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:

Suppliers have fewer document control resources and tools

Various data points in the survey indicate that suppliers have fewer resources (and tools) available for document control:

• Fewer than 20% of suppliers reported having dedicated document control resources; The rest rely on project managers or technical resources to perform this work as required. We expect that the more technical a resource, the less time they can commit to document control.
• To manage data and documents, 75% of EPC respondents use an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). However, only 2% of suppliers currently have an EDMS in place. Instead, they create and manage their documents using spreadsheets and pdf tools, leading to errors and rework.
• Almost all suppliers surveyed – a full 90% – reported using email regularly to send and track transmittals. By contrast, 49% of EPCs declared this to be their preference.

Using an EDMS allows detailed tracking for documents. Email for transmittal management has some significant drawbacks: searching to track down submissions; weak audit trails; and non-deterministic delivery (you don’t know if it was received). Interestingly, the majority of EPC respondents (68%) expressed a willingness to log into a vendor system to receive submissions.

The most experienced supplier document control experts seem to have access to an EDMS at their workplace. In fact, supplier document controllers with more than five years’ experience were three times as likely to be an EDMS user.

If you’re a supplier of process equipment, are you serving your EPC customers in a way that they are happy with? DocBoss can help you do it better.