The Role of Enterprise Project Performance in Mining
Over the past three decades, the iron and steel industries have experienced a technological revolution marked by the widespread adoption of modern, cost-effective, and state-of-the-art technologies. In the traditional approach to project development, various components are distinguished for each new project to address unique challenges and deliver new products to the market. Specific requirements and solutions must be identified depending on the type of project - whether it's a greenfield, greyfield, merger, or internal project.
In the post-COVID era, organizations are experiencing increased revenue pressures, prompting them to expand their plant capacities or build new facilities. To manage these complex projects, many organizations have established Enterprise Management teams. These teams face the challenge of adapting to ever-changing goals while juggling multiple projects, leading to potential chaos. Project Management Organizations must manage multiple due dates, task owners, team meetings, and client and management presentations. Despite their efforts, project bottlenecks and deadline changes can further complicate matters.
Even highly skilled project managers need a systematic way to track their progress. Ultimately, the success of a project is often measured by whether it is delivered on time and within budget.
Research shows that only 15% of project managers focus on a single project at one time. Most PMs manage around five projects, and the number can go as high as 10. But how do project managers keep track of all this? The answer is simple - set up a process for project performance management.
What is Enterprise Project Performance?
In a nutshell, Enterprise Project Performance refers to the standardized steps or the framework project managers use to track multiple projects: from ideation to selecting a project and its launch. Project performance management ensures every task has proper timelines, sufficient resources allocated, and workflows mapped out in detail for efficiency.
Why Mining Industry Needs it NOW?
In today's business landscape, the performance of Enterprise Level projects goes beyond just project planning in isolation. It involves the integration of data from various IT assets, such as ERP systems, project planning tools, engineering tools, and others, to enable informed decision-making.
By integrating project performance at the enterprise level, project managers can effectively manage ideation processes, gain visibility on Capex planning and approvals, plan and allocate resources, monitor costs, manage budget overruns, and implement earned value management. This level of visibility empowers project managers and organizations to deliver projects on time and within budget.
Additionally, monotonous tasks such as invoicing and time tracking can be streamlined and integrated into project performance. Time sheeting can help track the time taken by each assigned employee on specific projects, providing precise reports about time distribution. These reports can be used for invoicing based on timesheets.
Automating the simple, manual workflows along with digital integration can eliminate errors, inefficiencies, and manual intervention, which further improves the IRR, costs, and resource planning; for example, the cost posted (Actuals) in ERP can automatically be available to EPP to capture in the dashboard with increased visibility costs and material availability in real-time. The automation improves forecasting and variance analysis.
In the end, today's mining industry needs an EPP system that is flexible and configurable to suit the organization's needs.
Organizations like FL SMITH, BHP, Worley, Burns, McDonald, and Jacobs, after successfully implementing comprehensive enterprise project performance solutions,
have experienced significant benefits, including cost savings, efficiency improvements, aligned expenditures with plans and forecasts, holistic views of performance across the portfolio, and better visibility, resulting in superior project execution and improved margins.
By implementing promising Enterprise Project Performance solutions, like EcoSys™, organizations can overcome project management challenges and achieve their objectives with greater ease and efficiency.
By - Bhagwan Das Sahajwani