Cost Certainty in Projects: Rider Hunt International has the Solution

Rider Hunt International (RHi) recently created a Project Services Centre for excellence with a vision to provide the greatest value to clients supported by the deployment of systems, cost data libraries, consulting services, and skilled personnel.

Their Integrated Solution approach gives RHi’s clients an advantage over their competitors in an increasingly digital and integrated world. As a result, key aspects of cost management can be delivered with significant timeline and cost savings as well as improving the quality, predictability, and reliability of project information.

Traditionally, cost management services involved large amounts of time and resource dedicated to:

• Manual transposing data from one set of documents to produce another set ofdocuments; data entry operations which add little value.
• Generating and managing paper deliverables
• Finding relevant historic information for use on new projects

Those processes resulted in unnecessary costs to clients and imposed higher risk due to the likelihood of human error in transposing or interpreting data. These risks are often compounded by the uncontrolled use of spreadsheets in the recording and analysis of data.

Today, oil and gas projects are designed and managed within the ‘data centric’ world. Paper based deliverables and the cost, time, and risks associated with them are becoming less desirable. Indeed, the emphasis is shifting towards the creation of value added through the efficient use of reliable information within a well structured and integrated environment.

RHi is at the forefront of this digital project information revolution. They consistently embrace the power of technology as a means for analysis, improvement, and innovation. The industry leading RHiComs delivers a unit rate contracts management system, that is recognised as the industry standard, for Oil & Gas Construction estimates, tendering, and benchmarking.

PEMS is a powerful budgeting, cost control and project controls tool which is used to manage cost on a diverse range of project types and sizes. At RHi, the Systems team comprises software developers, database and information management specialists to ensure that these applications remain at the leading edge providing huge advances in the underlying technology since their initial development.

Technical evolution now allows RHiComs and PEMS to function as central elements of a fully integrated system; or our advanced “Integrated Solution.” This approach allows RHiComs and PEMS to share common data as well as integrate digital project information from key external sources not limited to:

• Engineering design systems such as Aveva PDMS, Intergraph SmartPlant, Bentley AutoPlant/PlantSpace.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft
• Planning Schedule systems such as Primavera P6, Microsoft Project

Incorporating these data sets ensures that consistent and current information is reported to the client. RHi can re-use data provided by others without the need for resource intensive and expensive data entry processes. For instance, it can take an inordinate amount of man hours transposing data from hard copy or PDF Isometric drawings, to create the Bills of Quantities used to agree costs under a unit rate contract.

RHiComs, however, contains an automated measurement module that allows Bills of Quantities to be generated from the source data used to create the Isometric drawings; which significantly reduces the time and cost associated in taking-off quantities. Further, when engaging RHiComs, the cost implications of an amended or updated design can be understood extremely quickly – without the need to manually check every drawing, amend the quantities and calculate the revised costs. Revision in quantities can be compared to analyse the changes.

Similarly, efficiency can be gained by automating the transfer of data from ERP systems into PEMS in order to report actual procurement and expenditure information such as invoice payments, man-hours incurred, and commitments left. This in turn facilitates the reporting of accurate progress measurements as well as Earned Value Analysis.

Using digital information sources, which are entered in only once, instead of paper based ones ensures that the most up-to-date data is incorporated into project and corporate reporting. By integrating this data, we offer a reliable single point of truth to our clients. Directly incorporating digital information once also enables a reduction in the risk of human error and maintains the quality and accuracy of the source data.

A further innovation from RHi’s Centre of Excellence is the development of the RHiData concept which creates predictable cost study outcomes. Benchmarking must be reliable and the cornerstone benefit of utilising RHiComs and PEMS systems – is that over a number of decades we have archived a vast number of historical project data which is available for RHi clients in a digital format.

RHiData aligns historical project data to a standard RHiComs library, which allows current project costs to be compared directly to reliable out-turn data directly from the RHiData project database. This empowers current projects to be benchmarked against historic projects on key metrics in terms of design, quantities, and costs within reliable ranges. This is fundamental to ensuring predictability of outcome for our clients, particularly in early stages of the project life cycle where very little project definition or design may be available.

The Integrated Solution approach gives RHi’s clients an advantage over their competitors in an increasingly digital and integrated world.

For further information on RHi and RHi systems, email Finlay.Mclay@rhi-group.com.