SAP Project Systems for Capital and Maintenance Projects

Key challenges

Capital investment projects are part of a bigger picture: Investment Programs. At the early stage Investment ideas are assigned to program items. Ideas are estimated, balanced and prioritised. Once approved an idea becomes investment project with allocated budget distributed from program item. Capital projects vary in size and are often executed using maintenance orders, which are used to plan resources, schedule work dates, procure materials and services, confirm labour hours etc. Maintenance orders collect actual cost that are settled to assets via project or directly.

Large capital investment projects are planned and executed almost the same way as any engineering and construction project with the following differences:

There is no revenue planning, no profit recognition and no customer billing
Capital projects assigned to investment program items. Project budget distributed from program items
A degree of usage of internal labour and outsourced contractors vary depending on the industry and geographical region
In all other aspects, capital investment projects are managed the same way and have similar requirements as any other construction projects

Managing capital projects requires the ability to coordinate:

Estimating and project planning includes:

Performing cost estimation on various stages of a project’s lifecycle (from concept plan to final estimate)
Budget allocation, resource requirement planning and balancing across other projects, programs and portfolios
Defining long-lead time equipment to procure

Work order execution stemming from project planning includes:

Work orders generated and assigned to project tasks and/or work-packages
Detailed dates schedule, material requirements planning, detailed resource planning is performed on work order level
Labour time confirmation, material inventory management, procurement of long-lead items, procurement of sub-contracted services
Fixed asset integration (directly or via project WBS)

Project forecasting (or on-going financial replanning) in integration with work orders includes:

Visibility of all actual costs collected by work orders or posted directly to project network activities or WBS element (e.g. design, engineering)
Integrating actual costs and labour from work orders and recalculating project progress, remaining Costs To Complete and Estimate At Completion
Project forecasting for predicting budget overruns early before they actually hit the project
Project cash flow forecasting calculated from cost forecasts
Calculating project earned values and progress

Project variations and issue management includes:

Keeping track of project variations, budget transfers and adjustments between work-packages with complete audit trail history
Estimating costs of variations and seamlessly integrating them into project budget and forecasts
Managing project contingencies and reporting them separately from variations affecting project budget

Project and program reporting and analysis includes:

Top-down (from program down to project) control of allocated budget and funds
Bottom-up (from project up to program) visibility of actual costs, forecasts of estimated costs to complete and costs at completion, forecast of remaining resource requirements, forecast of potential budget overruns
Reporting on project financial KPIs (e.g. cash, budget, forecast at completion, open orders, forecast profit margin etc.)
Project financial history snapshot and analysis including budget and forecasts at completion changes over time

Noveco provides solutions for capital and maintenance projects

Many organizations even today manage and report their projects using excel spreadsheets or using various isolated and not integrated software applications.

SAP PPM, Project System enhanced with Noveco provide an integrated set of industry-specific solutions designed to manage every aspect of your capital projects seamlessly and effectively.

SAP PS with Noveco addresses all above mentioned requirements directly in SAP: no need for third-party non-SAP solutions and most importantly no excel spread sheets!

What Noveco does that SAP standard does not

Noveco integrates work orders into project planning and forecasting, which means:

Project Planning is done on the project level: on WBS or Network Activities
Detailed work planning, execution and confirmation is done though work orders assigned to project WBS or Network Activities
Forecasting remaining work and costs to complete is performed on WBS or Network Activities taking actual work and costs from assigned work orders

Noveco simplifies SAP PS, while enhancing functionality.

Cost Estimation

Quickly and easily create estimates directly in SAP by copying estimating templates or previously created estimates
Create as many estimate versions as needed to simulate different scenarios
Use flexible formulas to calculate price escalation, surcharges, risks, contingencies and profit margins
Maintain estimating structures different from project structures
Transfer estimated costs to project structure by drag & drop. This way you can automatically create project costs plan in SAP PS without typing it manually
Compare Estimated Costs vs Project Forecasts and Actuals at any time during project lifecycle

Project Forecasting

With Noveco Project Manager Workbench you can:

Review Project KPIs in a graphical dashboard
Automatically calculate project Cost To Complete (CTC) and Estimated At Completion (EAC) based on actual costs and purchasing commitments posted to your project
- Automatic recalculation can be run for multiple projects overnight as a background job saving project managers time of doing it manually in Excel sheets
Manually adjust CTC and EAC directly in SAP using PM Workbench
Distribute costs by period: Budget, Cost To Complete, PO Commitments
Single point-and-click to drill down to source documents assigned to your project: purchase orders, goods and invoice receipts, time sheets etc.
Forecast project Cash Out based on open PO Commitments, uncommitted costs and posted invoices
Automatic project forecast history tracking
Instant and immediate integration with SAP without any interfaces

Integrated Variation and Risk Management

Plan costs within one variation document
Assign variation costs to multiple project elements (WBS, Network Activities and orders) within one variation document
Control status of variations (e.g. Pending, Approved) with automatic cost allocation to assigned project elements (WBS, Network Activities. Project current budget and cost to complete are updated depending on variation status
Contingency management in complete integration with variations, budgets and forecasts
Full integration with project cost forecasting and reporting
Create Risks Threats and Opportunities with probabilities and their expected values to simulate various scenarios on impact on project KPIs

Noveco’s Project Manager Portal and Reporting

Provide instant visibility into your capital projects, enabling you to analyse, forecast and report directly in SAP without need for Excel spreadsheets.

Graphical KPI with configurable layout
Report on all project financial information including Progress and Earned Values past, current and future
Various reporting layouts provided: Graphical view with dynamic navigation, list view, period view
Download to Excel or use Excel in place view option
Full history of project KPIs: Budget, Forecast Cost At Completion, Commitments etc, See how your project(s) have evolved during their lifecycle
Drill down to the source documents
Always the most up-to-date real-time data directly from SAP

Project Scheduling with Gantt Chart

Project Schedule using relationships and duration set in network activities.

Noveco Gantt Chart provides the following key functionalities:

Graphical representation of project WBS, Networks, activities, relationships, milestones, maintenance and production orders
Reschedule maintenance and production orders by changing dates of related project WBS or network activities
Schedule project sections by drag & drop
Drag & drop or stretch network activities to reschedule all related project elements automatically
Schedule only part of the project by simply selecting project element and clicking “Schedule” button. The system uses concept top-down and left to write scheduling leaving top elements not affected.
See Plan and Actual POC on project chart instantly
Actual duration, Earliest and Latest dates
Set Date Constrains and fixed intervals between activities
Automatically re-distribute project costs and work demand
Complete and seamless integration with project dates in SAP PS