Project Execution

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Ardent employs a four-pronged approach to project success, leveraging electronic and paper-based tools to develop, maintain and achieve long-term, medium-term and short-term schedule objectives safely.

 

Planning for Safety - Safety is not a random result. Safety must be engineered into the plan and into each task. Ardent craft and supervisors are all empowered to stop the work. But more importantly, they are empowered to make the work safer. Observation is easy. Planning for safety is hard. It is involved. It takes experience and it takes commitment.

 

Long Term Planning - Ardent employs Critical Path Method (CPM) scheduling on all schedule critical and large scale projects. A well-constructed CPM schedule is an invaluable tool on long term or mission critical projects. CPM schedules are developed by our site manager or superintendent with input and guidance from the general contractor, the client and Ardent off-site management. Ardent employs Primavera and Microsoft software products for both internal and integrated scheduling needs.

 

Medium-Term Planning - Ardent employs four-week look-aheads to enable medium term success. The four-week look-ahead plan examines work at a level of detail generally not achievable in the standard integrated electronic schedule. While the CPM schedule may include an activity for Cable Tray, the four-week look-ahead provides greater resolution and greater detail, and may indicate Cable Tray in Unit Two West of Column A. Four-week look-ahead plans require Foremen and senior craft supervisors to analyze and prepare for the work of the coming four weeks. Four-week look-ahead plans are prompted by the overall electronic schedule but are completed in the field by field supervisors and are filled out by hand. In producing his or her four-week look-ahead, each supervisor must consider the tools, materials, craft, equipment, information and safety resources required to complete the work during the four weeks looking ahead. The supervisor must also include any foreseeable constraints to getting the work accomplished in the four week window, whether it would be Ardent controlled constraints or outside constraints. While project dynamics rarely allow supervisors to work the plan precisely as planned, the four-week look-ahead provides assurance that field supervisors have examined the work, prepared for its execution, and have received all necessary materials, information and safety items well in advance of commencing the work.

 

Short-Term Planning - Ardent advocates and encourages daily multi-disciplined craft coordination meetings for our widespread workforce. Ardent employs industrial electricians offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, in the San Joaquin Valley north of Bakersfield, in North Dakota, Kentucky, and West Texas and throughout industrial and petrochemical facilities in Los Angeles, Houston, and New Orleans. Regardless of the project or mission, Ardent employees are often dependent on the efforts of others to enable electrical and instrumentation work to commence. Our clients are dependent on Ardent completing its work in order to commission and start-up facilities or units. Ardent supports daily multi-disciplined craft coordination meetings because they are effective. They work! The craft coordination meetings provide the opportunity for all disciplines assigned to the project to discuss tomorrow's work plans and better enable pipe fitters, electricians and painters to stay out of one another's way. While both the CPM schedule and the four-week look-ahead accomplish this task with schedule logic and with foresight, the daily multi-craft coordination meetings accomplish the same with energy and exactitude. Daily multi-disciplined craft coordination meetings cannot replace long-term planning, but they can dramatically improve tomorrow's productivity.