Tronox is a global leader in the mining, production, and marketing of inorganic minerals and chemicals and operates two vertically integrated divisions.

The TiO2 division mines and processes titanium ore, zircon, and other minerals, and manufactures TiO2 pigments. They are the third-largest titanium feedstock producer with approximately 10% of global titanium ore production, and the second-largest producer of zircon, with approximately 20% of global production. The division operates mines and mineral processing plants in South Africa and Australia, and pigment manufacturing plants in the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia.

The Challenge

Tronox’s project management office (PMO) team encountered difficulty managing projects and building an effective plan for projects in the active pipeline. Planning and tracking of project work was being done manually, with information coming from multiple systems and spreadsheets. This method led to difficulty in daily updates and progress measurement, increased errors, and a lengthy approvals process. Schedule progress with cost information was also analyzed manually using spreadsheets. Budget and contract management in Tronox’s existing ERP system lacked the depth required to address the PMO team objectives.

Tronox wanted to implement a system to manage the entire portfolio of capital projects for Tronox Mineral Sands (TMS). They also wanted to manage the performance of their project portfolio using tools like earned value management
(EVM), cash flow dashboards, and commitments by fund sources.

The Solution

Gaea fully automated Tronox’s formerly-manual processes by implementing Primavera Unifier and P6 EPPM, and integrating both with SAP. Gaea’s team designed, configured, enhanced, and deployed nearly 60 complex and unique business processes. They set up a facility breakdown of Tronox assets in order to manage medium, large, and mega projects that were distributed across various portfolios. In addition, a facility breakdown structure was also created for effective management of assets under construction.

Reports and dashboards for key performance indicators (KPIs) were developed using Oracle BI Publisher, and a system was designed to generate project cash flows and earned value curves in Unifier.

Return On Investment

After implementation, the time required to generate reports was reduced by 99.5%, from 4-5 days to a few minutes. Gaea’s development of effective cost-control and value-engineering processes reduced Tronox overhead by 25%. Management of contingency budgets was greatly improved, and the variance in contract cost by vendor type was reduced.

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“We are proud to partner with NHC and drive such a large implementation. This will be one of the largest implementations we lead around the world so we are very excited to kick off the project and streamline NHC’s operations across the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” added Dennis Samson, vice president of operations at Gaea.

In April our CEO Sury Balasubramanian was received by his excellency Eng Mohammed Bin Saleh Albuty, CEO at NHC and sectors vice president in Saudi Arabia to officially launch the project management information system implementation. The meeting started with a presentation to officially launch the product and concluded with a tour.

“We have an active partnership with governmental and non-governmental organizations to make this project successful. We are honored to be part of this large and ambitious project and, as in every implementation, we will put ourselves into it to bring the best software support,” said Sury.

National Housing Company is the investment arm of the Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs, and Housing in the residential and commercial real estate sector in Saudi Arabia. The company has become the national enabler of the housing sector and the real estate supply system for the public and private sectors.

NHC is currently developing seven suburbs to provide housing solutions to Saudi citizens and bringing together different agencies and partners, like Gaea, to execute the real estate plan. The plan involves a total of 150,000 units spanning an area of 65,000,000 square meters.

Gaea will be leading the project management system efforts. The system will sync all the applications, information, and resources to have a comprehensive and integral project management platform and it will handle all the aspects of the plan life cycle in every sector of the seven business units (PMOs).

The PMIS implementation includes:

• Oracle Primavera Analytics
• Oracle Primavera Unifier
• Oracle Fusion PPM
• Microsoft Power BI

Learn More

Learn more about Gaea EPPM implementation services, or email us for a custom PMIS evaluation with a Gaea representative.

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For success on a software implementation project, you’ll need two kinds of “change champions.” Pre-implementation change champions put project infrastructure in place, obtain funding, and get the project rolling. Post-implementation change champions focus on end-user adoption and enhanced change management.

The article includes a list of attributes that must be understood for change champions to be successful. While you’ll rarely find all this knowledge within one individual, it’s important that the collective wisdom of your team of change agents includes proficiency in:

• The business processes they will implement;
• The skills required to drive change;
• Political savviness;
• How to incorporate user feedback into your plans and the delivered solution;
• How to sell the value of the implementation to your organization, and;
• Organized project planning and solution configuration to alleviate learning curve pains.

A key takeaway from the article is that effective communication is a vital skill that change agents must develop, and knowing your audience is the first step. Research must be conducted before you’ll be able to deliver on-target answers when you’re asked, “what’s in it for me?” Before you begin outbound communication about planned changes, utilize inbound communication. Ask your stakeholders what’s important to them and listen attentively, then map their existing pain points to your proposed solution. That’s how you’ll convince your organization that change is worth the cost and effort required.

Another takeaway is that fear can be overcome by presenting evidence of success. References from other firms in a similar industry, or that are similar in size or other details, will help convince your decision makers that the proposed solution will yield desired results. Beginning with a pilot project within one division or business unit will minimize disruption across the enterprise, provide helpful lessons learned, and deliver tangible ROI measurements that show the value of expanding change across the entire organization.

Contact Gaea today to learn how we can help you become a change champion in your industry.

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