KCM Consulting has experience all over the world.
We have worked in Canada, Russia, Japan, Korea, South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe to name a few. Some of our engagements have been for a few weeks while others have been for several years.
Power Industry
KCM Consulting has extensive experience with Government regulated clients supporting their efforts during the large capital improvements required to support the recent build in Western Canada. KCM Consulting provided extensive support to these agencies and clients with their establishment of process and procedures to ensure consistency in their General Tariff Applications (GTA), and defense of their capital program and projects spends for prudency.
We have helped clients to develop and ensure the proper controls have been established and are being followed to help the client defend a consistent process to the regulators and provide validation of prudent methodologies in project and program management. KCM Consulting helped to establish Estimating practices and has been able to help the client reduce variances in the estimates at all stages of the project.
KCM established a “Gate Review“ process to ensure the project is sufficiently scoped, estimated, contracted, and scheduled at predetermined points in the project prior to moving to the next phase including the assurance that all required documents are completed, stored in the appropriate location.
The establishment of a defined process to support the regulatory agency inquiries by validating the costs throughout the program and projects, to document decisions made and the information used to support project teams during these decisions, to ensure that all costs are well documented, variances explained and supporting information gathered and collated has provided the clients a repeatable process that will be used in the future years. These documented processes have provided our clients the ability to ensure timeframes to address Interveners and the questions they generate.
In addition to the regulatory benefits, these improvements to project controls and the implementation of stage gates has increased the client’s control over every project including managing subcontractors and reducing change orders for scope and budget and avoiding rework. These changes to project execution have improved the ability for client to plan, execute, and defend several very large concurrent projects across large and diverse geography in Western Canada.
Regulatory Economics
We have helped our clients to develop and ensure the proper controls have been established and are being followed to ensure the client can mount a solid defense to the government regulators in a vigorous regulatory environment and demonstrate and provide validation of prudent methodologies in project and program management. Our expertise has provided in depth understanding and support to allow the clients to provide several years of consistency and defense of historical projects while helping the client to establish go-forward parameters to the organization to support a consistent and reliable management process.
We have helped clients with General Tariff Application (GTA) support including the development of their rate application, the review of existing government regulations and the coordination of the regulations with the client’s business process to ensure a valid and reliable filing. Part of this work included developing data repositories so that information is stored centrally throughout project execution and not throughout the organization on individual computers several months after project completion.
We have supported our clients to develop responses to Intervener Requests (IR’s) including research of previous responses by the client along with a review of previous applications to ensure the responses are coordinated across the multiple years and are valid and consistent. KCM will also review the client’s competitors’ responses to be able to provide our clients a solid benchmarking of the questions the Interveners are proposing. This review allows a planned and thorough response during the interactions with the Regulatory Agency and Intervenors at the hearings and meetings of the regulatory process.
Government
KCM Consulting personnel have worked for numerous government agencies and several NGO’s. We have provided support in the areas of Project design, Estimating, scheduling, construction supervision and change management.
KCM Consulting has received several government contracting vehicles including a GSA Schedule, a MOBIS Schedule along with various contract mechanism for the State of Texas.
Work with the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
KCM Personnel have supported the USACE on the Ft. Sam Houston BRAC Build Out in 2006 – 2008.
The USACE-Portland District was principally charged with the sustainment, restoration and modernization of hydro-power production facilities and dams along the Willamette, Snake, and Columbia River basins in the Pacific Northwest. This program regularly executed in excess of $500 million (US) in construction and maintenance projects on an annual basis.
KCM Personnel have supported the USACE Portland District in the integration and utilization of its P2 Project Management Tool at the Portland District Center of Operations. The P2 project management suite is a collection of software applications consisting of Oracle’s Primavera P6, Oracle Projects (a customized deployment of Oracle’s E-Business Suite Software), Corps of Engineers Financial Management Software (CEFMS) and Oracle’s Financial Analyzer (OFA). KCM Personnel provided Subject Matter Expertise in deploying, utilizing, and integration of the project management process for managing schedules as well as subject matter expertise on Primavera P6 specifically. KCM provided staff augmentation as personnel performed day to day tasking as part of the Portland District Project Controls Team to deploy, manage, and report project level data utilized by all levels of Corps management from project level through District to Headquarters. KCM personnel assisted the USACE in developing process improvement guidelines to be implemented district wide. KCM personnel also assisted in the development of an implementation plan to put the guidelines into operation and general use across the district. performed a quality assurance/control assessment to bring existing project schedules into general compliance with established and agreed benchmarks in an integrated matrix format as part of the process improvement process.
Work with the United States Air Force Center for Engineering (AFCEC)
KCM personnel have been deeply involved in the Air Force Military Family Housing and the Housing Privatization projects at numerous bases throughout the world.
KCM personnel were able to provide evaluation of the Cost estimate for the Housing Privatization project at Hickam Joint Base Pearl Harbor which resulted in a $40 million (US) savings prior to construction.
KCM personnel have provided construction oversight expertise on numerous projects at Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs including Aircraft Hanger construction, runway construction, and the NORAD Space Command construction projects.
KCM personnel provided construction execution project controls support to AFCEC (Air Force Civil Engineer Center). The services provided by KCM include compliance review and risk analysis recommendations to Air Force managers for on-going construction projects across the continental United States at active Air Force base installations. Results have been to see a long term reduction in project time and cost overruns.
KCM personnel provided project controls support to AFCEE (now AFCEC) HQ, ACC/A7 on the FY06 and FY07 Predator Beddown valued at over $84 million (US), allowing the Air Force to achieve construction of new aircraft maintenance and support infrastructure to a remote location near Las Vegas, Nevada during a construction boom period in the region. The services provided by KCM personnel allowed the Air Force to create an optimal construction delivery plan including phasing and resource level projections to attract and deliver a high quality program within the budgetary constraints placed on the projects. Once in place, KCM personnel acted as on site monitoring and project controls consultants to the Air Force to assist the delivery team in achieving projected goals.
KCM personnel provided milcon (military construction) program support for military family housing facilities damaged and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Valued at $284 million (US), it was the largest single contract for a project of this type at the time. KCM personnel assisted Air Force Engineering and Procurement in developing an optimized procurement valuation and delivery schedule to achieve delivery of 1028 housing units across 5 existing subdivisions in Biloxi, Mississippi. The specified delivery period of 4 years was considered at high risk for both quality and quantity delivery necessitating a follow on presence by KCM personnel throughout the delivery period. Acting in a consultant role, KCM personnel provided project controls support validating construction delivery progress and assisting the Air Force in communicating project progress status and earned value to all levels of the Air Force leadership through command and headquarters levels.
KCM personnel provided program support validating facility condition assessments as part of the 2005 BRAC directive to combine installation management functions for bases in close proximity to each other, in particular, those bases in located within the San Antonio, Texas SMSA. KCM personnel made recommendations up and/or downward as appropriate to revise previous determinations and assist installation management personnel in developing long term sustainment, maintenance, and restoration strategies for the combined facilities inventories.
KCM personnel provided consultant support in developing and deploying a structured approach to facility asset management for the United States Air National Guard acting on the built and natural assets valued at over $14 billion (US) based on business case principles. KCM personnel assisted base, major command, and air force wide command personnel in developing standardized levels of service and balancing costs, risks, and benefits to maximize the value of assets against mission delivery requirements. Results of this process enabled Air National Guard planning leadership with consistently expressed asset information from base locations across the Continental United States and its territories, enabling planners to continue to meet mission requirements at a time when available funding had decreased year over year to pre FY 2000 funding levels.
Work with USAID
KCM personnel provided consultant support to the United States State Department’s Millennium Challenge Corporation as project controls subject matter experts (SME) on their Water, Sanitation, and Roads development compact with the Republic of Mozambique valued at nearly $507 million (US). KCM was engaged to assist in-country staff in preparing the necessary controls vehicles to satisfy State Department requirements, consisting of project schedules and a program wide enterprise based schedule allowing team members transparent visibility to progress status at all levels of the compact. In addition, as with most projects, time being of the essence, it became necessary to prioritize the program requirements to clarify which projects would be infeasible to pursue under the compact due to time limitations. KCM personnel coordinated with the agencies in competition for compact funds to develop a comprehensive prioritization of projects to present to government officials for acceptance.
Work with Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT)
KCM personnel have extensive experience in delivering transportation sustainment, restoration, and modernization projects. KCM personnel have hands-on experience in estimating, planning, forecasting, and on-site management of highways from interstates through residential street development, bridges, airport infrastructure and rural infrastructure assets (soil retention dams, roller compacted concrete structures, etc.).
Work with Panama City, Panama Lock Expansion Project
KCM personnel were engaged to provide execution schedule re-configuration of the New Locks Project for the Panama Canal. KCM personnel assessed the project management plan as approved and developed alternatives according to the execution plan revision requested by the construction contractor, GUPC. The plan revision had extensive impacts on design requirements completion.
Province of Queensland Australia
KCM personnel supported the Australian state of Queensland’s Fitzroy Region Flood Recovery Program of 2010/2011. KCM personnel were embedded as part of a team assessing extensive flood water damage to the region’s transportation infrastructure assets. A result of the 2nd worst flood event in recorded history of the region combined with a king tide event on the Brisbane River, which serves as the largest collection basin in the region, conspired to create over $330 million (AUD) in damages to roads, airport, and railway facilities across an area of land approximately ½ the size of the State of Texas. Personnel engaged government agencies responsible for the sustainment, restoration and modernization of the regions infrastructure to develop the planning and controls vehicles to report current status and progress forecasts for the restoration projects at the project and program level. Personnel then coordinated with personnel from other affected regions in the state to combine recovery information for a state wide reporting mechanism used to brief the government and public entities.
City of Christchurch, New Zealand
KCM personnel supported the commercial properties earthquake recovery program for the City of Christchurch in New Zealand’s Canterbury region. As a result of a 7.1 and 6.3 magnitude earthquakes in 2010 and 2011, the City of Christchurch experienced nearly $60 million (NZD) worth of damage to 1,000 commercial buildings in the central business district and numerous other structures throughout the region. KCM personnel were engaged to assist the largest insurance carrier in the region, Vero, to investigate, expedite, and make final determination recommendations.