A Proper Systems Integration Planning, Solusi Penting Proyek EPC

Telah banyak penelitian yang membahas problem yang dihadapi dalam pelaksanaan proyek EPC yang berdampak pada cost overrun dan time overrun. Bervariasinya jenis proyek EPC juga memberikan faktor penyebab yang berbeda-beda. Namun satu jawaban penting yang menjawab semuanya adalah A Proper Systems Integration Planning.

Berhari-hari penulis mencari jawaban yang paling tepat atas permasalahan pelaksanaan proyek EPC akhirnya terhenti pada suatu artikel yang sebenarnya bukanlah artikel ilmiah. “How To Avoid Complications When Delivering an EPC Project” tulisan Peter Wyss memberikan jawaban yang cukup memuaskan jika dikaitkan dengan pengalaman mengerjakan poyek EPC. Berikut cuplikan penting artikel tersebut dalam point-point pentingnya:

• Usually, a large scale EPC project is executed by a consortium of multinational companies and sub-contractors. The company on top or the consortium leader usually has the function to provide the integration of the individual components or sub-systems into the final operational system. This is part of the Engineering in an EPC project and requires a system view and a different mindset.
• The requirement here includes a strong and experienced systems engineer with a lot of soft skills, because a lot of great communication and people skills are required to get the individual contractors talking to each other to solve the technical interfaces to ensure that the application will be operational at the end of the project. Ideally, this systems integration should already happen during the design phase when each party is preparing the detail design and the interfaces have been defined. However, it does not happen too often. It sometimes postponed to a later date and the risks of interfaces not working during the final stage in the project is quite common.
• Several impacts on the project: (1) Delays can happen due to delivery lead times, design and engineering mistakes, language or cultural issues in an international team, (2) That the interfaces are not clear yet but everybody seems busy in the project and no time to look at interfaces and systems integration, the project incurs a potential delay without visibility to the individual project manager, (3) Highlighting the issues, some engineers or PM’s may see the potential delays, but there is a certain level of denial to raise the topic and ring the alarm bell to turnaround the project. There is no follow up because it seems not urgent (yet) or the project stakeholders do not understand the need of system integration due to lack of experience or lack of systems view, (4) Since the system integration is an integral part of the project and usually it takes a lot of time for testing and commissioning of the complete system after each component is functional tested, but the complete system is not properly integrated, respectively visualised to plan the testing and commissioning, a huge delay can be expected for the completion of the project, (5) Of course, a system that doesn’t crane work will cause a huge punch list which needs to be cleared before the commissioning and remedial work even after the commissioning is expected to clear all the remaining issues.
• All the above mentioned impact the project, mainly the timeline, and has an additional effect on the cost. To avoid all that, or at least most of it, a proper systems integration planning needs to be established to take care of all these issues early enough to avoid delays and rocketing costs in the completion of the project.

A Proper integration system planning adalah salah satu jawaban yang terpenting dalam mengatasi berbagai permasalahan yang terjadi pada pelaksanaan proyek EPC disamping permasalahan manajemen proyek. Maksudnya tidak hanya melakukan perencanaan secara individual, tapi harus mengintegarasikannya dalam satu kesatuan perencanaan system.

Kontraktor EPC Indonesia harus mampu untuk mengembangkan perencanaan terpadu ini untuk meningkatkan kinerja dan daya saing dalam menghadapi pasar bebas. Disebutkan bahwa dibutuhkan engineer system yang kuat dan berpengalaman serta memiliki banyak soft skills untuk mengintegrasikan system yang ada pada proyek EPC. Akhirnya SDM yang berkualitas adalah salah satu penentu dari keberhasilan pelaksanaan proyek EPC.

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