Ability to Influence Capital Cost at Various Project Phases
When our clients ask us what is the most important thing they can do to ensure a successful project, our answer is always the same – spend the time to and effort required to do quality preliminary development work! This includes baseline studies to characterize the development site, resource assessment studies to determine what the available resource actually is and finally, a thorough review of design alternatives (often called “value engineering”) to determine the optimum facility configuration and design details for the chosen site.
Provided there are no other unusual events that affect your project, doing this homework will always result in the lowest capital cost and best overall operability. The effect of this can be seen in the above graph from Max Wideman’s book: “Cost Control for Capital Projects”.
Feel free to contact us any time to discuss further how to lay down this critical foundation and ensure your project is a success!