Precision in Testing — How McDermott & QMW Raised the Bar for Commissioning Quality
Commissioning quality on large offshore projects depends on thousands of test records being created, linked, and signed off in the right order. McDermott and QMW used Konnect xD to bring precision to a process that had always relied on paper.
The Commissioning Quality Problem
Commissioning is where engineering meets reality. A mechanical completion certificate means every piece of equipment has been installed to specification. A pre-commissioning record means every test has been performed and signed off. A punch list means every outstanding item has been identified, categorised, and assigned.
On a complex offshore project, this process involves hundreds of systems, thousands of tags, tens of thousands of individual test records. The margin for error is zero. A single test record that references the wrong tag, or a commissioning certificate signed off against an outdated revision of the datasheet, can hold up first oil for weeks.
The traditional approach — document management systems, paper-based punch lists, email chains for sign-off — is not capable of the precision this environment demands.
The Project
Working across a major offshore platform project, McDermott and their testing partner QMW needed to establish a commissioning management workflow that could handle the volume and complexity of the scope while maintaining the documentation integrity required for handover to the asset owner.
The core challenge was traceability. Every test needed to link back to the engineering tag it was performed against. Every punch item needed to link to the inspection record that raised it. Every certificate needed to trace through to the completed test packages that supported it.
What Konnect xD Delivered
The Konnect xD commissioning module provided the structured data layer that connected all of these relationships. Rather than letting the connections between tests, tags, and certificates live in a folder structure or a project engineer's memory, Konnect xD enforced them at the data level.
Key capabilities deployed on the project included:
Tag-linked test records: Every test record was created against a specific engineering tag, with the tag's latest-revision datasheet attributes automatically populated at record creation time.
Punch list management with category discipline: Punch items were classified at the point of raise — A, B, or C category, assigned to the responsible party, with mandatory documentation fields — eliminating the ambiguity that typically accumulates during walk-down.
Certificate pack automation: When all tests for a system were complete and signed off, the certificate pack was assembled automatically from the linked records, rather than manually compiled from PDFs across multiple folders.
The Outcome
The project closed commissioning documentation with a defect rate significantly lower than the team's previous comparable project. More importantly, the final handover package was assembled in a fraction of the time typically required — because the data had been structured correctly from the first test record rather than having to be reorganised at handover.
For McDermott and QMW, the value wasn't just in executing the commissioning more efficiently. It was in demonstrating to the asset owner a level of documentation discipline and traceability that differentiated their delivery.