Collaboration Gaps in Facility Design Lead to Costly LNG and Pipeline Errors
I. MCPHILLIPS, BL Companies, Melville, New York (U.S.)
(P&GJ) — Today, energy facilities are being built in an environment very different from the one that existed 50 yrs ago. Design teams are distributed, project managers rotate frequently and new technology and regulations—from AI-assisted design tools to process safety-driven requirements—have altered the way projects come together.
These advances all yield benefits for the construction of liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities, regulator stations and other utility infrastructure. However, there is an unintended side effect: a disconnect between the people who design facilities and those that will operate them.
That gap is more than a nuisance—it’s a source of cost overruns, delays and, in some cases, outright failures. Too often, a facility is designed to meet every code requirement but ends up impractical, or even impossible, for operators to run safely and efficiently. Conversely, if a project team focuses solely on operational concerns, other unintended consequences present themselves. The disconnect tends to reveal itself in small but telling ways.
For example, take a regulator station redesign that seemed straightforward. The engineering team was told to prioritize access, so they did by designing 23 separate manhole covers into the layout. Twenty-three! The project met the directive and complied with standards, but when neighbors saw a street riddled with steel, they questioned whether the utility knew what it was doing. A decision made to satisfy a single stakeholder ended up undermining community trust. The facility owner got what it thought it wanted, but not what it needed.
A changing culture of design. In earlier decades, projects often ran through contractors who carried institutional knowledge. A new plant was built in much the same way as the last one, with incremental improvements, but operators had little voice. That model was rigid, which meant it was also predictable.
Today, the picture looks very different. Process safety management, citing requirements and environmental standards have created new expectations. Jurisdictions may have multiple authorities jockeying to weigh in with their input or added requirements. In addition, engineers are now much more likely to go straight from school into an engineering design role without the benefit of any hands-on working experience in the field, as was much more typical in the past.1
Organizations also often have more specialization within their job titles, and in some cases, the goals of one line of business may be in conflict with those of other departments. Owners demand input from multiple perspectives: engineering, safety, process safety, operations and construction. The result is more people in the room, more opinions to reconcile, and more risk that projects stall while preferences are debated.
The irony is that greater collaboration was supposed to solve these problems; in many cases, involving operators early helps ensure the facility will work in practice. However, collaboration without leadership is just noise. Someone—typically the asset owner or project manager—must have both the authority and the responsibility to make final decisions. Without that, the process becomes endless and, in many ways, counterproductive.
Lessons from the field. In the author’s experience, the projects that run most smoothly share a few common qualities. They start with clarity on who owns the asset. That person or group becomes the clearinghouse for decisions, the one who listens to competing perspectives but ultimately makes the call on what is in the best interest overall for the project and its stakeholders. This is not about stifling input, but about preventing a project from spinning endlessly because no one feels empowered to choose a direction.
Consistency in this leadership is paramount. Personnel changes are inevitable, but when each new arrival resets expectations, the result is confusion. Projects that succeed tend to be guided by a steady vision from the owner’s side, even as the players come and go.
Operators must also be brought into the process early and with a clearly defined role. Their voice is essential, but it should represent the philosophy of operations at the facility, not just one person’s preferences. When a single individual’s opinion dominates, the project is vulnerable to short-sighted choices (sometimes leading to far more manholes than you might really need, for example). It also makes a project vulnerable to changes later on in its lifecycle if new personnel are rotated onto the project.
A modern view on safety. In addition to the operationally driven influences in the design process, the philosophy of how safety is viewed has also morphed, changing how we look at and account for risk in the design process. Process safety has introduced a whole new way of looking at potential issues and seeking to remediate those before they ever have a chance to occur.
Gone are the days when a potential risk could be written off because it has never happened before. Instead, designs must assess the likelihood and consequences of a potential event, and whether the overall risk would require mitigation through design changes.
This approach does introduce additional potential complexities into the design by adding additional layers of protection to address those risks, but it is important not to overlook the importance of design through the lens of process safety. Designing infrastructure according to regulations is good, but regulations typically offer a backward-looking perspective, where requirements are implemented based on lessons learned. Process safety, however, is a forward-looking view on risk mitigation, and may shine light on things regulatory requirements have not yet contemplated.
This is where the operational interface must come back into play. If you add complexity to the design to address potential risks, the impact on the people operating that asset must be considered. Designers must understand that people are human, and humans are imperfect.
As much as we may want to think the best of everyone, we must recognize that mistakes will be made at some point. Maintaining an operational focus in design helps reduce that likelihood, and that is often not just an operational benefit but can also be a safety and environmental benefit. Simplicity and predictability can help an operator make the right decision when time is of the essence.
Closing the gap. None of these points are revolutionary: engineers know that designs must account for operation; operators know that practical realities matter more than drawings; and owners know that projects need leadership. However, in today’s industry environment, where tighter budgets, shorter schedules, and heightened regulatory pressure reign, the consequences of ignoring these truths are greater than ever.
What is needed is not just collaboration, but collaboration with accountability. Engineers cannot design in a vacuum, operators cannot dictate in isolation, and owners cannot expect consensus to emerge without stepping in to lead. The facility designs that succeed are the ones where these groups come together, guided by a shared commitment to technical standards, operational realities and, above all, a willingness to compromise to support the bigger picture.
That is how costly rework is avoided, timelines are protected, and how energy facilities can be designed not only to meet code, but to actually work for the people who depend on them.
About the author
IAN MCPHILLIPS is the Director of Energy Engineering at BL Companies, leading a team delivering natural gas, LNG, compressed natural gas (CNG) and renewable natural gas (RNG) projects. His engineering background includes work on natural gas transmission, distribution, meter/regulator stations, LNG, CNG and RNG assets.
LITERATURE CITED
1 American Society for Engineering Education, “AC 2009-1233: Determining the importance of hands-on ability for engineers,” 2009, online: https://share.google/4qd0au02IX9s54KxL