P R O J E C T M A N AG E M E N T S O LU T I O N S T H AT D E L I V E R R E S U LT S Emerald A S S O C I A T E S

TESTIMONIAL

Suncor Energy Inc. is a Canadian-based integrated energy company that mines for oil from the vast oil sand deposits of northern Alberta. Extracting the bitumen and processing it into a range of petroleum products involves rapidly growing facilities which currently represent in excess of $8 billion in assets.

Suncor Energy, Inc. Integrated Tools Deliver Value for Major Turnaround at Suncor Energy A massive turnaround in the spring of 2003, where every day down meant over 100,000 barrels of lost production, proved the benefits of the rationalization and integration of project management tools into a corporate turnaround methodology. Suncor has grown from an initial 45,000 bbl/day to its present production capacity of 225,000 bbl/day. Suncor’s Voyageur growth strategy, which includes the Firebag In Situ Oil Sands Project, is projected to increase production to the range of 500,000 to 550,000 bbl/day by 2010 to 2012. Suncor Energy is a world leader in mining, extracting and upgrading crude oil from the vast oil sands deposits of northern Alberta. (The company also explores for, develops and markets natural gas, operates a refining and marketing business in Ontario under the Sunoco brand, and actively develops renewable energy sources. Suncor’s U.S. downstream assets include a Denver refinery, 43 Phillips-66 retail stations and pipeline and distribution facilities located in Colorado and Wyoming.) “With Emerald’s planning expertise and The Challenge extensive knowledge in Primavera, the With so much at stake the company has recognized the need for integration of Suncor’s planning and integrated tools and sound methodology in everything that they do, reporting systems was a successful and be it capital projects, turnarounds, daily maintenance and outages. In smooth transition from our previous the spring of 2003 the first three were coming together in a turnaround planning software.” that also included the cutting-in of a new fractionating tower and some major urgent maintenance. It was vital that the planning and scheduling Peter L. Clarkson was meticulous and that all tools worked together flawlessly. Turnaround Manager Suncor Energy Inc. Emerald was privileged to be retained to support and mentor that effort. Oil Sands Group This was the culmination of several years of involvement, first to move the company from Artemis 9000 to P3 (ref Testimonial T3), and then from P3 to P3e (ref Testimonial T2). It had also worked with integrating C.M.M.S. Maximo software to P3e (ref Testimonial T16) and created an intranet browser ASP to improve communication between plant operators and schedulers (ref Testimonial T19). This turnaround involved 300,000 man-hours to be delivered in 30 days under a mixture of lump sum and unit rate contracts.

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Building the Scheduled Plan Emerald Associates, Inc. is a leader in A dedicated team of schedulers and planners was assembled 24 months integrating and implementing project before the turnaround and they started to build the 16,000 activity schedule management, computer, accounting, with 24,000 logic links and 120,000 activity code assignments. Resource and maintenance solutions. Emerald is a availability is crucial, so the dates are posted on the Turnaround Web Site to minimize conflict with other plants. Lessons learned were reviewed from Primavera Authorized Partner as well as the previous turnaround and logic reviewed. Then the 26,000 resource assign- a Primavera Solution Provider. ments were developed. With a schedule of this size, business rules must be applied if it is not to become unmanageable, some of these rules were:

Logic is ‘hard’, in the sense that it must be an absolute requirement not just desirable.

Logic links between plants are kept to an absolute minimum.

The schedule must be strictly based on the Work Breakdown Structure model.

Resource limits: manpower, accommodation and workplace loading, provide leveling criteria.

Leveling is performed only within the total float.

Scope is frozen 6 months before turnaround. Implementing the Plan Emerald supplied 7x24 support to Suncor’s team during the turnaround. The schedule was updated daily with the data time being 8:00 a.m. Updating started at 4:00 a.m. with the schedule runs being at 7:00 a.m. Reports consisting of S-curves and earned value reports were delivered to management by 2:00 p.m. latest so that reviews resulting in remedial or tuning recommendations could be incorporated in the next reporting cycle. Earned value was calculated on actual % complete versus actual budget man-hours, no attempt being made to incorporate actual man-hours. The methodology worked well and was particularly tested when major ‘found work’ was revealed in one of the furnaces. Next Steps Incorporation of actual hours into the schedule requires the solution of the problem of daily, complete capture of hours with activities associations and rapidly transmitting them in time for the schedule update cycle. Then integration of schedule and resources to the SAP system. Finally, analysis and review of the most effective mix of contractual form: lump sum versus unit rate. As the size of turnarounds grow, time frames shrink and risks escalate, turnaround methodology has to become more formalized. Without advanced and enforced methodology, management cannot prove the exercise of due diligence.

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