IBC 2024 Addresses Talent Management Challenges, New Technology Projects, Sustainability, and More

The 2024 annual meeting of the Industry Benchmarking Consortium (IBC 2024) was held at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Virginia, from March 18 to 20, 2024. The IBC’s objective is to drive continuous capital project system improvement for the world’s leading companies in the manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure industries. The IBC 2024 agenda featured a keynote speech by IPA President & CEO Ed Merrow, new industry research study presentations, industrial sector breakout sessions, and project performance competitiveness briefings for large and site and sustaining capital projects. Attendees had opportunities to network with and learn from their counterparts at other member companies.

Continue reading for summaries of some of the exclusive research studies and focused presentations delivered at IBC 2024.

The People Problem–Understanding Today’s Talent Management Challenges and Opportunities

In today’s highly competitive job market, owners are facing significant talent management challenges (i.e., “The People Problem”). Chief among these are getting competent and experienced project personnel for their project portfolios and developing junior talent. This study identified the most pressing people problems our clients are facing today—specifically around talent acquisition, talent development, and retention—and the strategies used to address those people problems.

Successful Commercialization of New Technology

Sustainability has generated the need for new technology but are companies ready to manage the risks associated with new technology and do they have the discipline to make new technology projects successful? This study revisited old lessons about how to commercialize new technology successfully and found some new ones in the data as well.

Capturing Value–CCUS and Hydrogen Projects

Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) and hydrogen manufacturing projects are becoming an important part of companies’ low-carbon agendas. This IBC session highlighted trends in cost and schedule performance of CCUS and H2 projects that IPA has evaluated recently, looking at how they vary by project characteristics and discussing key risks preventing more projects from reaching full funds authorization.

How to Incorporate Sustainability Into Capital Projects

Sustainability has become a major input to capital investment decision making, with engineering and project organizations playing a key role in those processes. This study summarized what companies are doing to enable sound business sustainability decision making and to manage sustainability risk. We identified the practices for success and the pitfalls companies are encountering as they deploy sustainability processes. Individuals can use the results to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their company’s effort and take steps for improvement.

Owner Construction Manager

Today’s changing contracting market, erosion of contractor capabilities, shifting demographics, and rebounding portfolios have forced owners to examine their construction management capabilities. This study examined the value of staffing the owner core team with an owner construction manager early in FEL and provides an industry perspective on the role of the owner construction manager as companies evaluate their capabilities in delivering effective capital projects.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Modularization

Modular projects don’t always meet the expectation of better cost and schedule for capital projects compared to stick-built projects. This study covered the differences between modular projects that are successful and those that are unsuccessful to better understand what practices and characteristics set projects up to achieve the desired outcomes.

Improvement in Site-Based Project Systems

This session focused on the factors that played a role in improving site-based project systems. We reviewed the practices used, lessons learned from prior Most Improved Sites at IBC, and existing IPA tools and their role in site-based project performance improvement. Live audience polling helped to bring participants’ experiences into the discussion.

Additional Topics

IBC 2024 also featured presentations on Project Governance, Undisciplined Authorization Practices, Minimizing Project Changes During Execution, and Maximizing Value From the Business and Engineering Alignment Meeting (BEAM).

About the IBC

The IBC is a voluntary association of owner firms in the chemical, petroleum, minerals processing, food and consumer products, life sciences, pulp and paper, and power and infrastructure industries that employ IPA’s quantitative benchmarking approach to improve the value from their capital project systems. Through benchmarkings of both large and site-based systems conducted by IPA, IBC member companies receive exclusive insights into how their capital project systems and project outcomes stack up against their industry peers with respect to safety, cost, schedule, and operational performance. Member companies agree to support the continuous improvement of their own capital processes through measuring and comparing performance metrics.