leads to a more successful project overall.
Part 3: The Final Product
As you go through the construction process and watch the equipment get installed, see rolling stock getting delivered, watch the team getting built, see the overall project getting completed, and the fruits of your labor realized, that is when you can reflect on how your preparation from day one led to the overall success of the project. It is your leadership and the ability to build the right team and partnerships that resulted in an accurate business case, the right timing, the proforma being accurate and the project being a success. Using experts throughout every level of the project is the key to getting to that point.
Now that the final piece of the puzzle has been placed, you can sit back and admire the hard work that was put into the project as a whole. You can also look back and think about how you might have done some things slightly differently to improve your process for the next project. Just do not let someone else step in and set the last piece in that puzzle and take credit for your hard work when they did not help you all along the way. That is what my kids tend to do! | WA
Jeff Eriks is President and Evan Williams is a Design Project Manager at Cambridge Companies, Inc., a design-build firm, specializing in the environmental and waste industries with more than 30 years of experience covering more than 250 projects. During this time, Cambridge has successfully completed all types of solid waste design-build projects including transfer stations, recycling centers/MRFs, RNG facilities, truck and heavy equipment maintenance shops, landfill support facilities, and more. The Cambridge team continually monitors industry trends and ever-evolving needs to provide superior and relevant solutions when planning and building new facilities to ultimately benefit clients needing design-build solutions.
Contact Jeff at [email protected] or Evan at [email protected]. For more information, visit .