Snapshot
A plant-based beverage company looked to expand their self-production capabilities and sustainability claims by forming their own bottles on-site from recycled PET (rPET). Catapult provided substantial in-depth project management in order to maintain production while undergoing significant facility upgrades.
The Challenge
Client launched multiple concurrent capital expenditure projects in order to update their facilities. These capex projects totalled 10x the average annual capex spend in the entirety of the client’s history.
These projects included landing a pair of rPET blow molders, building expansions, and building out additional lines. This required several project managers to work together to establish multiple timelines that were both independent and also interdependent on each other.
Catapult’s original project was to support the project management of landing and commissioning of the rPET blow molders. The role expanded into working with multiple project managers to establish timelines, as well as working with the financial department to maintain visibility of the costs incurred to prevent needless cash flow issues and project budget overruns.
The Approach
All well-managed projects begin with a firm understanding of the project setting and potential influencing factors and projects. In this case, Catapult immediately began working with external project managers for the building expansion, as well as the internal engineers who ran smaller concurrent projects. This allowed the team to pull together the interdependencies across all projects and establish a common Gantt chart of the interdependent timelines.
With the establishment of the common timelines, Catapult also reorganized the budgetary system associated with the rPET project. This allowed a granular approach on the project’s budgetary balance, in which the template was applicable to future projects. Further, the payment of each invoice was charted out to ensure that capital was liquid and available to meet all outstanding liabilities on time.
As the project continued, regular reporting was instituted to ensure all stakeholders were well informed of progress and potential roadblocks, allowing the Client to be proactive in heading off problems rather than reactive to existing problems. This necessitated developing a common form of communication and reporting to be created and applied to projects not limited to Catapult’s purview.
As Catapult’s project came to its inevitable conclusion, Catapult trained in-house teams on how to continuously improve their processes.
The Results and Benefits
As a result of Catapult’s involvement, this client was able to supply its customers while installing/commissioning two blow molders. This allowed the client to produce any of the three bottle sizes previously produced by a supplier and sold to the client with a markup, driving down their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). Finally, the client was able to move from virgin PET to 100% recycled PET in one large project, instead of in two projects as originally planned.
This project completed under budget and within the agreed upon operational timeline parameters.