case studies
Government
Marine Energy Challenge
- Client
- The Carbon Trust - Innovative Low Carbon Technology Development
- Sector
- Government
- Download as PDF
- Marine Energy Challenge
Project description
The UK government is committed to reducing carbon emissions and to providing a proportion of energy needs through renewable sources. Wave and tidal energy devices will become an element of this provision.
Currently, there is little understanding as to whether these types of devices can become economically viable. The Marine Energy Challenge - run by The Carbon Trust - was set up to determine whether specific device types are likely to become economic, and
how this might be achieved.
The project deliverables were dependent on a disparate group of partners who were developing various prototype devices and the engineers supporting their development.
Chaucer was engaged firstly to provide project management expertise, discipline and rigour to the project in order to deliver the crucial objective of determining current cost and performance measures. Chaucer then project managed a program of cost reduction and performance improvement reviews in a wide variety of environments so that the devices might reach an economical cost of energy production.
Chaucer's scope
Program management, governance and assurance
Planning, resource scheduling, progress monitoring and tracking
Project accounting and budget/project cost control
Work schedule management (both at project level and for individual work teams)
Risk management and mitigation
Management reporting and facilitation of meetings
Interface and interdependency identification and control
Weekly status reports and monthly progress reports/meetings were used as a vehicle for ensuring that each device was being developed in the appropriate manner
Benefits
The project was highly successful and fully delivered a clear picture of whether wave and tidal devices can become economically competitive for provision of renewable energy in the future.
The project was delivered on time - despite the major challenge of working with a huge variety of engineering companies, Universities and other research and development organisations - each with their own internal standards and dispersed throughout the UK.
The rigour that Chaucer brought to the project allowed for full control to be put in place and a series of prototype reviews which allowed full scrutiny and assessment of device performance and economic viability.
In such a hugely complex environment, a key benefit was the systemised, detailed management of all the interfaces and interdependencies between functions and third party service suppliers. Chaucer’s approach brought a level playing field to a diverse and innovative development environment.
Based on the success of this project, Chaucer has been retained by The Carbon Trust to work on similar projects with significant project management challenges.
