with Diego Cardoso, Joacir Costa, and Tulio Policarpo

Petrochemical greenfield projects are complex, CAPEX-intensive, and can take anywhere from a year to three years or more to achieve implementation. In many cases, they are global endeavors undertaken by segmented teams worldwide or signed into agreement by multiple international companies. Much of the growth of greenfield projects in petrochemicals comes from either emerging markets or the need for a lower-carbon footprint plants. But construction isn’t where greenfield projects come to life—it’s in the ideation and planning.

CONNECTING A FRAGMENTED PROCESS

With stakeholders across the globe, multiple engineering phases, and significant investment on the line, greenfield project leaders are under pressure to deliver and execute on time and on budget. This makes alignment across teams critical from day one.

When planning is fragmented and often simultaneous, the issue becomes not just the project schedule, but also a lack of synchronicity in management logic. Differing geographies, schedules across global time zones, unclear dependencies, limited visibility into critical paths, and competing priorities create ample room for discrepancies and downtime. Even language barriers can lead to miscommunication, lag time, and misaligned priorities.

ALIGNING COMMUNICATION AND VISIBILITY ACROSS FIVE STAGES

Petrochemical greenfield projects typically happen in five stages. With Timenow as a consultative partner, your project will benefit from alignment from the start through a methodology that prioritizes communication and visibility throughout every stage.

Stage 1: Planning – We ensure that everyone from stakeholders and clients to suppliers and contractors have visibility into all components of the project—scope, budget, schedule, risk tolerance, business objectives, engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning before the project even begins. This transparency sets the stage for smoother operations in between every milestone.

Stage 2: Engineering and design – Coordinating all the disciplines—electrical, mechanical, instrumentation, and more—requires a deep understanding of scope and requirements. Timenow helps ensure the engineering design is progressing by connecting engineers with the bigger picture, such as OEMs for parts, teams in charge of infrastructure design, and project managers.

Stage 3: Procurement – Once suppliers and contractors are selected, manufacturing can begin. To stay on the same page, Timenow ensures a logistics discussion between parties occurs every single day. The stages, while distinct, are all interconnected, so Timenow’s experts will be prepared for all milestones at stage 1. For example, equipment must be mapped out from the beginning, so a plant’s needs don’t change midway through the project, causing expensive procurement adjustments and delays.

Stage 4: Construction – Following from procurement, construction may be delayed by a knock-on effect if mapping and visible alignment are not achieved in stage 1. It can be a massive challenge to coordinate, but if not completed at the earliest stages of a greenfield project, it will prolong actual construction and field execution, wasting time and cost.

Stage 5: Commission: Once the plant is built, all systems must work together as a single operation. To be ready, systems must be complete, spare parts available, and any commissioning delays resolved.

TRANSPARENCY, PREDICTABILITY, AND COST SAVINGS

Timenow does not focus on a single stage or isolated deliverable. It provides a full ecosystem management system that connects all stages and serves as a single source of truth for stakeholders and teams throughout the project.

Our experience working in complex environments with global teams and multiple contractors provides a throughline for your entire project. Even more important than our technical expertise is this integrated approach in which we can turn a fragmented process into a coordinated execution model.

By giving you greater visibility and predictability, we are an independent partner that can improve project outcomes and boost your confidence in successful greenfield execution. Our proactive method focuses on integration, visibility, and governance, establishing a common set of priorities and milestones that set your project up for success.

Interested in working with Timenow on your next greenfield project? Contact us today to learn more about how we partner with organizations to improve transparency and align interconnected teams for a faster, more cost-effective solution.