Accelerating infrastructure projects

What opportunities do you see for accelerating infrastructure projects?

Martin Zündorf: There are various ways of accelerating infrastructure projects. In certain circumstances, legal frameworks can help to shorten planning and approval procedures. Since speed is a top priority when it comes to expanding our energy infrastructure, a rapid and risk-free production and installation phase should be considered at an early stage and coordinated with key supply chain partners. Another factor that has played a major role in the recent past is a collaborative environment and absolute transparency among parties involved in order to identify and eliminate hidden obstacles and incorrect dependencies in the construction processes at an early stage.

How can an early construction start be achieved?

How can companies realise the potential of project acceleration?

Zündorf: It is important to establish and maintain stable communication between all parties involved, both public and private, especially in the early phase of a project. An iterative process can lead to much faster progress in planning, approval and construction than traditional sequential steps. Within the project organisation, interactive planning workshops with key stakeholders from different departments are an important planning and management method for optimising the project schedule. They enable an interdisciplinary schedule planning of the scope of work, they help to identify key milestones and interface activities, and help to validate performance indices as well as logical order/sequence of work. Forward and backward planning considerations can be used to determine options for acceleration. In the execution phase, it’s essential to integrate and consolidate management information to jointly carry out critical risk and schedule  assessments in order to set overall project priorities.