Overall project support (Owner's Engineer, Technical Agent, Lender's Engineer services)

Investment projects in power sector are characterized by relative complexity and long construction terms. The interested investor has to control the project implementation for several years at all its stages in several directions. In particular, he has to keep under observation the following:

• project business-plan correspondence with the prospects of heat and electric power distribution market, forecasted changes in price for raw materials and production;
• quality of design documentation development, estimates adequacy (it is in the interests of the design engineer to make the design project as soon as possible on the basis of available archived practices without troubling himself with cost minimization);
• approval process for general contractor’s contract (EPC, EPCM–contract) (it is in the interests of the general contractor to avoid liability for the failure to meet the deadline and project costs);
• selection of the main equipment and contract signing for delivery and maintenance (it is in the interests of the supplier to sell standard equipment with the minimum maintenance as costly as possible);
• civil and erection (it is in the interests of the contractor to build with minimum costs and not to think a lot about quality);
• coordination of contractors’ work, activity progress scheduling (it is in the interests of the contractor to be responsible for the minimum area of work without liability for interrelation with others);
• proper execution of as-built documentation, etc.

To realize such control an interested investor should have a group of experts up to 20-30 persons. During the years of the USSR, Construction owners used to have capital construction departments (ССD) and production and technical departments (PTD) made of several tens of persons with the function of technical supervision. In the world practice, it is more popular to attract independent engineering companies with constant staff and possibility not to dismiss an experienced team after any project but to transfer it to a new project to a new customer. Such companies are called Owner’s Engineer. In Russia the following terms synonymic to “Owner’s Engineer” are used: “Technical agent”, “Surveyor”, “Technical expert”.

If control is realized in the interests of the Lender or Bank, then the term “Lender’s Engineer” is used. More often banks do not need a deep technical survey over all works at site, they are more interested in survey over budget of the project, expenditures justification, etc.

The EF-TEK team was one of the originators of the Owner’s Engineer (Technical Agent) Institute in RAO UES of Russia and Lender’s Engineer in the largest Russian credit organizations. Our experts accompanied construction projects of new power units from the beginning of construction up to starting operations at power plants in Tyumen, Shatura, Yayva, Surgut, Kolpino, Vologda, Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Nyagan and other cities in the interests of the largest power companies – E.ON Russia, Fortum, TGK-2, Siberian Generating Company etc. We are ready to apply our experience in the projects of our customers.