Future built on talent, creativity and innovation

The future for pow­er port­fo­lios world­wide is as excit­ing as it is chal­leng­ing. Glob­al spend on cap­i­tal projects and infra­struc­ture to 2025 is fore­cast to hit £78 tril­lion, with UK fig­ures alone set to rise by a stag­ger­ing 51 per cent.

In order to cre­ate val­ue and secure these projects, the UK must ensure that it has the envi­ron­ment that deliv­ers:

• Pro­gramme assur­ance across projects; plus

• Pre­dictabil­i­ty and val­ue for mon­ey.

The fac­tors dri­ving enhanced per­for­mance across projects in the ener­gy sec­tor are not, how­ev­er, restrict­ed to tra­di­tion­al areas of con­cern for busi­ness man­age­ment, such as risk and cost. The indus­try of tomor­row must also be one that:

• Com­petes for tal­ent in a glob­al mar­ket­place in the STEM dis­ci­plines (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics);

• Cre­ates, fos­ters, and even demands a cul­ture of cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion.

“Con­struc­tion is a bor­der­less indus­try with resources mov­ing glob­al­ly across pro¬gramme net­works. If we are to deliv­er the future in¬frastructure plan, the com­pe­ti­tion for tal­ent must remain a pri­or­i­ty for the UK,” says Nigel Cur­ry, chief exec­u­tive of lead­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­gramme man­age­ment and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices con­sul­tan­cy Rhead Group.

“Tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion are essen­tial require­ments in help­ing to deliv­er the next gen­er­a­tion of pro­grammes with greater assur­ance and pre­dictabil­i­ty.

“At Rhead Group, we have invest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in attract­ing and retain­ing the best indus­try tal­ent across the ener­gy, pow­er, defence and infra­struc­ture sec­tors, which has sup­port­ed a high lev­el of client reten­tion and expan­sion. Since our for­ma­tion 29 years ago, we have retained our entre­pre­neur­ial agili­ty cou­pled with an increas­ing strength in depth and breadth to sup­port some of the most chal­leng­ing con­struc­tion pro­grammes across the globe.”

As a cat­e­go­ry win­ner of the Ernst and Young Award for Mid­lands Entre­pre­neur of the Year 2014, Mr Cur­ry is in the van­guard of project con­sul­tan­cy pro­fes­sion­als help­ing to dri­ve the busi­ness agen­da for­ward. The suc­cess of Rhead Group in respond­ing to cur­rent mar­ket trends has also been for­mal­ly acknowl­edged, with receipt of the pres­ti­gious Queens Award for Enter­prise: Inter­na­tion­al Trade, in 2014, in recog­ni­tion of an increase in glob­al busi­ness of 20 per cent.

At Rhead Group, we have invest­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in attract­ing and retain­ing the best indus­try tal­ent across the ener­gy, pow­er, defence and infra­struc­ture sec­tors

At Rhead Group, it is this under­stand­ing of the indus­try-wide need to pri­ori­tise devel­op­ment of tal­ent, cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion that has brought for­ward such mar­ket-lead­ing ini­tia­tives as the first car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) project in the UAE, Nation­al Grid Build­ing Infor­ma­tion Mod­el­ling (BIM) Bank, plus a port­fo­lio of tal­ent and train­ing ini­tia­tives.

CCS FIRST FOR THE UAE

The Abu Dhabi branch of Rhead Group was appoint­ed by Abu Dhabi Future Ener­gy Com­pa­ny PJSC – Mas­dar in May 2012 to pro­vide project man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for its region­al­ly pio­neer­ing car­bon cap­ture and stor­age project.

Cap­tur­ing CO2 for util­i­sa­tion on an Abu Dhabi oil field for enhanced oil recov­ery, the project is being deliv­ered under an Abu Dhabi Nation­al Oil Com­pa­ny and Mas­dar joint ven­ture, and com­pris­es three main ele­ments: a car­bon cap­ture com­pres­sion and dehy­dra­tion facil­i­ty; a 43km pipeline and asso­ci­at­ed above-ground instal­la­tions; and a receiv­ing and trans­fer sta­tion to the rein­jec­tion clus­ter.

The CO2 is a man­u­fac­tur­ing by-prod­uct from the Emi­rates Steel Indus­tries Plant in Mus­safah and, once com­plete, the project will cap­ture up to 800,000 tonnes of car­bon diox­ide gas each year.

NATIONAL GRID BIM BANK

Nation­al Grid’s Build­ing Infor­ma­tion Mod­el­ling Bank, devel­oped by Rhead Group, will be a free online, Share­Point repos­i­to­ry of 3D and intel­li­gent 3D mod­els of per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary works for use by the trans­mis­sion sup­ply chain.

Using Net­work Inno­va­tion Allowance fund­ing, the project is chal­leng­ing the cur­rent approach of “solu­tion mode engi­neer­ing”. Too often the jump is made into mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, civ­il, con­trol, instru­men­ta­tion and cathod­ic pro­tec­tion detail, with con­sid­er­a­tions of cost, time and car­bon only com­ing at the back-end of the design, too late for fun­da­men­tal changes.

By peg­ging cost and car­bon data to the 3D mod­els, it should be the design­ers who are able to make informed eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal deci­sions from the very start. The pri­ma­ry objec­tive of the BIM Bank is to allow project spon­sors and teams to achieve more con­sis­tent, pre­dictable out­comes, at low­er cost and car­bon, with increased stake­hold­er sat­is­fac­tion.

TALENT AND TRAINING INITIATIVES

Rhead Group is pio­neer­ing a host of tal­ent and train­ing ini­tia­tives, in addi­tion to grad­u­ate, man­age­ment and lead­er­ship pro­grammes, includ­ing:

• Project Con­trols Acad­e­my, with Rhead writ­ing the offi­cial spec­i­fi­ca­tion for train­ing project con­trollers, togeth­er with the Engi­neer­ing Con­struc­tion Indus­try Train­ing Board;

• Rhead Group’s train­ing busi­ness, Con­struc­tion Study Cen­tre, has a wide range of cours­es to take del­e­gates from basic to advanced aware­ness;

• Rug­by Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion project man­age­ment aware­ness and train­ing, to give play­ers approach­ing the end of their on-field career an insight into oppor­tu­ni­ties, with many pro­fes­sion­al sports skills prov­ing trans­fer­able.

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FUTURE

These kinds of ground-break­ing schemes and imag­i­na­tive pro­grammes are going to prove vital to an ener­gy sec­tor equipped to pow­er the future, as Mr Cur­ry con­cludes: “A sus­tain­able ener­gy future is an absolute require­ment for the UK and pos­es an excit­ing chal­lenge for engi­neers and project pro­fes­sion­als. To deliv­er on that goal, the ener­gy sec­tor as a whole will need to bal­ance its port­fo­lio, con­sid­er­ing cost and afford­abil­i­ty, car­bon reduc­tion, and secu­ri­ty of sup­ply.

“Any strate­gic and sys­temic approach to this com­plex and evolv­ing chal­lenge is going to require con­fi­dence in deliv­er­ing pro­grammes with greater cer­tain­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty, while demon­strat­ing increas­ing lev­els of effi­cien­cy. This will require cre­ative minds and a col­lab­o­ra­tive style of work­ing, which chal­lenges norms and the tra­di­tion­al method of work­ing, while ben­e­fit­ting from advances in mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

“At Rhead Group, we recog­nise the impor­tance of this dynam­ic and have com­mit­ted a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment to fur­ther enhance our IT and dig­i­tal plat­form in addi­tion to our train­ing and devel­op­ment bud­get. This addi­tion­al invest­ment has already start­ed to ben­e­fit our clients and will con­tin­ue to sup­port our growth as a lead­ing inde­pen­dent pro­gramme man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy.”

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it www.rheadgroup.com

CCS FIRST FOR THE UAE

NATIONAL GRID BIM BANK

TALENT AND TRAINING INITIATIVES

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE ENERGY FUTURE