Vulcan Mozambique, a global mining company, owns and operates Africa's largest coal mine at Moatize. Vulcan took on an anggresive target of increasing the met coal production by three times in 14 months. To meet this immensely challenging target, ramping up mine production was not enough, the capacity augementation had to happen for the entire process flow, which means washplant and logistics had to be augemented in the same time period.

Subject of this case study is the washplant problem.
Process team engineered all possible improvements and came up with a list of around 17 brownfield projects to be implemented in washplant in 12 months focusing on capacity augmentation directly and indirectly (efficiency). The most important were exeuction of thickener projects in 2 wash plants.
It would add 25% increose in production capacity for the entre plont.

Challenges:

After 4 months of execution into both the projects, 2 months of combined progress was ochieved
• Resource Shortage: Projects faced a scarcity of resources for skilled civil manpower, fabrication manpower, progress was ot 307 of the required speed. Project team vas constantly chasing contractors and catch up plans was the way of execution.
• Material Shortage: Material unavailability (Mainly common material - structure plates, pipes & cables etc) was frequent at both project sites limiting excution speed.
• Start & Stop execution: Resource problem was also amplified by the fact that the execution often waited for right inputs, rendering workforce idle. This was also causing contractors to start whatever they can, for ensuring monthly billing.
• Conflicting priorties: Purchase team was stretched between priorties of both the projects. Conflict of priority between projects and operations was also hurting projects.
• Lack of reliable projection: With delay adding every week, any projection was unreliable for top management

Implementation:

To address these challenges, Vulcan International partnered with Realization Technologies, a trusted provider of project delivery solutions.
Highlights of the Implementation:
• Focus & Finish: In 2 weeks time Realization team created a Focus-&-Finish strategy for the portolio. One of the projects vas stopped all together and all the avaiable resources (manpower, equipment, material) were concentrated on one project. The analysis presented the obvious benefits of the same.
• Project-Level Fullkit Closure: Second project was full kitted during the waiting time (3 months), all pending designs, orders etc. were completed in this period so that it can be executed without any stoppages.
• Clear priorty for shared resources: With consistent and synchronized priorities for the purchase team, cycle time of purchase was crashed by 40%6
• Streamlined Execution through Contractor Onboarding: The contractors were onboarded with execution strategy and establishing that Focus & Finish will ensure faster cash flows for them too.
• ⁠Streamliner the enabler. To control execution, the entire process was automated on Streamliner. Streamliner provided reliable and transparent visibilty at all levels to ensure the synchronization and bring out the bottlenecks

Tangible Results:

After 6 months of implementation,
• First project was completed in 260 days against projection of 340 days, 30% improvement in execution rates
• Second project was completed in even faster time, 92% faster than the first project, and 250% faster than the earlier rate of execution with the same set of resources
• Tie in of the projects during shutdown was achieved in 5/5 days for first project and 4.5/5 days for second project

Intangible Results

• Reduced Firefighting: Vulcan successfully managed the projects with lean project team and minimal support from Realization.
• Shorter review meetings: Streamliner facilitated short & crisp reviews with top management by providng actionable insights at the portiolio level, enabling informed and timely decision-making despite the limited bandwidth.

Conclusion

Through Realization's project management solution, vulcan successfully overcame resource shortages and unreliable projections. The software's streamlined operations, resulting in timely project delivery and budget control. Vulcan now stands as a testament to the effectiveness of enabling companies to navigate complex expansions. The company is on path to achieve its ambitious growth goals, enhanced its project management expertise, and transformed its operations for sustained success. Vulcan continues to use Realization to complete the remaining projects.

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