THE Lopez Achievement Awards (LAA) cycle 2014 celebrated the feats of an even dozen winners on October 15, 2015. It was the 13th straight year for the Lopez Group to recognize the best performing teams in six categories.
Customer Focus
First Balfour met the critical challenge posed by its client and delivered a 115-kilovolt overhead transmission line (OHTL) and a substation ahead of schedule. Both were essential for the on-time commissioning of Energy Development Corporation’s (EDC) Burgos Wind Project (BWP).
First Balfour finished the OHTL two months earlier than what the leading competitor said it would take to finish a project of such scale and complexity. It involved the engineering, detailed design, procurement, construction and installation of steel poles and 128 steel towers on a 42-kilometer trail passing through Burgos, Pasuquin, Bacarra and Laoag in Ilocos Norte. The team turned over the project seven days ahead of schedule.
The same team was tapped to take over the substation project, which was behind schedule by almost four months. Originally awarded to a foreign contractor, the Burgos Substation and Interconnection Works contract, First Balfour delivered the project, enabling EDC to commission the BWP nine days ahead of schedule.
ABS-CBN subsidiary ABS-CBN Convergence Inc. launched the iWant TV app on ABS-CBNmobile and empowered subscribers to watch ABS-CBN programs anytime and anywhere they want. The company capitalized on the development of nonlinear TV viewing, where the emphasis is on mobility, convenience and choice instead of following scheduled TV channel programming.
ABS-CBN Convergence created a new habit of watching video content on mobile using the ABS-CBNmobile SIM; using the mobile-friendly iWant TV app, subscribers shifted their behavior from watching on desktop to watching on mobile, thereby increasing the average revenue-per-user of the ABSCBNmobile subscriber base.
Business Management
EDC won two business management awards: one for securing the feed-in-tariff (FiT) for its BWP ahead of competitors; and another for the first documented successful transfer of a geothermal power plant in the Philippines.
For its 150-megawatt (MW) BWP, EDC managed completion delay risks to qualify for the best scenario of receiving guaranteed revenues at the P8.53 per kilowatt-hour FiT rate for the next 20 years. Working with strategic partners to mitigate risks, the company completed construction in 17 months with over 4.5 million safe man-hours and zero losttime incidents by contractors.
After accepting the challenge of expanding the project to 150 MW from an original 87 MW, EDC had to work through regulatory, contractor performance and technical challenges to achieve successful commissioning by November 5, 2014. With a total cost of $450 million, the BWP became the biggest investment supporting the Philippine renewable energy program.
Meanwhile, another EDC team was working on the transfer of the Northern Negros Geothermal Power Plant (NNGP) from Northern Negros to Nasulo in Southern Negros. The NNGP was shut down in 2011 due to insufficient steam to operate the plant. The decision to relocate a nonperforming asset that was written off and caused EDC its first and only net loss thus far entailed a series of financial and technical evaluations that challenged the N2N Relocation Project team.
A total of 2,000 tons of equipment was transferred over a total distance of 242 kilometers, using 193 trips over land, 13th LAA cycle yields 12 winners 17 trips over sea, and crossing 16 cities and municipalities and 49 bridges in two provinces. The team withstood 23 landslides, 30 heavy rain incidents and had as many as 1,159 workers on-site at the peak of work. In addition to the physical transfer of NNGP assets and their almost Humpty Dumpty-like reassembly into a working geothermal power plant, the team had to construct additional pipelines, drill a new well and install underground cables to connect to the transmission lines.
The results directly impacted EDC’s financial results for 2014, with the newly put-together 49-MW Nasulo Power Plant contributing generation of 208 gigawatt-hours and incremental revenue of P481M to the Southern Negros group. Impairment charges of P2.3 billion on the previously non-operating asset were reversed, improving EDC’s financial condition for the year.
Operations Management
EDC also garnered two operations management awards: one for powering up the substation for the BWP; and another for securing rights-of-way for the 128 towers that were to bring the energy produced by the BWP to the grid through overhead transmission lines.
Commissioning the Burgos substation was a technical challenge overcome just six days shy of the commissioning of a competing wind farm. When its foreign contractor failed to perform, EDC stepped in to complete the project. The team borrowed substation parts from other EDC power plants and the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP). It turned to a global network of suppliers to source long-lead items. It was able to engage suppliers to replace custom-made parts that were lost. It banked on its strong working relationship with the NGCP, and tapped AECOM, which has expertise in energizing large wind farms, as technical adviser.
Successful on-time commissioning meant recurring annual revenues of P3B after the BWP qualified for the FiT rate.
At the same time, EDC’s right-of-way team was doing its share of the work. It took five years for a team of 18 to secure 100% of the needed land, involving 2,146 landowners covering an area of 800 hectares over 43 kilometers and 29 barangays. The task entailed processing more than 8,000 sets of land ownership documents. The team provided legal aid to landowners in closing documents and even helped them contact relatives when necessary.
The relatively quick negotiations were the result of the team’s extensive technical and legal knowledge of securing land rights; the efforts of local employees who knew how to speak Ilocano and understood the local scene, including what the landowners wanted; and the strategy of gaining local social acceptability by respecting the owners’ preference to lease land instead of selling land to EDC. The rights-of-way were secured, leading to the legal and on-time installation of the needed towers and transmission lines for the BWP’s proper commissioning.
Human Resource Focus
EDC scored a feat in this category with its unprecedented
