IBC 2025 Features New Research on Engineering Quality, Effective Resource Deployment, Project Controls, and More!

The 2025 annual meeting of the Industry Benchmarking Consortium (IBC 2025) will be held exclusively for members at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Virginia, from March 17 to 19, 2025. 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 2025 agenda features a keynote speech by IPA President & CEO Nekkhil Mishra, new industry research study presentations, industrial sector breakout sessions, and project performance competitiveness briefings for large and site and sustaining capital projects. Attendees will also have 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 to be delivered at IBC 2025.

Achieving Project Controls Excellence

Decades after creating the Project Control Index (PCI), IPA is providing an update to better define what makes good project controls so beneficial. This study covers project controls practices across the industry and their effect on project outcomes, focusing on resource utilization, estimate validation, and progress measurement Best Practices. At the conclusion of this session, IPA will present the new Project Control Index and provide recommendations on how to use this study to strengthen project controls effectiveness.

Commercializing New Technology

After two decades of a steady decline in innovation, new technology is back at the forefront for IBC companies. 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? In this study, we revisit old lessons about how to commercialize new technology successfully and find some new ones in the data as well.

Fundamentals: A Diagnostic Study of Engineering Quality

IPA clients have struggled with engineering quality on their projects for many years. This study analyzed engineering design quality issues, major late changes, and engineering slip to describe the current state of the industry and how these factors affect typical project outcomes. This research will illustrate broad trends and provide specific insights—part of the study looks at the most common design quality issues and major late changes that projects face in execution. These buckets will allow companies to target key issues on future projects. Finally, this study will provide recommendations for actions owner companies can take to mitigate and reduce these engineering quality struggles, both in FEL and execution.

Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) Step Forward

IPA will be initiating research on the effect of AWP practices on project performance (cost and benefits). IPA has partnered with CII and Insight-AWP to propose an industry standard metric that describes the degree of AWP implementation at the project level. In this session, we are seeking owner input and confirmation on what detectable activities take place (over and above good FEL) when using AWP practices. Participants should include those members of the IBC delegation most familiar with AWP practices or future AWP implementation efforts.

Owner Construction Manager

The owner construction manager oversees a large part of a capital project. However, over the last few decades, many owners have outsourced construction management to EPC/EPCm contractors and, as a result, have lost much of their “hands-on” construction management capabilities. 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 looks at the value of staffing the owner core team with an owner construction manager early in FEL. We interviewed clients about the owner construction manager’s role and value they bring to every project stage. As part of the interviews, we also discussed the current market for hiring construction managers. The objective is to provide IBC member companies with an industry perspective on the role of the owner construction manager as they evaluate their capabilities in delivering effective capital projects.

Introducing the Constructability Review Implementation Metric

IBC sponsored three studies evaluating how Industry implements Constructability Reviews during FEL. These studies measured the benefits of Constructability Reviews and identified Best Practices that contribute to more effective results. In this presentation, IPA will introduce a modified method for measuring how project teams apply this key Value Improving Practice. IPA will begin to report and benchmark Constructability Reviews using this updated metric. In addition, we are including a document that outlines Best Practices for Constructability Reviews as part of the handouts for IBC 2025.

The Role of the Project Management Office in Site Projects

IPA has long recognized the different ways sites use central resources and different ways central project groups engage with sites. This study will attempt to define the degrees of centralization and trade-offs inherent in different approaches. We will investigate where central and site organizations should come together to optimize resources—in terms of personnel and tools/processes—to deliver more successful projects across the project organization. Clients routinely ask what centralization for processes, tools, and resources looks like and what top performers do. Most client questions we receive focus on the source of various project services functions: controls, scheduling, and estimating. This study will attempt to answer which (if any) of these specific functions, tools, and processes should be centrally supplied; where central involvement should augment site resources and tools; and how to best administer and manage associated processes.

Effective Resource Deployment

One of the biggest challenges capital project systems face today is how to effectively allocate project resources across their portfolios. Owners are short on experienced resources, and contractors have experienced similar competency declines. The purpose of this study is to arm project system leaders with actions they can take to strategically deploy resources across the project portfolio. This study identifies leveraging characteristics, such as experience levels and owner representation, that drive better performance across five key project functions: Project Manager, Engineering Lead, Construction Manager, Controls Lead, and Cost Estimator. The findings will support owners in thinking strategically about where to assign project personnel based on portfolio characteristics.

Additional Topics

IBC 2025 will also feature industry sector breakouts and focused sessions on the following topics:

• Site and Sustaining Capital Metrics and Trends
• Finding Opportunities to Improve Site-Based Projects in Refining
• Risk Analysis and Mitigation Strategies for Chemicals and Consumer Products Projects
• Lessons Learned from Brownfield Minerals and Metals Projects
• Assessing Owner Change Capability
• IPA’s Bi-annual Market Trend Survey
• On-site demos of the CEC Validator and Site Portfolio Tool software applications

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.

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