A proposed quality control process for front-end planning to minimize risk of field change orders in underground electrical construction

Controlling capital costs and cost overruns due to construction field change orders (FCOs) is essential for the electric power industry to provide affordable energy services. Conversion from overhead to underground systems due to security and climate change factors will increase the risk of FCOs due to site conditions. The failure in collaboration by front-end planning (FEP) teams can increase risk of FCOs due to missing scopes, errors in design, lack of existing field condition evaluation, constraints on the project schedule, or unexpected field conditions, among other causes. This study involved development of a quality control process that enables members of the FEP team to vote their confidence levels about risk control of FCOs before proceeding to final design. The proposed process utilized Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodologies to distribute the weights of stakeholder votes based on responsibilities for each category of FCOs to obtain an integrated metric of FEP team confidence. Data from an operational electric power utility was used to provide a case scenario approach and to illustrate the method. Three actual projects were analyzed to assess how well the process would have worked for them. The novelty of the proposed model is to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative working relationships across teams during the FEP process and to provide a quality control metric to capture risk of FCOs in the early phase to minimize cost overruns in the project execution phase.