This week (July 21–23) -- the Construction Industry Institute (CII) is holding its 2014 CII Annual Conference, “Driving Performance at Every Turn,” in Indianapolis, USA. Dr Ted Blackmon, CEO of Construct-X, will be participating in a panel at the conference on Advanced Work Packaging (AWP), a subject your business and technology readers should know about.

Here is some background:
AWP is currently used in large industrial plant construction across the world.

Industrial Project personas/stakeholders include Owner-Operators, Architects, Engineers, Construction Management, Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPCs), General Contractors (GCs), Fabricators, Logistics, and Speciality Contractors.

Moving beyond traditional plan-the-work and work-the-plan methodologies, AWP ensures significant cost reduction, early alignment of engineering and construction planning, increased certainty from design through execution, improved safety, and help to enable construction crews to spend more time on productive tasks.

In 2013, the Construction Industry Institute (CII), in conjunction with the Construction Owners Association of Alberta (COAA), published Advanced Work Packaging (AWP): Design Through Workface Execution, a report showing that AWP techniques have realized remarkable results. Teams using AWP techniques have realized a 25% improvement in productivity, a 10% reduction in total installed cost, better safety, quality improvements, and better predictability of scheduling and costs.

Other metrics reported in a recent Engineering News Record (enr.com) article, where Dr. Blackmon is quoted, include 10% - 15% improvement in field productivity, 50% increase in tool time, 50% reduced turnover time, and 10:1 reduction in locating materials.

AWP helps manage the design process to support construction execution — where the money is spent and where you can lose or win a project.

AWP is the best way to plan the safe and timely movement of people and materials on multibillion-dollar industrial construction projects around the world.

With AWP, Work Packages become the core of the construction planning and execution process, supported by departments managing quality, safety, project controls, scheduling, cost coding, and materials. Traditional construction silos are broken down and there is better overall monitoring of progress and control of the construction process.

The construction automation landscape required for AWP includes Advanced 2D/3D Engineering Design software platforms with 4D/5D BIM capabilities along with RFID, laser-scanning technologies, field tablets, and other technologies. Major offerings in software space include Bentley with ProjectWise, Aveva Solutions, and Intergraph's SmartPlant Construction.

At the conference, Dr. Ted Blackmon will discuss AWP, significant Owner-Operators and EPCs that have adopted and benefited from AWP, industry pain points regarding information silos, current AWP-driven projects, the Capital Facilities Life-Cycle, and the major conclusions from this year's CII conference.