The process industry is under intense pressure to maximize efficiency. Whether building new facilities or modifying existing facilities, the desire is to get the facility up and running as quickly as possible.

In this paper, we examine ways of accelerating capital investment project schedules. We know that using overtime, shift work, and other costly, high-risk methods can accelerate project execution schedules. We wanted to ascertain whether projects can achieve fast schedules without using one of these high risk methods. The results of our research show that it is possible to accelerate the execution of capital projects without incurring excessive risk or additional cost.

Using statistical techniques, this study of data from several hundred recently constructed projects from across the chemical process industries demonstrates that significant savings can be realized in execution schedules with low risk and little or no cost penalty. The secret is to return to project management basics—clear objectives, all stakeholders on-board, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, good basic design definition, and detailed planning.

This study shows that those projects that use project management Best Practices have execution schedules that are significantly faster than the schedules of those projects that did not involve Best Practices.