Do You Need an Interface Management Program for Your Project?

Investing in an interface management program can provide substantial benefits, but do you need it for your next project? Here are questions to help determine if your project needs interface management technology:

1. Is your project complex?
   • There is new technology.
   • You are working in remote or hard-to-develop geographies.
   • Your project requires concurrent engineering where independent teams are working simultaneously on separate, yet dependent modules of the project thus increasing the potential for interface errors and integration problems.
   • You are facing compressed project schedules where design-build time cycles are more compact and costs for schedule delays can be enormous.
2. Is your project being built in a modular fashion with multiple scope packages?
   • Your project requires multiple EPCs and contractors, as opposed to less complex projects where a single firm will design, engineer, and build your project.
3. Are designers, fabricators, contractors, and other stakeholders globally dispersed?
   • You are dealing with contractors on different continents, in different time zones, speaking different languages.
4. What is your contracting strategy?
   • Often projects will have a mix of contracting strategies which adds complexity. Large projects are often executed on lump-sum or fixed-price contracts to put a ceiling on costs – in reality, lump-sum contracts always come in over budget, due to changes that occur – these changes are often a direct result of interface dependencies.
5. What is the capital expenditure of your project?
   • While construction megaprojects are generally defined as projects approaching $1 billion or more, even projects exceeding $500 million represent significant capital investment and can require an interface management system.

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you should be looking for an interface management system for your project.

As demonstrated time and time again, poor management of interfaces will result in:

• Deficiencies in the project schedule
• Increased costs,
• Fewer quality assets with lower production levels
• Long-term operational difficulties.

A small project with few interfaces can be managed using a simple Excel spreadsheet to identify the interface, its stakeholders, dates, and actions. As projects increase in size and complexity, the number of scope packages increase, which increases the number of stakeholders, which in turn increases the number of interfaces. As a result, it is highly recommended that project teams look for tools designed to manage and automate interface management processes for complex capital projects. Systems that offer an online and up-to-date Interface Register to ensure all parties are working with the same information and form a bridge between various parties involved in the execution of the project. Automated systems also help to enforce agreed-upon project processes, including, governance, risk, and compliance procedures, and improve overall stakeholder communication.

The single biggest impediment to successful interface management is the owner’s management team – if they lack understanding of or commitment to the importance of interface management, then interface management is doomed to fail.  Some people think interface management “just happens” and then point fingers when inevitable problems arise. Don’t let your project suffer a fate such as this. If your next project meets any of the 5 criteria listed above, make sure you understand and commit to interface management being core to the overall project management philosophy, and not viewed as a subject on the periphery.