Irving Oil - Fluor Alliance for Refinery and Marine Terminal EPC

Client: Irving Oil

Location: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Business Segments: Energy SolutionsUrban Solutions

Map showing the location of Irving Oil - Fluor Alliance for Refinery and Marine Terminal EPC

Executive Summary

The alliance is a mix of Fluor and Irving employees who together deliver capital projects to support the 300,000 barrel/day refinery and associated marine terminals.

Started in 1997, the alliance executes an average of $100 million per year of sustaining capital projects and up to $300 million per year of large investment capital projects.

In 2017, Irving Oil and Fluor celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the two companies' business alliance. Fluor teams provide engineering, procurement and construction support to projects, completing more than 3.4 million work hours on alliance projects.

The Irving Oil Alliance project received Fluor's Hugh Coble Project Excellence Award in 2007. The award is based on outstanding performance in several areas, including safety, value creation and client and community relations.

Client's Challenge

Founded in 1924 by K. C. Irving, Irving Oil is a family-owned and privately held regional energy processing, transporting and marketing company headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, with marketing operations in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States.

Irving Oil has more than 7,000 employees and 700 fueling locations, operations from 13 marine terminals and a delivery fleet of tractor-trailers. Its wholesale, commercial and retail customers are located in Eastern Canada, Quebec and New England.

The alliance was founded with a long-term view and a trust that over time people would develop, efficiencies would be gained and lower-cost projects would be the norm. Over the years, the alliance has evolved into an exclusively local team that is able to work share larger projects to other offices.

The team has an ownership of the work, blurring the lines between Fluor and Irving. It is often difficult to pick out the Fluor employees in a room.

Fluor's Solution

Fluor provides full service engineering, procurement and construction support services in the alliance with Irving Oil.

Fluor teams have averaged 80 people, peaking at 150 in Saint John during some large capital expansions. More than 3,400,000 hours have been worked by the Fluor team on alliance projects.

Housed in an office complex near the Saint John, New Brunswick refinery, the local team performs full-discipline engineering, materials management and project management services for large and small projects at all Irving Oil locations. Both Fluor and client staff work under the direction of a Fluor project manager, and leadership of the group is integrated with Irving Oil management.

The alliance has continually met ambitious goals and high standards. One example is the Better Way Program, identifying over 1,000 ideas, for an estimated savings of $40 million.

Conclusion

Through its alliance with Fluor, Irving Oil benefits from access to industry experts, technologies and a local, multidiscipline engineering team to support its operating facility.

In return, Fluor has benefitted from a sustaining project workload, has been a part of several large expansion projects and has "rewritten the book" on how alliances should thrive through trust and a long-term view. Fluor staff have access to the largest refinery in Canada and are included in all Irving and Fluor employee events and initiatives, reflecting the culture of "one team."