InEight Offshore Wind Construction Technology
Virtual Roundtable

Originally aired on 06/21/2022

60 Minute Watch Time

Request A Demo

Transcript

Scott Kirshe: 
Okay, good morning, everybody. My name is Scott Kirshen. I’ll be the moderator along with Brad Barth this morning. Appreciate everybody joining us.

One of the questions was how did we get here? While, all of a sudden, is InEight getting into the offshore and renewable energies, which really we’re not just getting into it. We’ve been into it for a while, but I had the luxury of going to Atlantic City and attending the IPF show, the offshore wind conference in Atlantic city. And sitting there with Mike Murphy, who’s joining us today, over and over and over again, we heard that the industry needs technology for tying together the scope, schedule, and cost of seamlessly and transparently, for owners and contractors.

With the approval of Justin, I went back and said, “Hey, can we do a round table and have an open discussion with people that are in the industry with our experts that we have here today.” And he gave us the thumb’s up.

And so, that’s how we got here today. But before I get started, there’s a huge thanks I’ve got to give out to Christina Moch. She was the quarterback behind all this, putting everything together for us. And, obviously, there’s a gentleman who’s not on here, Kobe Stardler, who actually helped me with all the LinkedIn stuff, where getting stuff out there, if you don’t do it every day, it does become a challenge. So he was instrumental in getting everything out there on social messaging, et cetera. And, of course, Melissa Esbenshade, who’s the vice president of marketing, who is with us today.

So that’s how we got here today. I’m going to take care of some business up front here, is… Come on.

Please join the conversation. Everybody is on mute. If you want to jump off mute, we have that capability of doing that for you. But again, just sit back, relax. I’ve got a great group of people here today, to be able to discuss things going forward.

So, to get started, we’re going to pass this over to Brad Barth.

But, very quickly, we’re going to jump in with Mike Murphy, MJM Business, to the use of technology.

And very excited to have Kiewit with us this morning, for the South Fork Wind and the fast LNG job that they’re working on, with Ignatius McGhee. He goes by Iggy. I’ve got Zach Dill and Aundrey Owens with us.

And then, we’re very, very happy to have Amanda Queen, all the way from Scotland, joining us, about the complexity of the Seagreen project and other wind projects that she’s actually worked on.

Then we’ll have some time for question and answers after this, but again, please ask your questions in the box, in the bottom right corner, and we should be fine.

 

Brad Barth:  
Looks like we may have lost Scott. Yeah, let me… Hey, everyone. This is Brad. Let me jump in here. Maybe we’ll get Scott back here, hopefully, in a second.

But yeah, as Scott said, we’ve got a super, super list of speakers here today. I personally cannot wait to hear from these folks on what’s going on in the wind energy sector.

And we’ll start by doing a little bit of kick-off on who is InEight. I promise we’ll take just a few minutes of the time to talk about InEight. I want to spend most of our time, and I know Scott does, with our distinguished list of speakers here.

So Scott went around the table already, in terms of who we have with us today. As we go from speaker to speaker, they can introduce themselves and give a little bit more background.

And so, let’s go ahead. Scott, if you do get back on, just feel free to jump in.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
I just got back on. No idea about that hiccup. Go ahead, Brad.

 

Brad Barth:
No problem. Technology, right? You just got to, just react.

All right, let’s talk a little bit about InEight. InEight is a global provider of project control solutions in the renewables space, as well as energy infrastructure, general building, mining, oil and gas, really across the board. And we provide that solution to really all the major stakeholders on capital projects, as well as large maintenance, shutdown turnaround-type projects.

So, really complex projects, is large complex projects is kind of the theme for our customers, whether they’re, like I said, contractors, owners, engineers, construction managers, all the major stakeholders in these projects.

And our mission is, frankly, all about project certainty. So, that is our goal, of our solution. We make it as easy as possible using the cloud, using mobile solutions and all those kind of great technologies we’ve gotten used to.

We bring those to bear, in terms of planning projects and executing those projects, really, from the time they were conceived, all the way through design construction shutdown, or excuse me, commissioning and turnover and startup, over into asset management, handing back to the owner.

And we do that. That project certainty, for us, is all about how do we enable all those stakeholders to create reasonable expectations, risk-adjusted expectations, going into the project, in terms of estimates, budgets, schedules, scope. What are the risks associated with those things, so we know how to mitigate them throughout the life cycle? And so that we make sure those expectations end up equaling the outcomes at the end. We want to make sure that across scope, cost, and schedule, we’re hitting those targets and not just, for example, hitting maybe schedule and cost targets at the expense of scope. We want to make sure that we’re creating the proper expectations and achieving those outcomes across all three of those dimensions.

And we do that through connecting data, connecting roles. So we want to make sure that the folks, often hundreds of folks involved in these projects, from a planning and execution perspective, we want to make sure that they’re sharing information with each other, that they’re sharing information internally and externally, easily. And also leveraging information from previous projects, so there’s a lot of… Certainly every project’s different in this space, but there are some aspects of every project that are repeatable, that we can learn lessons from previous projects, use that for benchmarking and risk identification on future projects.

And, ultimately, that’s what drives that project certainty, eliminating surprises, make sure that we’ve got a nice, smooth, seamless process through delivery of these large projects.

The last thing I’ll say here is, what are some of those roles? And what are some of those business processes that the InEight solution covers, and you can see them on the screen here. I promise I won’t read every one of these boxes here, but from estimating early on, from creating schedules, all the way through, like I said, through design, we have a great BIM and digital twin solution that captures, takes that model information and connects it to other, whether it’s documents, whether it’s commissioning and startup activity, punch lists, all that can be connected back into the model, so that at the end of the project, handing that back over to the owner to support asset management. And then, along the way, another big part of that, is dealing with changes, for example, and managing changes to scope and how do those things affect costs? How do those things affect schedule?

So, one of the things that we do, we’re in our third decade of this solution. I’ll just wrap it up here, just with a point that this is not new technology. We use next generation technologies, like I mentioned, cloud and mobile, but the functionality and these these buckets that you see on the screen in many cases is 25, 30 years into development.

So, very robust, very feature-rich solutions in every one of these areas. And we are continually creating integrations to cross them. A perfect example of that, is we just recently released our design management solution, that allows you to manage your design work and bring a project controls approach to managing your design work. Your resources, your progress, your status of that design work.

And that connects over to our earned value management solution. So you can create earned values and report on those earned values, as you’re doing that design work. So, just a one example on hundreds of how these roles and these business processes are connected through the InEight solution.

So, with that, yeah, I just wanted to run an intro on InEight, certainly, at InEight.com, you can learn more about us. But, like I said, I’m excited to hear from our speakers here today. So let’s get to that.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Super. Thanks, Brad.

We’re going to start off this morning with quick open discussion with Mr. Mike Murphy. Mike Murphy is the President and CEO of MJM Business Solutions.

Mike actually has over 35 years of experience of it, the executive, operational, and strategic management within the construction, manufacturing, and engineering organizations. Thanks, Mike, for joining us this morning. Good to see your face after the IPF show, my friend.

 

Mike Murphy:
That’s right. Thanks. Thanks God.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
So, Mike, you’ve been in this industry for a long time. What do you see within the offshore wind sector, where we met at the IPF show in Atlantic City, the wind sector is the biggest risk for the contractors and owners. What do you see as far as net risk?

 

Mike Murphy:
Yeah, that’s good. Well, I think when we take a look at it, there are multiple risks that the offshore wind sector is going to impose on developers and contractors and people throughout the supply chain.

So, first it’s really, if I take a look at that, I’d say when you look at scope, scale, and pace, the federal government with the 30 gigs of generation capacity installed by 2030, that in itself is a significant driver, that includes a number of risks.

With the way that you go about obtaining the ability to move forward with an offshore wind project, the developers are expending significant resources. They need to participate in federal auctions, state solicitations, and then navigate all that permitting process. And so you have to deal with the complicated scopes. We’re dealing with massive structures that are connected over a fairly large geographic area, both onshore and offshore.

That’s a little unique to heavy process industries and traditional energy generation. If you just take a look at the typical wind turbine generator, you’re talking about a… One alone will likely have an excess of seven or 8,000 parts.

 

Scott Kirshe:  
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

 

Mike Murphy:
Again, the size of monopile foundations, they can run 2,000 to 2,500 tons. So you’re dealing with a lot of components and fairly massive structures.

You need to connect onshore substations with an export cable. So, these scopes can get complicated. The scale, each of these projects, I would deem them to be a mega project in themself. And so, to deal with all the permitting, the complex supply chain with certain unique capabilities and safety considerations, that scale is something that we’re coming to terms with.

And then, of course, the pace. To get 30 gigawatts in installed and up and running by 2030, is… There’s risk on multiple fronts there, you have. You were talking about the permitting, the contracting, developing the supply chain. Some of the ancillary aspects of identifying lay down areas and having marshaling ports ready to go. Sourcing the vessels. You have the construction of the operation and maintenance facilities.

With the drive for good paying green energy jobs, and the federal government and the state governments to date, focus on union labor, on the building trades. There’s participation in project labor agreements. And then again, it’s, for the US, the offshore wind is a bit of a new industry. So you have all that workforce identification, training, education, and development.

So, there are quite a few risks that are bundled throughout what the developers are going to need to take care of and throughout their supply chains.

And, of course, the developers, they look at how they wrap their Tier 1 contractors together, as they look to focus on transitioning the field activities. And, ultimately, to commissioning startup and operation.

So you have to work across your Tier 1s, and then vertically within each of the tiers. So, with that, there’s quite a bit of data management, project management, and the like, to take care of.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Well, you brought up a key point, quite honestly, is supply chain. What is your feeling on the risk of the supply chain for the offshore wind?

 

Mike Murphy:
Yeah, that’s a really great question. And we were both at the IPF, attended multiple meetings and other events. And supply chain management, the US supply chain management, is a significant consideration.

Even take a look at the BOAM auction notices and the state solicitations, they’re including various supply chain goals, spending within a state, or more recently, even in a state cluster.

And they even include the use of XBE entities, minority, women-owned, veteran, et cetera. So, that’s, itself, a major focus on the supply chain.

The typical model we’ll see in the US, at least to date, has been referred to as an EPCI model. You many of us are familiar with EPC. The added “I” is for installation.

So the offshore wind developers typically place those first tier awards to the wind turbine generators, the foundation suppliers for the onshore and offshore cabling.

We’ll hear from Kiewit later, on some of the substations. Substations, which would be a Tier 1 award, as well.

So that is a big risk area that the developers are dealing with.

And then, how you vertically develop that supply chain, and with the pace of these projects and ramping up engineering and manufacturing, construction and the like, I see that the Tier 1s appear to be moving forward.

We see companies that are existing in heavy industry involved, like Kiewit and others. We also see some others that are stepping up into spaces like secondary steel support and some other areas that would go to US companies.

However, lower in the tiers, I think, is an area that I continue to see some weakness in the development that needs some shoring up.

So, as they come on board, those companies may be less, have had less involvement in industrial work, energy work. So we’re going to need to take a look at their workforce sourcing, their workforce development, and make sure they understand the capabilities they’ll need and the complexities of what they’re about to get involved with.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Super. Well, you bring up two great points there, with scale pace, and obviously supply chain. How do you see software like InEight addressing some of these risks and the supply chain concerns? And we got to keep on pace here, so we got about a minute.

 

Mike Murphy:
A minute. Okay, I’ll condense.

There are a lot of issues that you’re going to have to face. And one is having confidence in that technology provider. The validation, or their ability to provide what is needed, and does it have scalability capabilities? Like the instance to have project management oversight, all the down to the ability to maybe to do a plan of the day, and to take a look at what your production is, to meet your longer term goals.

So, there’s that aspect. And if we have a minute, I’ll jump to one.

And a major consideration for me is that the provider has significant subject matter expertise in heavy industrial process and energy-type engineering, procurement and construction projects.

I do have a bit of experience with implementing different types of software programs. And I did get involved with an InEight implementation.

And one of the things that impressed me was the subject matter expertise and the knowledge and benefit that that brings, that the support that you’re getting, there’s an understanding there of the considerations of workflow, document roles, scheduling, forecasting, and getting the operations folks comfortable with the technology solution. Because sometimes they’re the biggest area that we have to address, their confidence that the systems will be providing the support that they’re told they will provide.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Perfect. That actually leads us into, as you say, expert matter people. I’m going to introduce, I don’t see him on camera, maybe he’s being shy, Ignatius McGhee. He goes by the name Iggy. He’s very well known after 30 years in the offshore commissioning and startup manager at Kiewit. Iggy, I can’t see you, but can I hear you?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
I hope so.

 

Scott Kirshe:
There he is. So, quite honestly, Iggy, thanks for joining us. We’ve had several meetings. Just tell us a little bit about what you do there, at Kiewit, for me.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Yeah. So I joined Kiewit three years ago. Now I come from, obviously, a background in oil and gas. And came here to cure it, to continue that sort of experience, and provide my experience to another growing team here.

But as most oil and gas giants, clients, they’re diversifying into renewables. We have taken that step here at Kiewit, as well.

So I’ve been working, very closely, in those three years with Ørsted, one of our clients here, for the South Fork project.

We’ve been in discussions with both onshore wind farms and substations, as well as offshore. And we’ve been very fortunate that we have been provided the contract, or won the contract, for the first offshore substation to be built and installed in the US, with South Fork.

It’s just a small substation, but the complexities are just as big, whether it’s a small one or a larger one, which we are also in discussions and feed on other projects with other clients, as well.

So my role here is to take the scope of work from the beginning. We have got a motto here at Kiewit, where we begin with the end in mind, so we are responsible to make sure that we’ve got all the information going from detailed design through to startup.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Perfect. You brought up the word “complexities.” And can you describe some of the complexities when you start up and begin a project like South Fork? Or the fast LNG? But what are some of the complexities that keep you up at night?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
So, first of all, South Fork gives us a complexity because this is the first time that we have… Many of us have worked on offshore substations. A lot of us work on compressors and turbines and all the rest, but we don’t really work on GIS, shunt reactors, and other SO.

It’s a first for us. We’ve gone out to the market and we’ve brought in subject matter experts to be able to come in and support us. We have now one or two commissioning managers who have now joined Kiewit staff, who have worked on equipment like this in the past, but also looking at how we fit everything into a small facility.

Obviously, it’s mainly electrical, so and controls. And one of the other things is from controls, from a scatter complexity, as well, the communications between the turbines themselves, the field, going through the substation, going back in from the export cable, back to the onshore substation, and then obviously out to the grid.

So these are things that we have never really worked on in the past, and we are getting up to speed with how that technology works and how we can produce a successful project across to our client.

 

Scott Kirshe:
What would you say..? Good points quite honestly, regarding the complexity and, obviously, being new in the industry. What are some of the things that you’re doing to mitigate some of those concerns?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
So, obviously, the mitigation that we’ve got is trying to break things down into smaller components and this is where our InEight completions assist us.

So we systemize each of our packages, whether it comes from the turbine, whether it’s a cable, whether it’s the export cable, or whether it’s the onshore substation.

And we break it down into manageable systems and subsystems. And that’s how we put our progress together, our scope of work together.

And then looking at what the quantities that are in there, concerning tags and components, and looking at what sort of expertise that we need to support us in carrying that out.

It’s pointless bringing in a mechanical engineer for an offshore substation. This substation is mainly electrical and controls, and that’s the sort of major components and expertise that we require to be able to be successful in these.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Gotcha. Out of curiosity, because you brought up another great point, as far as breaking down a project of this size into manageable work packages, if you will. How many of those do you see? Have you identified on a project like this? Is it 200? 300? Different small-

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
Yeah. So, on the South Fork project, we have got Aundrey will be able to be able to give me an exact number, because he’s working on it as well. But I think it’s got about 60 subsystems.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Okay.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Where the fast LNG project, which I’m leading here just now, and we are just under 300 subsystems for that one. By- [inaudible 00:24:40]

 

Scott Kirshe:
They’re all being managed within the unique completions platform?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Yes, that’s correct. Yeah.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Perfect. Now, what happens after Iggy gets done, putting the whole scope together and putting the packages together, they kind of hand it over to Zach.

And Zach, if you would, Zach Dill, obviously, he’s with Kiewit. Zach, if you don’t mind just introducing yourself, and tell us about what you do from the time Iggy passes it over to you, before it gets over to Aundrey. And before I pass to you Iggy, anything else you wanted to throw at us?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
No, it’s just, from that beginning, from the end in mind, is the main component behind that is making sure that we have all the information coming from our engineering departments, whether third party engineer or our own in-house engineering, for us to be able to hand us over to the completions team, they need all that information, to be able to start putting their process together.

And we spoke earlier. Mike spoke about it as well. Coming from the OEMs. It is absolute crucial that when we are starting to have these initial discussions with the OEMs, we highlight to them the information that we require from them to be able to populate the database, as well, to support Zach and Aundrey.

 

Brad Barth:
Scott, I got a question for Iggy, if you don’t mind, real quick, just before we switch.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Absolutely.

 

Brad Barth:
So, Iggy, I’m just curious, especially with your background in oil and gas. Do you see, from an observational standpoint, it seems like these projects in the wind sector and the renewable sector, in general, seem to… It takes a long time to get permits and things like that, but once you get all those boxes checked, it’s a very fast pace. You’re taking advantage of whether private funding or government grants or incentives. Do you you see that difference, in terms of the pace of these projects, and the need to react swiftly to changes and that sort of thing?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Absolutely. Fast LNG, and again, Mike… it was, sorry, not just fast LNG, but sorry, but the South Fork as well, is this was going to be a very fast moving project.

But when you go back to the issues that we’ve had with COVID and all the rest, Mike brought it up here, when we are going out to start purchasing, I know that we went to purchase GIS and shunt reactors and transformers, people were saying, “Yep, we’ve got them. We can, we can deliver them. But the amount of projects that are coming in now we are now being delayed in the delivery of that equipment,” some of them are even up to six to eight months.

And for me, that with the industry booming so much just now, it’s not the fact of building them, because we can get the steel. It’s just a cost factor, but it’s the packages which are going which are going to give us some concerns, whether it’s a GIS, or a shunt reactor, or transformers. Even cranes, the basis.

These are long-term, long lead items, and they’re getting even longer, on a daily basis.

 

Brad Barth:
So there are practical constraints that are keeping you from-

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Yeah.

 

Brad Barth:
… Really keeping up with the demand that’s out there?

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
That’s correct. Yeah.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Thanks, Iggy. That was awesome. Brad, any further questions?

 

Brad Barth:
Questions?

 

Scott Kirshe: 
It’s good. Let’s keep going. Perfect.

Good. All right. We’re going to throw it right over to Zach, who is the Senior Completions Advisor for Kiewit. Zach, just introduce yourself. And then I got a couple of quick questions for you, my friend.

 

Zach Dill: 
Yeah. Good morning. I’m as you said, I’m the Senior Completions Advisor for our Kiewit Energy Group, in the commission and startup area.

I basically set up the databases, the process procedures, and staff up our multiple projects with completion managers and other completion personnel.

So, this South Fork project has been pretty much right up my alley, trying to get the completions program stood up and working with Aundrey \on defining scope and technical acceptance standards and other attributes that we’ll put into the system to manage.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Super. Again, complexities. It’s everywhere in these projects, aren’t that? What do you take into account when you’re setting up and populating a database?

 

Zach Dill:
So, whenever we’re populating our systems completion database, for South Fork, we’re using InEight Completions.

What we’ll typically do, is we’ll take into account, not just the engineering deliverables, which we have to reach out to all of our different engineers and vendors, to make sure that we get all of the components that are going to go into the system.

But we also integrate that with the systemization, that Iggy had already mentioned earlier. The bite-size chunks. The real reason behind creating the bite-size chunks is primarily schedule-based, in that what’s the smallest unit that we can group it down to, so that we can pass it from construction to pre-commissioning, into commissioning.

We will systemize all of our engineering deliverables and populate the database, but we also take a look at, well, what order do we need them in? Because we’ll need utilities first, whereas process last, typically. We will identify that as part of a startup sequence fishbone, and incorporate that in as milestones against each of our systems and subsystems.

But the big aspect of a completions database is tracking the technical acceptance standards. Our installation forms, our commissioning forms, verifying that we’ve fully tested out each of the individual components. Our commissioning procedures saying that that entire functional system is running as designed.

We’ll define the quality pre-commissioning commissioning forms. And then the default assignment matrix based off of, not just the contract, but off of code and specifications.

And then, finally, we incorporate our certification process. Each subsystem will be associated, will have an associated construction completion certificate, ready for commissioning, ready for startup certificate. And then in any other intermediate certificates, like say for example, onshore versus offshore scoping of ready for sale, away for the onshore fabrication, to the offshore hookup and commissioning, and final system acceptance.

When we’re actually utilizing InEight completions, we’re taking those individual engineering components, and loading them in, and classifying them, not just by system and subsystem, which we’re able to filter in our element register, on the left hand side of the software. But we’re also classifying it to a specific component type, whether it’s a centrifugal compressor, low voltage switch gear, et cetera, because that determines how we apply our technical acceptance standards, our check sheets, to each of the components, which within InEight Completions, we have our tag list. We will filter to what we want to actually get our components associated with, technical acceptance assigned to. We’ll run our TTM, which stands for tag type matrix, tag classification, to default check sheet requirement.

And that’ll generate our scope of work, so to speak, which we will utilize on system by subsystem basis saying, “Okay, how many check sheets are still outstanding? Complete all of those.” And then allow us to say, “Okay, we’re ready for a walk down. We’ve completed all that to find all of our punch list. Close those out.”

And then we’re ready to actually sign the certificate, moving from one phase to the next.

So, whenever we actually build out our scoping, or our checklists, we’re able to not just have it associated by system and subsystem, but we also are able to identify it based on contractor and scope.

So we can say, “This scope is being done in the fab yard,” versus “This scope being done offshore,” and vice versa.

And, finally, we’re also in the same system. We’re able to define issues, whether it be workless, punchless NCRs, FAT punches, et cetera, because the whole point is that since we have it all in one system, we’re easily able to print out our turnover dossiers that show, “Here’s my scope. Here’s my checklist. And then here’s any issues that came up,” and us being able to show that they’ve all been closed.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Wow. Just out of curiosity, one of the questions came in through the chat over here. How did you do this prior to having InEight?

 

Zach Dill: 
Well, there’s… InEight Completions is not a new concept. There are systems completion databases, available through various other software providers.

In the past, we’d used one of those, with less features.

And even before that, it was managing by spreadsheet and other… Spreadsheet and paper. It’d be… Having something all consolidated like this makes it… It takes a little bit of effort upfront to get it populated, but then it makes it very… It makes it a lot smoother to when you’re right in the middle of execution, to compile it and push it over.

 

Brad Barth:
Hey, Zach. Good question for you. Just on that note to relative to the technology, especially going back to when it was done on spreadsheets.

This area, completions, commissioning, startup, even quality, that kind of stuff, strikes me as an area where you can really benefit from having a lot of collaboration going on. As you run into issues, or there are a lot of questions around where are we with this stuff? Who owns it? Who’s got the next step? Do we need to go back to engineering? Is it a particular contractor or fabricator?

Do you find that the cloud-based nature of the solution, that you’re using now, facilitates that collaboration? Either internally, or even with other stakeholders?

 

Zach Dill:
Yes, it does.

With regards to the preliminary setup, that’s more collaborative internal to the organization.

But once you’ve actually set up the database, especially when you start talking about, let’s say NCRs or other issues, the system actually allows you to designate a ball in court. And whenever they log into the system, they’ll actually have a little button up there, that says “Assign to me.” They can click that and see exactly what they need to work on for that specific, or what they have to focus on immediately, in addition to going out there and doing the actual work.

 

Brad Barth:
So there’s some accountability that happens there? There’s no claim, “Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.”

 

Zach Dill:
Correct. At the bare minimum, if it’s specifically flagged to you, it says, “Assigned to me,” but if you are part of a team, like say construction piping, they log in, they’ll be able to see, “Assigned to my team.” And so they can click on that and see the checklists, or punches, or whatever, that they’re responsible for.

 

Brad Barth:
Yeah. That’s great.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Perfect.

So, just so for some people who just joined, we started off with Iggy in the beginning, on the overall setup of the project, all that kind of stuff.

Then we pass it over to Zach, who then turns around, pretty much sets up the management.

Now, from here, we’re going to take it, because this is about offshore wind and what goes on in the software, in the industry.

We’re now going to change over to Aundrey, who is the completions manager for Kiewit. He’s the one that’s in charge of pretty much the day to day, if you will.

So Aundrey, I don’t see you if you could come back on camera.

 

Aundrey Owens:
Yep. I’m here.

 

Scott Kirshe:
There you go, sir. So Aundrey, just tell us a little bit about what you do there.

 

Aundrey Owens: 
Hi. Good morning, everyone. So I am the completion manager for Kiewit. I’ve been with Kiewit for about a year, but I’ve been doing completions in some capacity for about the last 15 years.

So, what I do, is all that information that Zach was talking about, and getting all that information into the database, I’m the one collecting that information and getting it into the database and getting it to be usable information for tracking and system turnover and just completion in general.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Gotcha. Okay. And, obviously, from Zach and all the different packages that are put together, you’ve now got the checklist. What kind of information are you sharing with your team? Do you have dashboards? Do you have reports?

 

Aundrey Owens:
Yeah, so we have some reports that we can share now. And what you can see, if it will-

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Yep. We see it.

 

Aundrey Owens:
There we go.

All right, so this is one of our systems completions dashboards. So you can get a lot of information just off of this one report. So you can get your percentage of checklist complete. You can get how many systems are turned over. Your punch list. What percentage you are on those subsystems, as well.

So, once you get to a hundred percent on a subsystem, for, let’s say A-sheets, which are your construction checklist, now we can go ahead and get that over to commissioning, sign it over, so that they can start their pre-commissioning, and that lets them know that everything is complete. It’s safe to move on.

And then, once that’s done, you do the same thing to get over to your commissioning, and then to the client.

But there’s a trove of information on just this one report that you can see at a glance and share with the client, with management, with whoever, to review, basically, how the project is progressing, in general.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Well, that brings up, in the very beginning, transparency.

 

Aundrey Owens:
That’s right.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
When I was at the IPF show, one of the things I learned very, very early is transparency is key to this industry. Would you agree?

 

Aundrey Owens:
100%. And that is one of the biggest things it. You can make this stuff accessible through just through a dashboard that anybody can go get. There’s no cooking the books. We can’t go in and manually change this information and without it being done. So yes, that transparency is very important.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
And Scott, I think we had previous discussions on this, of my 30 years, more than half of it has been in the client role. And on multiple projects, it’s on a weekly basis, or on a daily basis, you’re looking for your contractor to make sure that one, they’re being transparent and they’re giving you the truth on a daily basis. And it’s trying to get that visual correspondence on a daily basis.

Here, with InEight, and the way that we’ve set it up with Power BI, is that we are a hundred percent transparent in how we show our management team the program.

But also, we give this to the client, as well. So they can, at any time during the day, they can look at the dashboard and see where we are on a daily basis, how much we have completed, how much we’re still to go, and what are our key focuses to try and achieve some of our target dates.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Interesting. Again, transparency in this industry, because of what Mike Murphy said, up in the very beginning, literally, with challenges with supply chain, and I think it’s key that everybody be on the same page. And unlike the heavy highway industry and the building industry, I think this aspect of transparency is more important than any other industry, quite honestly, because there’s so much riding, there’s so much money. There’s so many different eyes on the ball, if you will, as you know, Zach had brought out the ball in court.

What else are you getting from the system, quite honestly, Aundrey, that you could share?

 

Aundrey Owens:
So, yeah, another thing that we use, another report, it’s a skyline report, system skyline report.

So, any dates that are attached to these subsystems, we can at a glance, see, okay, coming up, we have these many subsystems that should be ready for turnover. And that helps with planning.

Sometimes you can look at this and say, “Hey, we might be trying to do too much here during this week to safely do it. Maybe we need to move some dates and see if we can make the project run smoother.”

 

Scott Kirshe:
And, again, this is something that you share? Or is this primarily just for your internal stuff?

 

Aundrey Owens:
This is something that we share. It gives everybody eyes on to know this is what’s coming up and this is how we’re planning to do our work. And this is the order we’re trying to turn this stuff over.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Super.

 

Brad Barth:
All great.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Complexity.

 

Brad Barth: 
Sorry, Scott. Just one thing that strikes me as I listen to you describe how you do this and the transparency that you have, we’ve heard from a lot of folks, including you guys, around… Compared to doing things in a spreadsheet, where there is always this sense that people might be messing with the numbers, let’s say, or making the things look good, as opposed to a system that affects a business process or enforces a business process.

And there’s something about that, when you’re showing it in a system with dashboards, that just instills that confidence in everybody that’s looking at the information.

Would you agree with that, compared to how things used to be done in spreadsheets?

 

Aundrey Owens:
Yes. It’s exactly what we were saying. If it’s in a spreadsheet, there’s always that that chance of mistakes. There’s a chance of, like I said, cooking the numbers or something like that.

But when it’s coming directly out of the InEight Completions database, then you know that it’s as accurate as it can be, but also it makes it easier for everyone.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
One of the key things as well, Scott, is that when we put this dashboard together, every project, no matter whether it’s an onshore or an offshore facility, oil and gas, or a substation, is that construction will always construct in an area designated construction wide. This tool then supports them.

When they get to 60, 70% of construction complete, and we transfer across to system and subsystem, is that they then have this tool to be able to understand the sequence and the scope of what that they need to do to be able to, as I say, begin with the end in mind, we know that we have to start this up, because there’s an absolute sequence in being able to go from the construction phase to that startup phase.

It’s partners me asking for my HV equipment, right at the very beginning, when I’m not ever going to touch them until I’m at the very end.

So I ask for my LV equipment, my utilities, that I can then start pre-commissioning, commissioning them. And that shows them the tool to be able to write, we need to focus on this. We don’t need to focus on the HV equipment until the very end. My GIS, my transformers, my shunt reactors. That is something later on.

And they focus on the smaller equipment to be able to support the controls because I need my controls before I can start up any sort of HV equipment.

So, that gives them a good tool to be able to work on, as well.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Super. Brad, any other questions?

 

Brad Barth: 

That’s great stuff.

 

Scott Kirshe:

[inaudible 00:46:11].

 

Brad Barth:

Yeah, let’s make sure we get all of our speakers to- [inaudible 00:46:14]

 

Scott Kirshe:

So, now we’re going to move based on our time. Appreciate that Iggy. And, obviously, Aundrey and Zach.

Just so everybody knows, Zach didn’t know who he was speaking, until two days ago.

Well done, gentlemen, appreciate it.

And now we’re going to move over to, all the way across the pond, to Scotland with Amanda Queen. Hi, Amanda.

 

Amanda Queen:
Hi. How are you?

 

Scott Kirshe:
Good. Good. Good.

I know Mitchell was supposed to take over here. We’re having some technical difficulties with Mitchell. So if you don’t mind, just tell us a little bit about yourself.

 

Amanda Queen:
Oh, sure. Of course. So I’m Amanda. I’m a document manager. I was laterally working with SSE as their document controller across the portfolio of on and offshore projects, and as well as hydro and thermal. Busy job. Busy job.

Predominantly with Seagreen project, which is one of the largest offshore wind farms that are been developed in Scotland just now, with its extensions of Seagreen 1A and Marr and Berwick Bank, as well.

So, yeah, I was there for a long time, doing all this job.

And SSE moved at a phenomenal pace with regards to building of offshore wind farms. And, as we know, we can take a long time into going through the consenting phase, and get your planning and all the rest of it in. But as soon as you go into your feet and then hit construction, it accelerates at a speed of knots.

And you’re putting these farms up in the space of a couple of years.

So in all that, there’s a lot of documentation running around, masses and masses and masses. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, as you can imagine.

And, laterally, people were doing this on spreadsheets. So, as you guys have all spoke about, spreadsheets is not the way to go, when you’re trying to manage thousands of documentation.

We balanced it out, that for, as a minimum, for every turbine that you build, there is a hundred documents that get handed over with every single turbine.

Now that’s 1,500 documents that have been through for 150 turbines, that may have been through three iterations, if not more, coming through the feed, the pre-feed, the feed, and all the rest of it.

Then add all your other components in. So we reckon we can get approached, we can be handling over a 150,000 documents on a project.

 

Scott Kirshe:
That’s all?

 

Amanda Queen:
Yeah, that’s a lot of documents. That’s a lot of iterations of a document. Let me tell you. That’s a lot for us to juggle in our little hands.

 

Scott Kirshe:
And one of the things I wanted to bring up, Amanda, was, with the Kiewit group, we were dealing with completions.

Now we’re moving over to the other side of the fence, if you will, is document control. I just want to make sure everybody was aware of that before we continue on.

Talk to me about your process of evaluation. How did you evaluate the software, back in the day, before you made your choice? What were some of the things that was your requirements and how you made your choices?

 

Amanda Queen:
Okay. So I was very fortunate that I had came, again, just like Iggy, I had additionally came from an oil and gas background, which is a really… They’re such sticklers and they’ve really got good processes in oil and gas.

But moving into wind, there’s nothing there. There is absolutely nothing on the market at all.

So I knew what I wanted my team to have, but I didn’t need as much as oil and gas had.

So document controllers I had in my team were dynamic. Lots of years experience and knew the processes from beginning to end, and we knew what the engineers would want. Even they didn’t know what they wanted, but we knew what they wanted, at the end, so we could guide that.

So what we could do, we built the requirements and we said, “guys, this is what you’re going to need.”

The biggest challenge for me was to go from the end to end process.

So, for example, SSE, don’t just build and construct. They’re actually an operator. So I had to make sure that, whatever we were doing, I could have a single source of truth for that document, from its conception through to end.

And also we’re having there, as we’ve all spoke about, accountability and responsibility. So with one of the major things, for us, was that audit trail of who looked at that document, who touched that document, and who signed off in that document, which gave it the ultimate responsibility for that person.

One of the things about that, having the accountability, is it slowed, it can be considered that a review and approval process, where a document was slowed down, but it wasn’t because the people that were signing off in that document took their time to review it properly in its first iteration.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Ah-ha.,

 

Amanda Queen: 
And also-

 

Scott Kirshe: 
So that- [inaudible 00:51:28].

 

Amanda Queen: 
… Accountability-

 

Scott Kirshe:
[inaudible 00:51:28]

 

Amanda Queen:
Yeah. Whereas before you go, “Yeah, it’s reviewed I’ve done it. No bother.” There’s no accountability there.

So, that was one of our big things. Projects, the security of it, the user, the ease of using it for the user, and the integration with the contractors and, subsequently, the subcontractors, all being able to use the system, so we could develop that single source of truth.

So, that’s what our requirements were.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Gotcha. Okay. What were some of the challenges that you were looking to solve?

 

Amanda Queen: 
Buy-in.

 

Scott Kirshe:
You can buy software, but you can’t lead a horse to drink that water.

 

Amanda Queen:
You cannot. And you guys are all engineers out there, you are sticklers for process and you don’t like to change.

So my biggest challenge was having a quick win. So my quick win was to show them how the review and approval process worked and how easy it was for them to go to their screen, go to their dashboard, and see the documents that they had to review, the time that they had left to review it, when they were over review, and how we would then hound them with notification to say, “Get that document reviewed, because you’re slowing everybody else down here.” So, that quick one was essential for us.

Then, when they started to see, “Oh, I can see what’s coming up. Oh, I can see when it’s going to impact in the program, if we’re not going to get the documents in time,” these were great things for us.

And because we could do that really quickly, we got the buy-in quite quickly from our team. If we didn’t get them, we’d have still been struggling today with pen and paper.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Wow. You guys have tied up. Brad, were you going to ask something?

 

Brad Barth:
Yeah. I was just going to… So, Amanda, the nature of this type of work, where you’ve got all these different people, as you said, tens of thousands of documents. I suspect that maybe part of that quick win you got, or the buy-in, was the ability for people to participate in these workflows, or participate in these reviews, from anywhere- With a mobile phone, from sitting in-

 

Amanda Queen:
Absolutely.

 

Brad Barth:
… A kiosk. I don’t have to be at my desk, logged into the corporate network. I can really, from anywhere, anytime, as the saying goes, I can participate in this process.

Was a big factor? Was that helpful to get people to buy into this?

 

Amanda Queen:
Absolutely. The fact that they could get it at their fingertips, 24/7, that’s key. They’d be on a ship, they’d be [inaudible 00:54:00] buying. They could be anywhere. There was no excuse for them not to do the reviews and approvals and to move these documents on. Yeah, definitely a big bonus.

 

Brad Barth: 
I like that phrase, “No excuse.” And that’s part of that accountability, that a system which enforces a business process drives that accountability.

 

Amanda Queen: 
Yeah. It’s a hard role. A document controller is one of these roles that everybody hates. We’re like wasps at picnics. Wasps are essential, but at picnics, we don’t want you.

But if you buy into the process, it moves really quickly. And the benefits coming back to you guys is massive.

And we’ve seen that time after time, going, “Well, I can’t find this document,” we’ll go show you that it’s there. There’s a history of it. “Oh, fantastic. I see what happened,” how we got to this part of the design from here.

But the ease of use, for the guys, was massive. Log in. See what they’ve got to do. Review the document. Job done.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Super.

 

Brad Barth: 
[inaudible 00:54:57].

 

Scott Kirshe:
Sorry, Brad. Got a question from one of our viewers here. How big a document control team did you have for your off wind, offshore wind? Has the number of individuals changed, based on the system you use? Good question.

 

Amanda Queen:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

So I think Beatrice Wind Farm was, let’s say 120 turbines. They had about eight to 10 document controllers on that project, working on all sorts of different spreadsheets, all sorts of different systems. Within InEight, in Seagreen, we had three. One for each package. Marine, electrical, and turbine. That’s it. Three.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
That’s it. Three people?

 

Amanda Queen: 
Three people running that.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
That’s one of the things that surprised me, from the IPF show, is that these are mega projects, as Ziggy and Zach and everybody has called them, and Mike. They’re massive, but the people that are managing the documents, there’s not that many people. And that’s a lot of information to put through three people.

 

Amanda Queen: 
Yeah. It’s only because we could build the system to do all of our workflows automated. And also all the information we were getting returned from the system was dynamic. It was there. It was live. It was there. They could see it 24/7.

They could automate the reports out. They didn’t have to wait on us. There was no waiting on document control, doing anything. We were there, if you weren’t monitoring the system, QA checking the documents and making sure. But we were just being bossy, really. Come on, get it through. Hurry yourself up.

But yeah, from 10 document controllers, working all different spreadsheets, down to three.

 

Scott Kirshe:
That’s super. That’s- [inaudible 00:56:40]

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Scott, I’d like-

 

Scott Kirshe:
You guided it? Go ahead, bro.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
So Amanda, we’ve got four different companies working with us. We’ve got the client, we’ve got two engineering companies, and then we’ve got Hewitt doing the construction and commissioning.

When, and we’ve got multiple people, multiple companies, producing procedures, et cetera. Did you have that interface with SSE, where you’ve got a number of different clients who are all trying to work in the same system, review, and progress documents through InEight? And how did that work?

 

Amanda Queen:
Yes, we did. SSE were the client and we worked with all the contractors, but the contractors were working with their subcontractors and we were all in one system.

And the security module, that InEight provides, allows you to do that. So we could have our workflows running and they could have their workflows running. And because you could… I just say, “Click change on the hoof.” We could set our workflows up to be automated, but we could also go in and very quickly change out who we wanted to review a document.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…:
Okay, perfect.

 

Amanda Queen:
But your permission modules are is the one that once it’s set up, it’s pretty good to go.

 

Scott Kirshe:
Super. Okay. All right.

Look at that. Right at 11. That’s incredible. Well done everybody.

As we end this session, if there’s any more questions, throw them out to us very quickly.

Just before I let everybody off the hook here, thanks for joining us. We will have another one of these, in probably three months, the September timeframe.

Please go in and give the information for your swag kit that we’re sending you. And also the Nike shoe experience, where we’re going to wrap a pair of Nike sneakers, whatever kind of design you want there, the take your time, fill it out. If you need the link, let us know.

And, that everybody, this is an open session. So again, I appreciate everybody’s input. The questions on the side, the people that joined us, and my hat’s off to obviously Amanda, Aundrey, Zach, Iggy, and Mike. Really appreciate your time. I know you put a lot of effort into this. Brad, any last comments, sir?

 

Brad Barth: 
I just want to thank you, Scott, for organizing this, putting this together, and pulling this great list of speakers together. I really enjoyed it, loved hearing from this group. So, great stuff.

 

Scott Kirshe: 
Super. All right, everybody. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Appreciate it everybody.

 

Ignatius “Iggy”…: 
Thank you. Take care.

 

Amanda Queen: 
Thank you. Bye-bye.

Show full transcription

REQUEST A DEMO

Thanks for contacting us. A member of our team will follow up with you shortly.