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transportation and installation manager and is now marine subsea director. “Because of the canals’ width and height restrictions, you couldn’t just whistle up the usual 21stcentury installation vessels, and there wasn’t sufficient time to build new vessels.” Local state-owned vessels, some dating from the 1970s, were upgraded to provide the necessary heavy-lift, pipelaying and dive support capability. A number of other offshore support vessels, small enough to come through the canal system, were brought in, some having masts or decks cut off in order to meet restrictions. The vessels were then reassembled in Baku. The upgrading strategy success was all the more astonishing given that the marine installation team performed the Caspian’s first ever ‘floatover’ operations, where the deck is transported to the offshore site by barge before being floated and ballasted between the platform legs and installed. Although the technique was not new, other projects involved 10- 12,000 tonne decks, whereas ACG’s team was dealing with almost 16,000 tonnes and had to perform it six times. The scope might have been daunting, but ACG’s size worked in its favour. Invariably, big projects see designers, contractors and other team members come and go, each making their mark. This usually means changes, delays and increased costs and stress. Instead, ACG’s team adopted a standardised production line for the eventual six platforms, each with a jacket Staged approach: following the success of the Chirag Early Oil project, the full-field project began with the construction of the Central Azeri platform (below and opposite). 16 Issue 1 2009 BP MAGAZINE and deck of a roughly similar size and capability. Although this required the amalgamation of two project teams – never easy in the highly charged and competitive oil sector – this blueprint approach was a key factor in its success. “We had a policy of no change, as we wanted predictability with this project,” says Carroll Kearney, who joined the project in March 1997, and is currently the Azerbaijan business unit’s major projects Finely balanced: equipment for the ACG complex was transported to Azerbaijan via the Volga River, which freezes over for half the year, meaning the team had to manage a series of finely-balanced waterway manoeuvres. construction director. “In some ways, bigger was better, as we had a chance to do everything again with each platform, and we knew what was going to happen because of these standardised designs.” By retaining project individuals, contractor teams, fabrication yards and suppliers, and rejecting change, ACG achieved building cost savings of up to 24%, and construction schedule improvements of almost seven months.
Consequently, ACG beat its planned timescale for oil production by an impressive three months, meaning valuable earlier revenue for Azerbaijan and shareholders. That crucial test, the first year of operations, has seen ACG meet, or exceed, all production and availability targets. Keen to share their know how, the ACG teams submitted more than 50 pages of separate topics to BP’s knowledge management centre, accessible group-wide. The experiences of ACG in standardisation, knowledge management, risk management, contracting strategy and project service management have helped form BP’s major projects common process, which defines and streamlines BP’s approach to its largest projects. Fittingly, ACG won the performance category of BP’s internal Helios Awards programme, and a stream of external accolades. Its management team even gave an unprecedented seven papers at the key Offshore Technology Conference in Houston in May 2008. Teamwork and relationship building within the BP team, with contractors, suppliers or the state oil company, paid off, helping to retain personnel and sustain continuity and a sense of community. Alan Dunn, who joined in 1995, initially as ‘Early Oil’ senior project manager, and left Baku after Phase 3 had come onstream, says there is real attachment to a project like ACG. “It takes five years to get something like ACG together,” he says. “People formed a very tight bond and the community spirit was huge. ACG is a fantastic success story of bringing a mega-project onstream for the budget that was promised. It was far more than just a job to work on a project like that. For me, nothing else compares.” Developing the oil was not the sole aim of the contract. As well as upgrading local yards to world-class capabilities, the ACG project created, and sustained over six years, 15,000 jobs for Azerbaijani nationals, providing internationalstandard training, which has opened doors to jobs worldwide. And Baku and Azerbaijan have experienced massive change, enjoying a building boom of new roads and railways, and airport modernisations, along with new and improved education and community developments. The future sees sustained oil production for the project partners and Azerbaijan, augmented with the planned addition in 2013 of oil from the Chirag Oil Project, due to be sanctioned in late 2009. Most of the requisite platform will be built in Azerbaijan and predominantly by nationals. “I believe the biggest and most positive aspect of working on ACG was the excellent training programmes for locals,” says Ilgar Mammadov, an Azerbaijani who joined in 1998 as an engineer and is now project director for in-country fabrication. “ACG offered great personal development opportunities and made an enormous difference to people’s skills. In addition, a lot of money was invested in the yard upgrades, and the proof is there to see. “I feel very proud to have worked on the project and very confident about the future. ACG has changed people’s lives.” ■ “I believe the biggest and most positive aspect of working on ACG was the excellent training programmes for locals. ACG offered great personal development opportunities and made an enormous difference to people’s skills. I feel very proud to have worked on the project and very confident about the future. ACG has changed people’s lives.” Ilgar Mammadov Caspian report> ACG mega-project BP MAGAZINE Issue 1 2009 17
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