The complete life cycle of a production facility has many phases requiring many different skills and many different personalities. It is not unlike the life cycle of a person and many parallels can be drawn from it. I leave some of these analogous situations to your fertile minds. The author, having worked in operations, plant design, plant commissioning, marketing and many other interesting situations through the industry has drawn from this experience and examples given by many associates in the industry._x000D_
The phases seen are as follows: Concept Studies - someone has a bright idea of how to make a dollar._x000D_
Scope Studies - what possible processes/options that could make a dollar._x000D_
Prefeasibility Study - the viable' scope options are studied to develop feasible options._x000D_
Feasibility study - defines the concepts that should be designed to make a viable project thus enabling financing and project commitment to be made._x000D_
Detailed Design - an intermediate step that consolidates the inputs to give a robust plant that can be constructed._x000D_
Construction - people can see what they thought was going to occur and start to understand the plant._x000D_
Commissioning - the hand-over of ownership' from the conceiver's to the operators._x000D_
Operations - the toy' has become reality and money must be made._x000D_
De-commissioning - the plant has seen out the useful life of the ore deposit, it now goes through a further process required by society._x000D_
Across these phases of plant design run several countervailing management requirements that can influence the outcome of the plant design. Some of the management rigours that have to be applied to the various phases are as follows: costing basis of the various phases; operational and maintenance reviews; sustainable development; risk assessment; reliability reviews; equipment availability; commissioning time; and environmental review._x000D_
This paper endeavours to awaken people to the phases that projects require for a successful outcome and the management rigour that has to be applied throughout the phases to ensure the correct intellectual horsepower is applied at the right time to ensure the best outcome._x000D_
Many of you would be parents and realise this is not unlike the development of children, teenagers, adults, retirees and ongoing.