Dr. Robert Spear
Dr. Spear is the Owner and Principal Consultant of Project Performance Improvement, LLC. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Oklahoma State University, and has 48+ years of hands on experience in leading international E-C companies in the onshore and offshore oil and gas, petrochemical and power industries. He has served on project leadership teams in executing EPC projects with TICs ranging from $25 million to $2 billion in all phases of a project ranging from FEL-2 through mechanical completion.
Project roles have included serving as a Project Quality Manager and Senior Project Consultant responsible for ensuring that E-C contractors’ project execution systems and CII - IPA Value Improvement Practices, were planned and effectively implemented on projects. He is an expert in facilitating VIPs for Technology Selection, Class of Plant Quality, Design to Capacity, Process Simplification, Energy Optimization, Water Minimization, Project Risk Management and Project Lessons Learned, and in leading Phase-Gate Reviews at the end of all EPC phases. The VIPs he has facilitated have led to well over $500 million in project cost savings. Dr. Spear also has extensive experience in supporting IPA Project Assessments during FEL-2 and FEL-3, and in analyzing and identifying improvement opportunities in IPA’s proprietary Performance Benchmarking Reports.
In addition, Dr. Spear has received extensive specialized training in business improvement methodologies, and has benchmarked their use in more than 50 U.S. companies who have achieved best-in-class performance in their industries. This experience includes implementing methodologies to improve both manufacturing and project delivery processes, including Total Quality Management, Theory of Constraints, Critical Chains, Value Engineering, Systems Thinking, Lean and Six Sigma. These insights have allowed him to lead corporate business improvement initiatives in a leading E-C contractor that achieved best-in-class improvements in project execution, customer satisfaction, employee motivation, management leadership and financial performance.
Robert was a licensed Professional Engineer (Alberta, Canada) and served on two CII Research Teams (RT-10 and RT-31) identifying TQM best practices in the E-C industry.
Edwin Hyde
Edwin Hyde is a Principal Consultant of Project Performance Improvement, LLC. He graduated from the University of Houston with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, and has over 45+ years of Project Management experience delivering projects in the petrochemical, chemical, refining, and offshore industry sectors.
Edwin gained the reputation for generating above average business results for his clients. Majority of the projects his teams executed were fast track and first-of-a-kind where business units staked their futures on the outcomes of these projects. His projects typically achieved 10%-25% schedule and cost reductions while meeting all of the business goals. The development of specialized planning and scheduling techniques originated from the experience gained delivering these types of projects.
He took this experience to his role as manager of a strategic business initiative leading to significant profit gains for his company. By combining these techniques with production system improvement approaches put forward by Dr. Spear, he led teams to develop innovative planning systems that allowed his company to negotiate major project awards versus competitive bidding and execute these projects with significant increases in profit while delivering exceptional business results for their clients. He also led an internal hit team that coached project teams in applying this innovative planning system into their project plans and schedules. During his tenure, he coached the planning and scheduling of more than 75 major projects.
Mr. Hyde served on CII’s Constructability Research Team that developed CII SP34-1 Constructability Implementation Guide. He also led constructability programs on major projects in Canada and Britain, significantly increasing construction productivity through the application of modularization, work structuring and alignment and field construction packaging.
Edwin holds a Professional Engineering License from the State of Texas. He is also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.