Executing Brownfield Projects

Brownfield projects are significantly different from greenfield projects due to the fact these have to be executed in an environment with existing facilities and ongoing operations. This imposes a number of challenges and constraints on the projects that often results in significant cost overruns and schedule delays if not adequately addressed. The challenge already starts in the early assess and select phase of a project, in agreeing and defining the scope. Although the project team's focus is on execution the "main" scope (e.g. capacity expansion), the drive in the operations and maintenance team is on addressing integrity and obsolescence issues and/or addressing changes that are driven by new facilities standards. The resulting scope creep may affect the economics of the "main" scope and give rise to a recycle of the concept select. In the define phase significant scope and thus cost increases can be expected due to inappropriate scoping and costing practices in the earlier phases that are based on greenfield concepts. In the execution phase brownfield projects are often affected by a lack of definition resulting in scope growth, low efficiencies of the brownfield work due to permit, bedding limitations or simply poor access to the facilities. All these issues have been identified and are being addressed in RDS projects in a pro-active manner through the Center of Excellence for Brownfield Projects so as to make step change in project performance.