The Problem
In an effort to meet a milestone in its improvement plan, a multinational petrochemical company sought the IPA Institute’s expertise to revise its capital stewardship internal training materials and program for its business leadership group. Emphasis was needed on telling client project personnel what role they play in increasing business value when they follow a gated process to select and execute the right capital investment opportunities. The client also wanted to describe the concept of project governance and its part in improving capital stewardship. The advantages of implementing a stage-gated project development process also needed to be integrated into the course.
IPA’s Solution
The IPA Institute prepared and administered a 1-day seminar for the company’s senior management. The seminar focused on increasing managers’ understanding of their role in the company’s stage-gated process for E&P projects. Also discussed were tactics for increasing capital stewardship awareness by examining opportunity selection and project execution practices.
IPA Institute staff coordinated with the client to design a half-day course the client can deliver as needed with or without IPA instructors on site. The course covers the following topics, with course materials and exercises designed to facilitate active group discussions:
- Primary elements of capital stewardship
- Reviewing and identifying key phases of the client’s project delivery process
- Explanation of the key roles and responsibilities of each major project governance function
- How IPA views the FEL process and how IPA’s FEL Index is used to measure stage-gate discipline (delivered with an IPA Institute instructor to provide input based on existing capital project governance course catalog materials)
Examples of client projects evaluated by IPA to demonstrate how Best Practices drive better project outcomes and to provide a clear indication of how well the company was adhering to their own process were part of the deliverable too.
Delivery and Client Use of the Results
The client met its internal improvement plan milestone and now has an updated capital stewardship training program for business leadership to use as needed. This program meets the overall goal of helping business leadership not only do the right project(s) in its capital projects portfolio but also do the project(s) the right way.