Leading Complex Projects

CHAPTER 9JAY SEXTON

Clarity of Vision, Clarity Through Action, Staffing for Success

“In general, I like to keep driving.”

The following scenario is all too common in the oil and gas industry: an offshore platform is being fabricated in a yard, and the owner has people in the yard acting as eyes and ears, as thousands of workers scramble around the emerging ship, when out of the blue the fabricator announces that the vessel will be six months late to completion. Anyone familiar with offshore industry now knows that this project is in a world of trouble. Either the vessel will leave the yard with six months of work yet to be done, which will cost at least five times more to complete at sea than in the yard, or the sail-away date is slipped with a severe penalty to the project's cost. Depending on availabilities in other parts of the supply chain, the project will now be 6 to as much as 12 months late. Jay Sexton simply was not willing to accept such an outcome without exhausting every possibility first.

Our project leader, upon discovery of this schedule slippage, got directly involved and started going to the fabrication yard every week. For the first few weeks, he held daily and weekly meetings with every one of the disciplines working in the yard on his project. His purpose, as he explained it, “was to self-understand how the disciplines planned to do the work. Since I don't know how they do the work and since I don't know how this yard's process and procedures work, I can't ...