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More efficient project collaboration with TenneT

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TenneT manages the Dutch high-voltage grid and in Germany, TenneT is the largest electricity transmission system operator (TSO) and manages a route from the North Sea to the Alps. TenneT serves around 40 million households. The energy transition calls for an accelerated strengthening and expansion of the current infrastructure. TenneT's investment programme will amount to tens of billions of euros in the coming decades. Executing these programmes requires enormous coordination between TenneT and its contractors.

The challenge 

Through a European tender, the contract was awarded in May 2021 to an Indian party to provide software and support for project collaboration. The SaaS software is now considered a crucial part of the application landscape. Both the project organisation and the application landscape are developing rapidly. The project collaboration system must fit in seamlessly and connect to the developing data standards. Meanwhile, the evolution from document-driven to data-driven working is progressing much faster than anticipated. The system must be able to handle both worlds.

Takeshape contribution - Seamless transition from tendering to contract and realisation

A European tender is a project in itself. It is not unusual for the project team to fall apart after the winner has been contracted and for an entirely new team to be set up for the implementation. By supervising both the tendering process and the implementation, there has been no light between the intention of the tender and the execution of the contract. In this respect TenneT retained maximum control. 

The SaaS software is an off-the-shelf package. This is not where the challenge lies. Some of the characteristics of this assignment:

  • Harmonisation of working processes within TenneT
  • Multi cultural - international team
  • Remote online teamwork - Netherlands, Germany, India
  • From document driven to data driven
  • Agile governance 

 

 

The right software for TenneT projects on- and offshore

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Connecting a wind farm to TenneT's fixed high-voltage grid easily involves more than 40 parties. The amount of coordination required to bring such a project to a successful conclusion is phenomenal. The Project Management Office of Offshore NL is in charge of this. On behalf of the PMO, I am investigating which systems are required to provide optimal support to the PMO and how these systems should be connected to the rest of the TenneT systems.

Contribution Takeshape - European Tender Project Management

After a market consultation, I led the European tender that resulted in a contract with an Indian party in May 2021. As is customary with Takeshape and complex projects, this did not happen in a straight line. During the tender process, more business units showed an interest in participating. Under the OneTenneT development, the tender was anchored higher up in the organisation so that the system would become a TenneT-wide generic service. All future projects at the major project departments and at Grid Field Operations will use the system.

In close cooperation with the IT department, architects and service managers, we were able to draw up a future-proof contract with maketype pricing. In the meantime, we had to start working with the entire team online in March 2020. In the small, well-established team, this went fantastically well. Negotiations with large teams of software providers also went well, even better, online.

In the meantime, the contract has been put on hold and implementation is in full swing.

 

 

 

Professional IT support for growing engineering firm

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In 2016, a Private Equity party stepped into the already successful Petersburg, which by then had 25 consultants. In view of the energy transition, the newly appointed management team is tasked with achieving strong growth and upgrading the organisation.

St. Petersburg is a highly qualified engineering company in the field of high voltage and pipeline infrastructure. It offers engineering, consultancy and advisory services within the energy sector. It makes designs for high-voltage substations, high-voltage connections, carries out life cycle studies. In doing so, it uses the latest techniques. In order to remain at the forefront of the sector, it opts for strong growth.

Takeshape was asked in 2018 to bring the IT support to the desired level because the current informal model is not scalable. Petersburg Consultants now has 45 employees. In a short time, I mapped out the requirements, drew up a programme of requirements and carried out a supplier selection. At the same time, I carried out an AVG assessment. This freed up engineering capacity and increased the level of IT support.