Labor Opti­mi­sa­tion and Organ­i­sa­tion­al Redesign: A Case Study in Air­port Infra­struc­ture Management

INTRODUCTION

The Client is one of the largest glob­al infra­struc­ture con­ces­sion com­pa­nies with 40 years’ expe­ri­ence. Infra­struc­ture con­ces­sion com­pa­nies are typ­i­cal­ly involved in Design & Con­struc­tion, Oper­a­tion & Main­te­nance, Financ­ing, and Com­mer­cial Man­age­ment of large infra­struc­ture, in this case a major inter­na­tion­al airport. 

THE CHALLENGE

The com­pa­ny has his­tor­i­cal­ly high lev­els of ser­vice, but there was the feel­ing that such high stan­dards could still be achieved at a low­er cost. To under­stand the cur­rent lev­els of oper­a­tional per­for­mance of employ­ees and con­trac­tors, and its impact on cost and per­for­mance, Renoir was invit­ed to analyse main­te­nance process­es and man­age­ment con­trol systems.

ANALYSIS

Renoir iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment in sev­er­al key areas. Labor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, for instance, was iden­ti­fied as a poten­tial area of growth, indi­cat­ing that we could har­ness the effi­cien­cy of our work­force more effectively.

Addi­tion­al­ly, our analy­sis under­scored the impor­tance of con­sis­tent adher­ence to man­age­ment pro­ce­dures and estab­lished guide­lines. Rein­force­ment of these pro­to­cols could poten­tial­ly improve oper­a­tional performance.

There were also prospects for refin­ing exist­ing process­es to enhance effi­cien­cy. This includes opti­mis­ing the man­age­ment of con­trac­tors. By fine-tuning these process­es, we could poten­tial­ly improve time man­age­ment, reduce costs, and increase over­all efficiency.

The organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture was anoth­er focus dur­ing the analy­sis. Changes to the cur­rent struc­ture could lead to increased effi­cien­cy and bet­ter allo­ca­tion of resources.

Fur­ther­more, the analy­sis incor­po­rat­ed a com­par­a­tive study of our main­te­nance per­for­mance against world-class stan­dards to iden­ti­fy areas where our process­es and tools need­ed to be improved.

Giv­en these insights, the Client accept­ed Renoir’s pro­pos­al to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inte­grate the efforts of our Main­te­nance and Oper­a­tions depart­ments. This strat­e­gy could pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive solu­tions to address the per­for­mance improve­ment con­cerns. By focus­ing on col­lab­o­ra­tion and inte­gra­tion, we were con­fi­dent that we could fos­ter sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in our oper­a­tional per­for­mance and productivity.

“The work done with Renoir’s sup­port is bring­ing great results. We are con­vinced that, at the end of this process, we will be at a new man­age­ment lev­el, with greater team pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, bet­ter per­for­mance lev­els and indi­ca­tors and — above all — the guar­an­tee of the avail­abil­i­ty of the airport’s assets.”

Car­los Fre­itas, Main­te­nance Manager

PROJECT APPROACH

The main objec­tives of the ensu­ing project were to redesign the main­te­nance and con­trac­tor man­age­ment con­trol sys­tems such that man­agers had the nec­es­sary tools that pro­vid­ed per­for­mance infor­ma­tion in a time­ly man­ner for effec­tive decision-making.

The scope cov­ered main­te­nance process­es (such as plan­ning, sched­ul­ing, back­log man­age­ment, per­for­mance report­ing, etc.) as well as orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture asso­ci­at­ed with the function.

In the first phase of the project, Renoir imple­ment­ed a work­load and mas­ter sched­ul­ing method to iden­ti­fy the oppor­tu­ni­ties relat­ing to a new orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture. Con­se­quent­ly, two Man­age­ment Action Teams (MATs) were cre­at­ed relat­ing to Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tems and Con­trac­tor Man­age­ment, each of which met on a week­ly basis to assess progress and agree any actions to ensure the plan was achieved.

In addi­tion to the MATs, the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee met every two weeks where iden­ti­fied oppor­tu­ni­ties were pre­sent­ed, guid­ance giv­en by the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee mem­bers and addi­tion­al sup­port request­ed if required.

“ The board agreed with the diag­no­sis asser­ta­tions. The project team met all our expec­ta­tions that went beyond the finan­cial result. ”

Regio Fer­nan­des, CFO

IMPLEMENTATION

The changes were imple­ment­ed over a peri­od of 20 cal­en­dar weeks, begin­ning with the devel­op­ment of the method­ol­o­gy for review­ing busi­ness process­es. The Man­age­ment Con­trol Sys­tems MAT focused on struc­tur­ing process­es, sys­tems and behav­iors, defin­ing new rules and new ways of working.

The Con­trac­tors Man­age­ment MAT objec­tives were to opti­mise each of the biggest con­tracts to gain pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and to define a mod­el for the rest of them. The project’s key ini­tia­tives were qual­i­fied and quan­ti­fied in terms of mea­sur­able improve­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with MAT members.

All man­age­ment tools and work­flows were reviewed by the area man­agers. The start­ing point for the reviews was the As-Is analy­sis of the process­es, where­by those involved in indi­vid­ual process steps – both cus­tomer and sup­pli­er — cri­tiqued the process and raised oppor­tu­ni­ties for improvement.

Tac­ti­cal­ly, we were able to lay the foun­da­tion for sus­tain­abil­i­ty, as those involved in the cri­tiques pro­mot­ed their own improve­ment ideas and were then held respon­si­ble for their implementation.

Some 200 main­te­nance plans were reviewed and improved, and an addi­tion­al 54 main­te­nance plans were cre­at­ed to address gaps. Some 13 SLAs were also gen­er­at­ed to ensure there was clar­i­ty in what was expect­ed from the main­te­nance teams; improve­ments in struc­ture and rede­f­i­n­i­tion of roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Once they were agreed, changes to process­es and man­age­ment con­trol sys­tems were imple­ment­ed by the team. To increase the con­fi­dence of staff, we under­took sev­er­al train­ing ses­sions and act­ed joint­ly in exe­cut­ing the changed process­es to ensure adher­ence to them with the tremen­dous sup­port of the Human Resources depart­ment and excel­lent atten­dance of the com­pa­ny’s employ­ees. The train­ing cours­es them­selves achieved a sat­is­fac­tion index of 96%, as indi­cat­ed by the attendees

The project’s key ini­tia­tives were qual­i­fied and quan­ti­fied in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the defined man­age­ment action teams (MATs). This ensured that the project’s key objec­tives were clear­ly under­stood, enabling a sense of own­er­ship with­in the project team. As a result of the effort, uti­liza­tion improved by 48% and back­log days reduced by 58%.

In addi­tion, the joint Client – Renoir team deliv­ered a method­ol­o­gy to review main­te­nance plans and improve their effec­tive­ness, a mas­ter sched­ul­ing method­ol­o­gy and tools to allow effi­cient allo­ca­tion of resources, tools and meth­ods to analyse the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of own and out­sourced labor, assur­ing that all improve­ment actions are fol­lowed up and com­plet­ed in a time­ly man­ner. In sum­ma­ry, not only were the improve­ment tar­gets met, but the organ­i­sa­tion now has an agreed method­ol­o­gy to under­pin a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improvement.

KEY RESULTS