Time management challenges of major refurbishment projects : An analysis of 20 hydropower outages at Fortum

Abstract: While most western hydropower sites are already developed or protected by legislation, the aging hydropower park requires refurbishment actions. Especially to tackle the challenges of an increased fluctuation at the grid coming from the expansion of other renewable energy sources such as wind power. The company Fortum is carrying out a number of major refurbishment projects every year and want to enhance their time performance during the outage. Delayed projects are resulting in unexpected costs and production losses. By investigating 20 historical refurbishment outages from a project manager perspective, the delays are related to different sections of the outage time. These sections are referred to as work packages, meaning a set of activities related to a functional part of the plant. The material is based on interviews and project documentation. The outages are divided into three groups depending on the amount of delay and some additional set of factors are used in a comparison. The results are discussed from a time management and a multi-project perspective. The study can be viewed as an initial study to address time management challenges in a company. The methodology proves to be an efficient way to get time management challenges at a company to the surface. The results displays late manufacturing deliveries and overruns of assembly and erection durations as the most common reasons of delay. A number of potential success/failure factors are suggested. It is also pointed out that small projects are at risk being more delayed compared to larger ones.