PMO Optimization for a Drilling Equipment Manufacturer
Canrig Drilling · Microsoft PPM · Resource capacity and cost tracking
Overview
Canrig Drilling, a leading manufacturer of oil-drilling equipment, had outgrown its simple project management solutions as the business grew. EPMA optimized the Project Management Office by streamlining processes and overhauling the approach to managing projects and resources, implementing Microsoft Project Server to meet the organizational design demands and manage an enterprise-level portfolio.
“EPMA was fundamental in creating reports that would pull the data exactly as we needed.”
PMO Manager, Canrig Drilling
The key issues
- Limited resource capacity was constraining productivity, with no way to see or plan it.
- No efficient way to report project status to managers and stakeholders within the parent organization.
- Project costs could not be tracked efficiently.
EPMA identified further issues that would have continued to affect delivery even after a successful implementation:
- Project schedules did not accurately reflect resource planned work.
- Important resource data was not being captured at all.
- Resources had no way to report actual work effort.
- Resource data could not be updated automatically.
Our solutions
- A PPM solution and implementation strategy built to progress at the client’s preferred pace, recognising a small organization experiencing sudden growth.
- Worked hand in hand with the client’s existing IT staff rather than around them.
- Integrated the Microsoft PPM solution with the systems already in place.
- Automated many manual features of the tool, cutting the time project managers spent producing reports.
- Post-implementation support, including an EPMA resource on site one day a week during the support period.
Value added
- Resource capacity and utilization became visible for the first time.
- Project costs became trackable.
- Key business drivers were identified, allowing automatic prioritization of a growing project pipeline.
- Project managers trained within both the client and its parent organization, working to project management best practices.
- Increased productivity across the entire PMO.
“We needed to find a way to report on our resource capacity to get a better understanding of our resource utilization, we also wanted to track the cost of our projects more efficiently. EPMA was fundamental in creating reports that would pull the data exactly as we needed.”
PMO Manager, drilling equipment manufacturer
