Project management - The case of an oil refinery

To illustrate the case of a major project, we have chosen a rather large and complex project, the case of an oil refinery, which represents a good example of the problems faced by the team in charge of the project. In such a project, we necessarily encounter all the processes described in the article .

We will not repeat the detailed description of current operations, which are sufficiently illustrated in the articles and , dealing respectively with the case of a small project and a medium-sized project drawn from real-life situations. It goes without saying that they must also be carried out for large-scale projects, often with a much higher degree of complexity. In particular, the operations that precede the realization decision are not described: feasibility, administrative, commercial, economic, financial, geographical, legal, sociological and technical analyses. In fact, the most characteristic and difficult tasks in the case studied are those of organization, planning and launching, which we will go into in greater detail (as far as possible in the context of an article such as this).

We take the project at the moment when the Board of Directors, in view of the positive outcome of the above analyses, has decided to launch the construction of the refinery and has appointed a project manager (who may bear the title of director).

In a project of this scale, the role of the project team, and above all its leader, is much more relational and political than one of personal intervention and direct operations, whether technical or administrative.

Nevertheless, to fulfill their role properly, team members need to be sufficiently familiar with the nature of the technical issues involved. For this reason, we provide a few details on the physical content of the project. Each of these details represents a hypothesis, and therefore a potential risk, to be analyzed in the risk management phase.

In any other case, a similar analysis would have to be carried out, with the same concern for understanding the technical environment. This article therefore examines all the tasks specific to the project manager and his direct team, to the exclusion of the tasks of the project owner and other participants.

Please refer to article "Processes" (based on ISO 10 006) for the definition and presentation of the various processes, which will be referred to as [process x] in this booklet.

Please also refer to the articles :

"Case of an agricultural cooperative" (small size)

"Case of a joint-venture project" (medium-sized)

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