How proper oversight kept the project on track
The April edition on Nuclear News featured the Darlington Station expansion project in Ontario, Canada. The project took lessons learned from previous CANada Deuterium Uranium reactor refurbishments. It has three scheduled phases: initiation, definition and execution.
The project’s scope of work initiated in 2007, and the execution should complete in 2024. With the definition phase planned to end in 2015, the execution phase of the project is approaching. As with most megaprojects, challenges and obstacles became to arise, Modus, along with Burns & McDonnell Canada, were engaged to assist and course correct before the project fell too far off schedule.
During our due diligence, we found that project vendors had drastically underestimated their costs due to not understanding requirements for a nuclear site and the full scope of the project. We also uncovered the proper level of oversight was not being employed. Discovering and fixing these issues not only helped keep the project on schedule, it also locked down the project’s scope.
This is a great example of how independent, unbiased oversight, like Modus provides, can add value to a project, keep it on track and reduce hiccups and unexpected obstacles.
