What Do EPCs Think?

In our last post, we asked What Do Suppliers Think? about their work with EPCs. This time around, we give EPCs a chance to discuss what they think about their work with Suppliers like yourselves.

This research was gleaned from our survey Supplier vs EPC, Why is Vendor Documentation So Painful which you can download free of charge.

In the recent industry survey commissioned by DocBoss, suppliers indicated their EPC-driven documentation challenges to be:

• A lack of attention to deliverable timelines

• A lack of clearly defined submission protocols

• Receiving poor quality document scans or copies that simply aren’t usable.

The single most important factor to EPC respondents is accuracy and format. More than 80% of EPC survey respondents stated that data validation and correct formatting are the most important factors for successful supplier document management.

Suppliers often have no document control system or clearly defined protocols. To compensate and to ensure the EPC provider and the end users get the data they require, EPC teams force structure on their suppliers by:

• Providing very specific instructions for project documents including specifications for document numbering, formatting details, and status

• Strictly managing the compliance of documents to the submittal standard, often rejecting documentation and sending it back for revision

• Receiving documents, juggling revisions and resubmissions, and loading documents into their own document management systems

• Manually bundling information according to the project engineer’s preference

• Holding back a portion of the supplier’s final payment in order to get the document scope completed thoroughly and properly

The management of this process requires a major communication effort between the EPC and supplier. The EPC document controllers can be left to feel suppliers are uncooperative when it comes to documentation.

EPCs indicated their key overall challenges in working with suppliers to be:

How difficult do you make it for EPCs to work with you specific to your document control work?

DocBoss can help you do it better.

Drop us a line to do a free demo or free trial to learn more.