Emerald Helps Midstream O&G Client to Upgrade P6 and Clean Database with P6-Loader SaaS
Emerald Helps Midstream O&G Client to Upgrade P6 and Clean Database with P6-Loader SaaS
Client Overview
Client is one of the largest midstream oil and gas operators in Canada. The company services oil and gas producers in Western Canada and transports natural gas liquids to markets throughout North America.
Challenges
Client required their Primavera P6 database to be upgraded to v21.
Along with the upgrade, areas were identified where data needed to be cleaned up.
P6 security is a little different in the new version of P6, and the client asked for assistance with security for P6 users in the new P6 version.
Results
The database upgrade was completed.
The P6-Loader was used to review the data for potential areas of clean-up. The P6-Loader Usage Reports provided a quick and consolidated summary, so we were able to clean up UDFs, codes, and calendars.
We reviewed the security in the new version and addressed the option selections in security profiles and made sure they were set up correctly.
Consultant Uses P6-Scrubber to help manage many P6 schedules from different clients
Consultant Uses P6-Scrubber to help manage many P6 schedules from different clients
Written by Sue Fermelia
Client Overview
Client is a one person company that manages schedules for many different clients.
Challenges
Client needed a way to import schedules from different clients without polluting the existing data in their database
They wanted to be able to import outside data with prefixes and into specific structures to keep track of what schedules they belonged to.
Results
Installed P6-Scrubber on their standalone database, where they could see what already existed in the database and either rename or remap data in their XER/XMLs to match their existing data
P6-Scrubber allows them to prefix and place data elements, such as Resources and Roles into specific trees.
TAPS and P6-Loader help client streamline their turnaround schedule development and maintenance
TAPS and P6-Loader help client streamline their turnaround schedule development and maintenance
Written by Mary Lynn Backstrom
Client Overview
Client is a large Canadian petrochemical company that has been in operation since 1954. They have expanded the use of P6-Loader and TAPS from their site in Eastern Canada to now include their Western Canada site.
Challenges
Client was updating P6 manually at the end of each shift during their turnarounds
They needed a way to make P6 updates quick and error-free
Client also wanted to help streamline their scheduling processes
Results
TAPS is providing the turnaround team with quick, easy to use schedule updates
TAPS is improving the accuracy and speed of updates as well as the overall update process
P6-Loader is currently proving an asset in building turnaround schedules as well as processing changes for the Western Canada site
The client referenced in this case study is a Canadian integrated energy company that is based in Calgary, Alberta, and is considered one of Canada's largest energy companies, as well as having been previously ranked as one of the top 50 biggest public companies in the entire world. The refinery based in this case study began refining crude oil in 1955. The refinery produces a full range of refined petroleum products that includes gasoline, distillate, heavy fuel oil, solvents, asphalt and petrochemicals. It is also a leading producer of petrochemical products.
Challenges
The project was underway, but there was debate as to whether it was required because of a merger.
There was a lot of uncertainty around the project budget.
Results
The analysis showed that the project would cost significantly more than the budgeted amount.
The analysis showed that the project would be later than scheduled.
As a result of the risk analysis, the project was cancelled.
Learn how P6-Reporter helped an engineering company in this case study.
Client Overview
Client is a global consulting engineering firm specializing in the delivery of integrated solutions for energy, food and beverage, facilities, communications, environmental, and federal markets. They offer complete multi-discipline engineering, architecture, and program management services. Founded in 1976, it is an employee-owned company with nearly 4,000 employees and over 45 offices across North America.
Challenges
Schedulers needed to create reports on how their projects in Primavera P6 are progressing with convenient and easy to understand reporting and dashboards in Power BI.
Report creators needed to capture and report on historical data from their P6 databases.
Results
Emerald provided a solution using the Oracle Data Access Connector that allows the client to connect and query data from their Oracle databases.
Emerald's P6-Reporter takes snapshots of data at the points indicated by the client. This data is then made available in Power BI tables for report trending.
P6-Scrubber helps utility company clean P6 schedules prior to importing them in their production environment
Client Overview
The client is a multi-faceted utility company that has multiple business units. They own and operate many substations and transmission lines that form part of the Alberta interconnected electric system. They provide water and wastewater services to more than 85 communities and industrial sites across Western Canada. The client also operates in the US and serves more than 780,000 people across 42 communities and 18 counties in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, making it one of the largest private regulated water utilities in the U.S. Southwest.
Challenges
The scheduling teams' interactions with outside contractors and consultants required the team to receive schedules to import. They required a way to clean the schedules prior to import so the data does not collide with other business units
Each team required different rules for contractors and consultants, such as prefixes and what parent tree to land resources when imported
Results
P6-Scrubber was deployed for the team to make the cleaning effort easier, more reliable and faster to handle
The users setup the scrubbing definitions for the contractor and consultant loads, import an XER/XML file into P6-Scrubber, run P6-Scrubber - which does the cleanups - and then import the projects into P6 Production after the P6-Scrubber has done the cleanups
Client Moves Their Primavera P6 to the Emerald Cloud and Uses EAI Custom Tools
Client Overview
Client is and engineering and environmental consulting firm, that diversifies services to strengthen core competencies in complex, multidiscipline work. They are the largest Power Delivery detail designer in the US, Top 5 in Power (Generation + Power Delivery), have 10+ years as Top 10 Food & Beverage Engineering firm and are a Top 200 Environmental firm.
Challenges
The client wanted to move their in-house Primavera P6 environment to a cloud option with full time support.
Internal IT was overloaded with other initiatives and lacked expertise in maintaining their Primavera P6 environment.
They required the ability to maintain and analyze their Primavera P6 data in an easy, reliable manner.
Results
Their Primavera was moved to the Emerald hosting environment, which allowed Emerald to become their full time host and support model.
Emerald provides expertise in Primavera and provides complete support for their Primavera databases.
As part of Emerald hosting the environment, we also provide Emerald tools like P6-Loader to create and maintain data, P6-QA for schedule quality analysis, P6-Reporter for schedule reporting and P6-Auditor for monitoring the changes in their databases.
Learn how Emerald helped client clean up Primavera P6 and move to the Oracle Cloud.
Client Overview
The client is a multi-faceted utility company that has multiple business units. They own and operate many substations and transmission lines that form part of the Alberta interconnected electric system. They provide water and wastewater services to more than 85 communities and industrial sites across Western Canada. The client also operates in the US and serves more than 780,000 people across 42 communities and 18 counties in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, making it one of the largest private regulated water utilities in the U.S. Southwest.
Challenges
The client needed to consolidate several Primavera P6 databases, both shared and standalone, to move to the Oracle Cloud.
They needed the ability to manage appropriate levels of user access to the data for different business units once the databases were combined.
Required the ability to support and execute the Capital Delivery Model (CDM) with Phases and Stages defined.
Each business unit had different schedule requirements that were sometimes unique that needed to be maintained.
Results
Emerald analyzed the different databases and proposed business rules and clean up recommendations for each business unit and then consolidated the P6 databases into one database.
Business unit and user security rules were implemented to ensure data was secure and accessible to only the users who needed to access the schedules within each business unit.
Implemented schedule templates for each business unit that followed the corporate CDM requirements and provided consistency across the company for data analysis and reporting.
Analyzed each business unit requirement. Created naming conventions for individual requirements and consolidated shared attributes for corporate wide data.
Emerald used their P6-Loader tool to make the necessary adjustments for security and data changes that allowed the implementation to take much less time than manually entering the new and updated data in P6.
After going live, Emerald continues to provide Primavera support in the Oracle Cloud to the client adding new users and maintaining their environment.
Learn how P6-Loader helped a consultant manage their clients' Primavera P6 schedules.
P6-Loader saved client a lot of their valuable time
Client Overview
Client is a one person company that manages schedules for many different clients.
Challenges
This client receives information on a regular basis for managing schedules for different companies. They needed an easier way to create resources and update rates in their P6 database to accommodate the creation of the schedules.
Client receives spreadsheets with activities and resource assignments. They needed an easier way to get this information into P6 to develop schedules.
They receive regular updates to existing schedules and required an easy method to change existing data in P6 to reflect changes made.
The user needed to upgrade their current P6 environment to the latest version but had minimal technical experience to do so.
Results
P6-Loader saved the client a large amount of time by allowing them to convert the data provided to them in spreadsheets to P6-Loader files to load in resource information.
They can quickly and easily copy the information to a P6-Loader sheet to load the data into P6 without having to retype it manually.
They are able to take information provided by their clients in spreadsheets to quickly update schedules using the P6-Loader.
Emerald provided support to purchase and upgrade the client's current P6 environment.
Discover how this refinery used TAPS to improve the accuracy and speed of progress data entry during their turnarounds.
Turnaround progress entry more efficient and streamlined at the refinery
Client Overview
The client is an evolving energy company with an enduring family of brands. From refining to midstream to marketing, they provide traditional and renewable fuels and lubricants for planes, trains and automobiles – plus other essential products such as asphalt, roofing tar and components for medicines and cosmetics.
Challenges
The refinery needed a way to streamline their data entry and schedule updating.
Manual data entry of progress after each shift was taking two schedulers 4 to 5 hours to complete, which took time away from the analysis of their updated schedules.
Results
Schedule updates now take a matter of minutes using bar code scanners, rather than several hours.
The time saved using TAPS freed up schedulers' time to analyze the results and provide better reports to management after each shift.
Learn how a leading chemical and plastics manufacturer used P6-Loader to boost the efficiency of their contractor updates in P6
Updates Made Easy for Contractors and Schedulers
Client Overview
In operation since the mid 1900s, the client in this case study is a leading producer of plastics and chemicals, with nearly 2,500 employees, and plays a significant role in the global chemicals industry. They develop and manufacture materials for customers worldwide who produce consumer, industrial, and packaging products. The company has a strong focus on innovation, sustainability, and meeting the diverse needs of its many customers.
Challenges
The client had trouble getting contractor/scheduler updates for pre/post turnaround work
They were upgrading to the latest version of Primavera P6
They had unclean data that needed cleaning up
Results
The client can easily deal with their contractor updates by using Emerald's P6-Loader
They can easily extract and update resource availability and reload to Primavera P6
Client is an employee-owned, multi-disciplined engineering, planning, architectural, and environmental services firm in the United States. With nearly 700 employees spread between more than 30 offices in 12 states, they offer a wide range of services with a focus on aviation, construction, facilities design, federal, power, transportation, survey, and water. They sit in the top 150 of the Engineering News-Record's prestigious Top 500 Design Firms list, while Zweig Group has recognized client as a best firm to work for in the multi-discipline category for six consecutive years.
Challenges
Compiling historical data for reporting was difficult and time consuming
Reports were being created from many different sources, including Primavera P6 and Excel worksheets
Results
P6-Reporter (previously EP-datawarehouse) was deployed and snapshots are taken regularly to record historical information
New reports are easier to create with the snapshotted data readily available in Power BI
Previously created reports in Power BI were able to be utilized and improved with additional data provided by P6-Reporter
Learn How Emerald Helped Client Migrate to the Oracle Cloud
Primavera Migration and Custom Primavera P6 Training
Client Overview
Client is a Canadian construction company. They have provided innovative construction solutions to complex infrastructure projects across Canada for over 100 years through various contracting modes including general contracting/bid-build, design-build, design-bid-build and public-private partnerships.
Challenges
Needed to consolidate and migrate several databases, some residing on individual machines and on different versions of Primavera P6, to two databases located on the Oracle Cloud
The P6 Client version interface was not simple to use for the skill level of the end-users
They required a more formalized process between the Planning and Scheduling group managing the Primavera instances and the business as well as the IT group
Results
Migrate all existing project schedules, filters and layouts from both the enterprise and local Primavera installs to the Cloud solution
Implemented a sustainable Primavera QA/Training environment for the testing of enhancements and upgrades and to train users. Also implemented an archive strategy for closed projects.
Updated and redesigned roles, profiles, EPS and OBS to business requirements using established best practices.
Developed and delivered specific training documentation and class room sessions for administrators, power users, end users and IT.
Learn about how Emerald helped with an Oracle Fusion integration
Client Overview
Large contractor in the Philippines needed a better way to manage costing and forecasting processes for dozens of multi-year projects in five different industries, including very large and critical infrastructure projects.
Challenges
Having one consistent system across the business units, giving transparency to management on progress
Getting forecasting done every week on all projects
Managing manpower and critical equipment requirements from all jobsites for best performance
Accurate reporting of progress to date and forecasting of estimates to complete on the project tasks
Managing estimates and budgets with actual progress in the field to have a clear understanding of actual progress to date
Results
Integrated Oracle Fusion Projects and Oracle Primavera P6
Standardized strategy on project WBS, project task details, project resources, and project expenses
All calculations and integrations accommodate hours and costs. Set up multi-currency reporting for ledger and project based reporting.
Control of overheads and profits within P6, and control of resource rates to the project
Automatic updating of forecasting integrated from actuals from Oracle Fusion, and then updates from the field in P6
Time savings for actuals management and forecasting updating
A more efficient way to handle getting project information into P6 with the P6-Loader
P6 Administrators are able to analyze and clean up global data
Client Overview
Client is Canada’s premier nuclear science and technology organization. They are a world leader in developing peaceful and innovative applications from nuclear technology through expertise in physics, metallurgy, chemistry, biology and engineering.
Challenges
Schedulers were in need of a more efficient way to handle getting project information into P6
They wanted to add resources, edit rates, and add and edit codes
P6 administrators needed to clean up old data in P6 and manage their users in a more efficient way
Results
P6-Loader was deployed to schedulers, which significantly reduced the time to create and edit project information in P6
Administrators are able to analyze global data usage and clean up obsolete information using the Usage Sheets available in P6-Loader
Users are being added much more efficiently, using copy and paste features in Excel to quickly set user permissions from already existing users
