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Greenfield and plant expansion and upgrade projects: Nouran Yaghchi, Whitehopleman (UK)

Filmed at Cemtech MEA 2015, 8-11 February, Grand Hyatt Dubai, UAE

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Good afternoon all the Ladies and Gentlemen! Today I will speak about Whitehopleman services in general and we will speak about our vision to get the best out of, especially Chinese, EPC contractors during the construction and upgrading of the projects. First of all, I would like to tell you quickly about Whitehopleman. Whitehopleman is a consultant for international cement industries based in UK and we opened recently our branch here in Dubai.

Our consultant services range start from projects and continue to cover the operating and maintenance for the existing clients. At the Whitehopleman, we are involved in technical and commercial feasibility studies for the cement capacity development, and performance improvement, and this is just a quick vision about what we did so far. In 2004, we had feasibility studies in Iran for 6 million ton line.

2005, we made the feasibility study for 2 million ton line in Angola, then in 2008, we advised the requirements to attracts some companies to invest in Libya in the free zone. 2009, 2011, we had some feasibility studies in both Nigeria and Indonesia for 2 million ton per year cement plants. Also, Whitehopleman regularly involved in project monitoring and from investors, and this is some of our investors, and you can see we have a relationship with IFC, EIB, ADB,

and usually these investors appoint Whitehopleman as an independent consultant for their project which they're investing in, and as an independent consultant, Whitehopleman is regularly monitoring the physical and financial progress of the project with highlighting all the risks and the solutions for all these risks to eliminate it and finish the project in the best way.

Here's some of our monitoring projects which have been completed from 2006-2008. We were independent monetary consultant in Turkey on behalf of IFS and we finished the project in Kahramanmaras. Our technical team has visited the site in 2006 the first time led by Dr. Clark, our General Director, and the team had civil and mechanical engineers and they made all the studies there. Sorry, and with many visits during 2007 and 2008, we completed the project there and verified that all the projects have been completed properly.

Another project has been in 2010 with ANCAP in Uruguay and also we have that one for, as you can see modernization of the existing cement plant and we also have in 2010 with the same ANCAP independent assessment of the cement plant project management arrangement. 2012, we have retained to verify the completion of the second clinker line production in Senegal by DEG Invest of Germany.

According to area retained as an independent monitoring consultant with the, with the Derba Midroc Cement Company in Ethiopia and that's also on behalf of IFC and other lenders like AFDB, EIB, and DBE. This independent monitoring has started in 2009, also Dr. Clark led the technical team there, and we made the many site visits during 2010, 2011, when the construction had to take place and the final ignition was on 5th of February, 2012. The main contractor was CNBM and that's one of the plants which Chinese EPC contractor has done and we know all that in the last couple years, the Chinese EPC Contractors almost taking all the new projects in the cement, and this is why we need to know why the investors are selecting EPC Contractors. Of course saving in the capex up to 30% is the main positive things by selecting the Chinese EPC Contractors.

With this saving we will face some negative points, mainly the frame time of the projects can be much longer because of the many reason and also the quality of erection and manufacturing of the equipment could not match the similar European equipment. From our experience with the Chinese supply plant in Africa and Middle East, Whitehopleman believes that a very good quality of cement projects can be supplied by the Chinese contractors, but that should come with a very strict monitoring during the project in all aspects starting from engineering and procurement in China up to the completion and commissioning at site. And Whitehopleman is usually doing the benchmarking exercises which is in the last 30 plus pre-calciner benchmarking we made, we found that many of the Chinese kiln, which is the kiln supplied by the Chinese, the EPC Contractors have reached a very good thermal energy consumption, and that's very good sign that these Chinese EPC Contractors have been improved recently. But as I said, we have our vision about monitoring these projects with Chinese EPC Contractors and we believe that this strict monitoring is one of the main reason or the main objective which we need to do just to guarantee the final quality of the project and to guarantee that the plant will be commissioned and will reach the performance guarantee indicators.

Whitehopleman monitoring services start from the early stages and as I said, we have monitored the engineering the procurement in China and also we've monitored the progress in site. So what usually we have in the project, sorry. So we deploy usually two teams; one team will be in China and other technical team will be on site.

So in China team, we all know that any EPC Ccontractor from china, any client will face a lot of trouble with the communication, there's always lack of information, lack of communication between the sites people and the China. So we don't know exactly the delivery of the material, we don't know exactly the progress of the procurement, and that's one of the main problem which we can face when we have the Chinese EPC Contractor.

Whitehopleman, the best way to solve this by deploying as I said special technical team in China who can communicate there directly with the manufacturer and the workshops. So our technical team will always make a visit to the workshop and the factories. We will get our records for the progress of the manufacturing.

We will make our overseas inspection just to guarantee that all the equipment which will be sent to the site will be as per the site requirement and the design drawings, because as I said, we all know how hard it is to communicate with the Chinese there. So we found that this is the best way to solve this problem.

Also this team in China will be responsible to follow up the procurement activities and the shipment scheduling, so we guarantee that all the equipment will be delivered to site on time and by this way we will be able to reduce the or to eliminate the delay in the project, at the end of project phase. Also, we've on site, we deploy our technical team.

This technical team will be responsible mainly for the monitoring of all the progress on site, of course, as I said because we've have, our team will be usually will be planning engineering, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers. These engineers will be responsible for all the site progress. We are having this team in china and the very good communication with our sites, so we can actually plan the project properly on site.

We can make an actual activities scheduling and just assure that the project is going as per the milestones, and we believe in Whitehopleman that, all equipment are very important, it's not just a main equipment, even a small equipment could lead to a plant shut down or a failure during commissioning or after the commissioning.

This is why our engineers on site will be very strict with the Chinese subcontractor, and we will follow all the inspections in all aspects civil, mechanical, and electrical. Of course, if any of you guys are having the Chinese plant, we all know the documentation situation of the Chinese plant. Always there is very poor documentation at the end of the project and many plants they lost all the history of direction, and this is one of the things which our team will assure to hand it over to the client where we will make full archive of all the site activities including the inspection records, site modification, or measurement of all the main equipment.

This history will continue to be as a back up of all the maintenance team, so they can kind of have a reference to go back anytime to know exactly how the zero situation was during the erection. And the last thing here, we will supervise also the handover of the plant document and drawing from the contractors to the site team.

We will try to get our best from the Chinese EPC Contractor including the technical documents, any other, as best informing just to hand it over to the client to assure that they get the best out of the Chinese EPC contractor. We created our specialized PMS system. We call it Project Management System.

We call it WPMS. This system is on cloud and both team in China and on site, they update all the progress on it. So easily the communication between the two teams and on site and in China it will be much easier and they will be able to have updated status in both areas, and also clients and contractors they have also an access to the system so they can have actually the current situation of the project without need to speak with the Chinese or any of the people there in China.

After the project always there's challenge when we start the operation and maintenance of this EPC Chinese plant because as I said, the lack of documentation and the lack of spare parts. So, as a Whitehopleman, we deployed some special services, this is why we opened our branch here in Dubai. So we will provide many services to cover some of these gaps which we could face because of these EPC contractors and our services including new staff training that's I'll come later on about this.

Development of maintenance management system, we have sourcing and supplying of some of the spare parts, assisting during the plants shut down, automation and control system improvement. All these points almost some of the bottlenecks with the EPC Chinese plant and we will try to see how our services can help.

For example, in the maintenance management system, we all know how important it is to have proper maintenance management system where we archive the history of our equipment and the consumption of the spare parts, and all the budget and actual cost at the end of the year. So, Whitehopleman can provide services for implementation, this maintenance management system either it's a part of the ERP system like SAP or if it's a separate system for maintenance.

Sourcing and supplying of the spare parts, this is as I said, one of the disadvantages of having these Chinese plant that we don't able to have a manufacturing drawing of many of the spare parts, and the manual was always full. So, Whitehopleman team will try to work on this things. We will create, we have our engineering section, we will create our publication drawing of many of these spares, and we will find alternative solutions just to eliminate the connection with the Chinese if they are not helping the client.

And also, we can manufacture some of these parts and supply it to our customers. During shutdown, we all know how critical it is, and how much we need to have the best output at the end of the shutdown, and this is why also Whitehopleman will be available for our customers to help during the shut down, planning, and during and before the shut down just to help to get the best out of it. So we can make, we can help in the preparation of the shutdown and during the shutdown just to get the best at the end of it.

In automation system, and we are specialized in Semens PCS7. So we can improve the system, and we will increase the reliability and availability of the system. So we will reduce the shutdown because of the automation system. We have many solution for that and we can guarantee that the availability of the system will be much better. This solution can include engineering station acting as a master data, as a time master, failure/cost analysis.

We have the first time improvement where we can link directly the engineering drawings and the manuals from the screen to be just on the click. This will save a lot of time for the automation engineers. Also, we have maintenance planning through the automation system instead of having other systems, and we have the production and equipment history storage improvement just to work on the archiving solution.

Maybe some of the people here, do you know about our benchmarking? Whitehopleman has been providing the independent benchmarking in the last 17 years and we created our own data from over 350 plants all around the world, and we generated our benchmark out of this database. So, by joining our program in the benchmarking, you'll have an independent comparison for the performance of fuel plants, also the quantification of the gap between the performance and the benchmark.

The ability to identify and prioritize the areas of performance improvement and we also put targets for yearly targets just realistic one to improve this performance and if you join our benchmark on yearly basis, you have the ability to track the progress every year so we will give you how much you have been improved in the last year personal plot list in the training.

We have our special onsite training. We can provide advanced and basic training, in the basic training, we will give just the general information about the cement industry. Also in the advanced training it will be more specialized, and it will cover the areas which is required like mechanical automation, instrumentation or the production and chemistry of the cement.

This is the cost of this, will be efficient if it's big number of people and motivation benefit is much, much good as an international academy. It's a quick presentation. I would like to thank you for you time. As I told you, our main target and vision is just to have the best out of the Chinese EPC contractors and we will provide the solutions for any problems, for any customers.

Our stand, be free to visit our stand and also join our free draw for the benchmark. We'll be outside waiting you, thank you.

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