EPCs cannot afford fragmented completions, and they don’t have to

Made a decade ago, this statement by the Construction Industry Institute rings just as true today: “commissioning failures are too common in frequency and extremely costly in impact.” 

These failures fall broadly into two categories. Some are severe but fairly rare, such as a major equipment failure during startup or utilities not being ready. Others, far more common, are information management failures. This includes incomplete systems or critical punch items left open, inconsistent documentation and poor alignment between construction, commissioning and operations, to name a few. Outdated as-built documentation can exarcerbate these problems, with consequences that extend well beyond startup and affect the plant's long-term reliability. 

These failures largely stem from how completions and commissioning are traditionally handled. Field teams still rely on paper forms, spreadsheets, email and manual follow-ups to record inspections, manage punch items and prove work is complete. At the scale of a large project, this can mean several rooms’ worth of individual records, from drawings to vendor documents, Inspection Test Records (ITRs), certificates, test sheets and handover dossiers, which all need to be assembled, stored and organized. 

Compounding that problem is that commissioning is still too often seen as a “final stage” rather than a workflow integrated into project execution. By the time a missing inspection, overdue punch item, or incomplete turnover record becomes visible to the wider team, it may already be disrupting the commissioning sequence. The result is predictable: one in three projects runs over schedule or over budget during the commissioning, completions and start-up (CCSU) phase. 

A new approach to completions and commissioning 

Octave OnSite Completions (formerly Intergraph Smart Completions) is designed to address the commissioning challenges.. 

The platform replaces a fragmented process with structured digital workflows that cover construction completion, mechanical completion, pre-commissioning, commissioning, startup and handover. It also integrates with engineering tools for one single source of validated data. 

Onsite Completions changes the commissioning timeline. Instead of treating ITRs, punch lists, certificates and turnover dossiers as documents assembled after the work, the solution builds the workflow around the work itself. So, field information becomes part of the completion record as it is created. 

Teams can manage all these phases within the same environment. Photos, signatures and supporting evidence can be captured against the relevant activity, while completion status can be viewed across systems, assets and projects. All stakeholders are working from one single source, pulling the latest and validated information, and reporting to one aggregated progress report. 

The results can be significant, particularly on large, complex projects. 

Take the example of Chiyoda: on Qatar's North Field East LNG project, Chiyoda adopted OnSite Completions to move from paper to fully digital execution and to let headquarters monitor construction, commissioning and completion status remotely from the cloud. The EPC credits digitizing workflows like ITRs, punch lists and preservation with significant time savings, reduced personnel requirements and shorter closure times. System-level warnings for open ITRs and punches during certificate closure have prevented oversights and rework that could have caused budget and schedule overruns.

Punch closure needs control, not just a button 

Visibility is half the battle. The other half is trust. A punch item marked “closed” is useful only when the project can trust who closed it and whether they had authority to do so. 

The new version of OnSite Completions strengthens governance through Punchlist Closure Control. Authorized users can close punch items only within their assigned company and scope. Closure can be routed to the appropriate technical expert and inspectors can validate the work before final sign-off. The result is a traceable chain of responsibility, not a mere change of status. 

This is essential where completion authority is fragmented across several companies, disciplines and contractual scopes. This is common in complex capital projects such as LNG and refining facilities, power plants, mining developments, pharmaceutical facilities, semiconductor fabs and large data centers. 

For an EPC managing several subcontractors, the practical difference it makes is substantial. It can demonstrate that contractors stayed within their assigned scope and that the right party verified the work before acceptance. It also helps identify and address discrepancies early, such as when a contractor considers 40 items complete while the inspector accepts only 25. 

This fits into the wider control model within OnSite Completions. Advanced user management can restrict content by company, systems and subsystems and workgroup, while the completions environment keeps punch items, certificates, supporting records and completion history within the same controlled structure. 

The field becomes part of project control 

Another important change concerns how teams capture and manage information in the field. OnSite Completions’ mobile application supports online and offline execution across iOS, Android and Windows. Teams can carry inspections and work packages into the field, complete punch and non-conformance records and add as-found and as-left images offline, with all relevant documentation, manuals and drawings readily available and mapped to the task at hand. When the handheld synchronizes, completed work and updates flow into the central environment for reporting. 

It’s this connection that captures evidence and status where the work occurs, so inspection results can reach the project record without somebody returning to an office to transcribe a form. Equipment information, photos, GPS location and punch updates are attached to the relevant activity. 

The objective is not mobility for its own sake. It is to shorten the distance between something happening in the field and the project knowing it happened, while eliminating scattered information about the same asset 

A third meaningful update is guided by the idea that large completion programs become manageable only when thousands of activities relate to meaningful units of work. 

OnSite Completions supports this through structured work packages and task models. Systemization can automate tasks, certificates and turnover-package assignments. Project Control Tasks can link detailed field tasks to higher-level schedule activities in systems such as Primavera P6. This gives project controls a more granular view of actual progress and labor. 

This is the practical value behind logical work packages and task triangulation: connect what must be done, the system or subsystem it belongs to, the responsible organization and the schedule activity it affects. A superintendent can then see more than a percentage complete, and teams can identify the inspections, punches or certificates blocking the next system. 

These updates share the same underlying principle: completions and commissioning should be high-visibility processes in which information is meaningfully connected and contextualized, rather than disjointed and scattered. 

Putting an end to the paperwork marathon 

At the scale of large projects, moving from scattered, paper-based information to OnSite Completions can make a world of difference. An energy client calculated that, on a large LNG project, the average commissioning dossier ran to more than 180 pages and took up to five hours to assemble by hand. The project needed 977 dossiers, or 600 workdays. The automated process compiled and delivered all 977 in less than 2% of that time. 

The benefits extend beyond this example and include 30% lower field spin time and 45% to 50% lower administrative costs, along with quality gains and risk reduction. 

All these benefits trace back to the fact that OnSite Completions changes the nature of completions. Real-time progress identifies bottlenecks while there is still time to intervene. Controlled punch closure makes contractor accountability visible. Mobile execution gives inspectors evidence at the source and structured  work packages connect field activity with project control. 

This transformation is much needed.

In 2017, the Construction Industry Institute summarized the industry’s experience of completions and commissioning: “We struggle, and it costs us dearly." A decade later, some EPCs might still recognize themselves in that description, but a better solution exists: one that treats completions as an active control system rather than a last-ditch paperwork marathon. Learn more on what OnSite Completions can do for you in this upcoming webinar.