Project Definition Readiness Index Applied on Power Station Projects

ESKOM constantly manages capital projects to sustain its assets (power stations, transmission lines, distribution lines and buildings) and to increase its operational life cycle. The past decade was marked by an increasing number of capital projects for the power utility in South Africa, due to the organisation's objectives to refurbish the Power Station systems as most of them have reached their useful design life cycle. ESKOM had to also expanded its generation and transmission capacity to meet South Africäs increases energy demands. ESKOM adapted the Project Definition Readiness Index (PDRI) instrument as part of its Front End Planning (FEP), to address the challenge of poor scope definition resulting in scope creep, project costs escalations and delays. The PDRI provides a quantitative measure of the level of the scope definition of the project. It correlates the level of the scope definition to project success factors.