Case Study – BP
BP is one of the world’s leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.
In 2008, they awarded Commercial Software a contract for the development of a new project staff planning and control system [PSPC] to support project services teams with the effective management of people on BP’s long-term capital projects.
The objectives of the new system were:
- To provide an overview of all long-term project resourcing requirements
- To provide a tool for controlling on-going project resource costs and reporting against budgets
- To provide a platform for estimating future project costs based on different resource requirements
- To provide a platform for resource modelling and optimisation
- To aid global talent management and retention
PSPC can be configured for any type of corporate structure within BP. These can include multiple Organizations and related clusters of capital projects. Within each business unit Positions (or roles) are set up into which a bank of people can be assigned. This assignment process is the key link between a Position and a Person.
Each Organization can be split into separate Projects and each Project can be split into phases.
With each Organization there can be any number of Positions and each Position could have any number of Assignments reflecting the turnover of people.
BP can also import actual data from time recording systems to enable real time actual versus budget reporting and to enhance talent requirement forecasting. One of the most powerful features of the system is the report generator which allows total flexibility over mining the data held within PSPC.
Users can generate instant, dynamic organization charts permitting many different views of the same Organization including traditional hierarchy, Reports to and Skill set/Competency – a process which used to take many hours now takes seconds.
Real time data reports show actual FTE, headcount and cost information. The reports are easily filtered to show summary KPI dashboard data for senior management whilst allowing full drilldown to the underlying detailed information.
The project was completed on time and within budget and the first implementation went live in 2008. Since then the program has been adopted by all of the major operating units within BP including their central operating division.
PSPC has proved to be so successful that in 2011 BP supported the transition of the system into a generic version which is now available to other organisations with similar requirements under the product name Project Staff Manager.
