"Risky Business - Developing a Standardized WBS to Mitigate Risk on Refinery Turnarounds"
By Ben E. Voivedich Jr., PMP
Introduction
The ability to successfully manage a turnaround hinges on the project manager’s ability to control the scope or work. Rigorously control the scope and the ever present risk of cost and schedule overruns are substantially reduced. While methods such as Work Order Cutoff dates and Capital Project submission milestones help to curtail “scope creep”, the single most effective method would be for turnaround managers to adopt the use of Work Breakdown structures (WBS). By establishing that the WBS must represent all work and all costs of the turnaround, serve an integrative function of tying cost and schedule together, reconcile to the business accounting systems and act as a communication tool for the turnaround, the risk of things such as undefined scope “appearing” late in the project are significantly reduced.
For the benefit of those who are not yet familiar with the PMI project management terminology including the use of the WBS acronym, a brief description is in order. A Work Breakdown structure is a component of a task oriented breakdown of the turnaround scope. Others have described it as “flexible industrial language for describing, planning, and managing” work. Using a “tree” structure, the WBS defines all the work to be done on the turnaround by levels of increasing details identified as WBS elements or “buckets”. It often serves the function of integrating cost and schedule.
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