Zero Base Execution℠

Zero Base Execution℠

Abstract

Fluor's Zero Base Execution℠ (ZBE℠) process helps clients to achieve cost and time savings by aligning the project design from the start with client business drivers without excess.

Traditional execution methods are based on past designs and then value engineered to reduce costs. The designs produced by this value engineering retain many of the limitations of the earlier designs: outdated technologies along with excessive specifications and standards. As a result, value engineering delivers only marginal improvements.

By contrast, Zero Base Execution reverses the conventional method, taking a clean-slate approach. ZBE aligns the design premise with project goals before design execution and starts by working with clients to establish the project’s business drivers, class of facility, and project minimum requirements. From this basis, the cost and scope are developed in a deliberate fashion, with items only added if they are consistent with project goals and improve the business case. ZBE develops capital-efficient execution to meet project requirements while ensuring that the design and operation are safe, legal, and operable.

Client Benefits

The benefits of Zero Base Execution come from a focus on four major strategies:

  • Better build approach. This is achieved by design for fabricability and constructability, optimization of resources, and techniques and technologies such as the Fluor Scaffold Solution and advanced work packaging.
  • Minimum kit. This involves process configuration, the selection of technologies, and decisions on spares and redundant equipment.
  • Reduced quantities. These are achieved by the evaluation of buildings and layouts, integration with key vendors, and Fluor technologies.
  • Low-cost sourcing. This includes sourcing from high-value countries as well as offshore fabrication and assembly.

The goal of ZBE is to deliver the most capital-efficient facility design and execution approach, resulting in cost savings and benefits such as a reduced project footprint and elimination of unnecessary components. After development of the ZBE design, then value-enhancing opportunities are evaluated to see whether they can improve the project’s return on investment.

Benefits to this approach include:

  • Development of the most capital-efficient solution possible, with safety and operability as the foundation.
  • All stakeholders have an inherent ownership in, and familiarity with, the design base.
  • Any requirements above the minimum ZBE are vetted on a cost-benefit basis and therefore improve the project, rather than impair its viability.
  • There is a transparent and deliberate addition of cost/scope, recognizing the impact on capital intensity.