Two surefire ways to impede your production pace are disagreements at work and ineffective pipeline building teams, which can lead to decision-making bottlenecks. Your pre-construction surveys will be disrupted by setbacks in the environmental permitting phase, which will postpone the preparation of your ROW, and so on. Additionally, there is no time to add extra resources or play catch-up when it comes to pipeline building projects.
It takes a lot of time and is quite frustrating to assemble a complex team with different specialties. The good news? Finding pipeline construction companies one at a time is not necessary. Even hiring personnel from many specialized contractors is not necessary. Your project planning and execution will go much more smoothly if you find qualified consultants with areas of experience throughout the whole project lifecycle.
The difficulties of having the incorrect consultants present
In the near term, it may be more cost-effective to assemble a team from many different contractors as you may choose the lowest offers. However, over time, it may cause problems on several levels, such as cost control and managing several service providers. Before you start sending out dozens of RFPs or simply hiring bodies off the labor supply shelf, consider these logistical and workplace issues.
Challenges in logistics
Acquiring and monitoring certificates and trainings
Participating in ecologically sensitive projects, such as pipeline building, requires individuals who are knowledgeable about and frequently qualified in specialist fields. How can you be certain that any contractor you are thinking about have the necessary credentials? Professional engineers may be listed in one of your contractor’s offers, but when was the last time the PEs’ licenses were renewed? What if their lone certified stormwater inspector was lost due to personnel turnover? You must provide evidence that each person on the job site has received the training and certification necessary for the duties they will be carrying out.
The screening process will be made simpler by working with highly qualified advisors. Reliable certification renewals, frequent training, and document keeping are all second nature to consultants with various specialties housed under one roof.
Accidents are caused by inadequate training. It is never acceptable to omit obtaining proof of training.
Handling the employees’ revolving door
During pipeline building projects, a lot of people come and go, and contractors aren’t always there for the whole duration of the project. Because of this, it is difficult to keep track of who is present.
It’s likely that a consultant who works on many, if not all, of your construction project’s phases will stay on site in some capacity, from hydrostatic testing and restoration to project planning and permitting. This implies that there will be fewer individuals to mentor, train, and teach how to collaborate with.
Monitoring different billable rates
For controllers, nothing is more terrifying than having to monitor billable rates for several consultants. There will likely be some variation in hourly rates even if you have several employees on the same site with the same expertise and job title, but they are from separate organizations.
Although tracking varied rates won’t be eliminated by hiring consultants with multiple proficiencies, job titles will make those prices much more uniform. For instance, the prices for field technicians and project managers will be the same. There will be less opportunity for error and, more significantly, cost forecasting and control will be simpler if controllers have fewer data to deal with.
Speaking with many project managers
Effective communication between decision-makers is essential for pipeline construction projects to succeed. However, communication gets more complicated when you add additional management-level employees to your project. Based on our business experience, one of the most frustrating issues with large projects is having too many project managers.
You may address communication problems by implementing organizational changes, such holding weekly meetings or conference calls with each of your project managers. All points of communication can also be included in email threads, but there is a catch to this advice: reading and writing pointless emails can result in a major loss of productivity. The typical employee spends an absurd amount of time—13 hours, to be exact—on emails each week. Project managers must devote those hours to scheduling, keeping an eye on contractual obligations and the scope of work, and preparing project status reports on pipeline building projects.
Reducing the number of participants in daily interactions without sacrificing openness is the most effective method to improve communication (and maintain high output rates). Both may be accomplished by hiring qualified contractors with fewer points of contact.
Managing various reporting techniques
Accurate data from every contractor is necessary to measure the effectiveness of your operations. Even though you most likely have a consistent reporting procedure, certain contractors will still cause you problems. Contractors may choose to report their data in a certain way or not at all. Your employees are left in the dark when it comes to creating accurate metrics because of noncompliant reporting, or the absence of it.
Additionally, field reporting strategies differ greatly throughout contractors. Information may be manually gathered in field books by your survey contractor. Your inspectors may be equipped with laptops or tablets that enable them to gather and transmit data electronically. Receiving and organizing all of the information you need to track might be difficult when contractors manage field data using both digital and manual methods.
At the corporate level, however, reporting practices are usually uniform. Selecting contractors that have adequate reporting methods—ideally digital ones—reduces the amount of “data wrangling” you must perform.
Challenges in the workplace
Displacing various corporate cultures
Each pipeline contractor will have a unique corporate culture. To keep construction on track, one company would let its employees work late into the night, while another might end work at a respectable hour to avoid employee tiredness. One business may prioritize following the book, while another may do whatever is necessary to do the job.
Communication and morale at work might suffer as a result of clashing corporate cultures. And if you’re tempted to dismiss morale as unimportant, keep in mind that the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA) states that attitude and morale are the two main elements influencing construction productivity.
A workplace culture that encourages innovative cooperation is typically seen when contractors have different specialties. This is a powerful formula for reaching high productivity and coming up with innovative ideas. You will have a better chance of building business-to-business professional connections if you use these flexible, innovative contractors. Your productivity will increase, and contractors will be happy to build partnerships that may last a lifetime.
Enforcing and communicating work standards
It’s your responsibility to make sure your contractors meet the quality standards needed for high-risk projects like pipeline construction. The distinction between acceptable and bad work quality becomes increasingly hazy—and simple to straddle—when you have a large workforce on the job.
Your time spent communicating and enforcing work standards will be greatly reduced if you choose your contractors carefully. Contractors that are truly resourceful know what constitutes a quality work. Additionally, they will save you time and money by going above and beyond to meet your requirements with the least amount of work.
Putting emergency spill response plans into action
Responding to emergencies is a horrible experience for all parties. You have to be ready for spills, fires, and other crises as an oil and gas firm. However, there is a significant distinction between creating a plan and carrying it out.
Consider the reaction to an emergency spill. It will take at least three phone calls to coordinate independent specialists for cost management, health and safety, and cleanup when disaster hits and you sound the alarm. However, the proper consultant may ensure that a highly competent and adaptable team arrives in full force. One phone call is all you need to do. When responding to an emergency spill, every second matters. Use caution while selecting the contractors you have on speed dial.