Design for Maintainability: the Innovation Process in Long Term Engineering Projects

Introduction In this paper we are concerned with design and innovation in the context of long-term service driven engineering projects. These are defined as capital projects which involve, not just the manufacture or construction, delivery and/or commissioning of a capital facility, but also the long term operation and/or maintenance of that facility for the client. We argue that long-term projects create a particularly complex context for the management of innovation. The introduction of additional stakeholders and interest groups, in the form of an expanding project consortium, present particular difficulties of coordination for project managers and those concerned with managing design and innovation. The requirement for the facility provider to operate and maintain it throughout its life places a premium on technical and organisational innovations that reduce through-life cost rather than first cost. As such this may be regarded as a subtly new design paradigm. However, we also find that there are many barriers to the diffusion of this objective across all of the project actors; in particular, the design process(es) underpinning capital goods project are observed to be contextualised in different business, cultural and strategic environments. The case studies demonstrate the complexities inherent in the coordination of design and innovation in such projects and the multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives which designers are presented with. Nevertheless, the cases reveal a number of ways in which new organisational arrangements have emerged from attempts to deal with these difficulties and also some of the mechanisms that have helped companies to identify the design implications of future maintenance requirements. This paper is based upon research relating to two long-term engineering projects from the capital goods industry. They were firstly, ALSTOM Transport's project to supply and maintain a fleet of high-speed tilting trains for Virgin Trains on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) and Clarke Chapman's contract for the refurbishment, upgrading, operation and maintenance of wharf-side materials handling facilities on behalf of a newly privatised steelworks in Argentina. Background Service led, long-term capital goods projects Like many other enterprises, low volume capital goods firms in recent years have faced increasing internationalisation of markets and production and increasing competitive pressures. In addition, and due in part to the nature of the product or service they provide, many of them have been affected directly by changing regulation (e.g. environmental regulation) and/or deregulation (e.g. privatisation). These drivers have brought about fundamental changes in the sources and nature …