Stand-up of operational excellence for a mega power plant build

A major greenfield power generation programme in the Gulf was approaching the late construction and pre-commissioning phase under a multinational EPC consortium. Programme governance was strong on engineering and procurement, but operational excellence — the discipline that translates construction completion into reliable steady-state operation — had no owner, no playbook, and no reporting line. The CEO of the operating company faced a regulatory commissioning window with no meaningful operational readiness function in place. Conventional consulting engagements would have produced a strategy document; a permanent hire would have arrived after the window closed. The mandate had to be senior, embedded, and immediate.

Xelyr took the operational excellence chair on the executive committee with full authority over the OE function — methodology, hiring rubric, governance cadence, and reporting line into the CEO. Scope covered the development of operational procedures, the design of the integrated performance management system across plant operations, and the establishment of a board-grade reporting rhythm that connected daily plant data to weekly executive review and monthly board commentary. Success was defined narrowly: a fully running OE function at handover, with documented procedures, a trained core team, and a performance dashboard tied to the regional regulator’s reporting requirements.

The work moved on three workstreams in parallel. First, procedure development — a full operational procedure stack covering safety, maintenance, performance management, and outage planning, structured against international power industry references (IEEE, ISO 55000, INPO operating principles) and adapted to the local regulatory context. Second, performance analytics — a KPI tree from plant-level availability and heat rate down to unit-level performance, fed by an integrated business data layer pulling from the DCS, the CMMS, and the financial system. Third, governance — a daily plant cadence, a weekly executive review, and a monthly board pack designed for a non-technical board reading technical performance. The OE function was built around a small core team of operators identified, recruited, and trained inside the mandate window.

Function operational at handover. Twelve operational procedures published. Integrated performance dashboard live with daily refresh. Reporting cycle compressed from a six-week lag to next-day. The OE chair was successfully transitioned to a permanent senior leader at the close of the mandate.