Building a new plant or relocating production is not simply a matter of moving machinery and constructing a facility; above all, it requires managing a complex, company-wide transformation. In this interview, Robert Kotas explains why it is essential to establish accountability early, integrate project schedules, work from a single source of data, and involve employees – and how to deliver change while keeping the business fully operational.
Mr Kotas, when a company decides to build a new plant or relocate existing production, what does its leadership need to clarify before the project begins?
In addition to technical parameters such as the budget, timeline, plant capacity and required technologies, I believe it is essential to start communicating with people at a very early stage. The construction work can be planned from a technical perspective, but a company is more than a collection of buildings and machines.
Paradoxically, relocating an entire company can be easier from a communications perspective than moving only selected operations. When everyone is relocating, the situation is clear. However, if the change affects only part of production or a particular department, questions arise immediately: Why us? Why them? What does this mean for us? Is another change coming?
Management therefore needs to be clear from the outset not only about what it wants to build and at what cost, but also why the project is being undertaken, how the company should operate once it is complete, and exactly what the change means for employees. The longer this information gap remains, the more it will be filled by rumours and concerns.
The project brings together construction, technology, logistics, procurement, IT and day-to-day operations. Who should have overall accountability, and when does it make sense to bring in an external project manager?
A project of this kind needs clear overall accountability. Specialists may lead individual workstreams – the construction team can manage construction, process engineers can manage technology, and IT can have its own project manager – but someone must make decisions across the project as a whole. This is where the most significant conflicts between priorities arise.
For major transformation programmes, I consider an external project manager an excellent solution. They have no legacy ties within the organisation, are not part of internal turf wars, and can assess individual requirements against the overall project objective. However, their role is not to replace internal management.
Instead, a formal internal project team must be built around them, with members who have the project genuinely embedded in their responsibilities and KPIs. A major project cannot be managed successfully if key people are expected to deal with it ‘in their spare time’ alongside their regular roles. This is often one of the underestimated causes of delay.
Relocating production is not simply about moving machinery from one facility to another. How can a company avoid transferring outdated and inefficient processes into the new plant as well?
Those decisions need to be made as early as possible – ideally while changes can still be made on a computer screen rather than in concrete.
Early in the project, several technology scenarios can be developed relatively inexpensively. Their capacity, material flows, space requirements and logistics can be calculated, and the options can be visualised using simulation or a digital twin. The cost of a robust technology analysis is negligible compared with the cost of relocating equipment after installation or modifying a completed facility.
Building or relocating a plant is also an exceptional opportunity to review business processes. The question should be asked: If we were designing this production operation from scratch today, would we design it the same way? If we simply place the current machinery and existing processes into a new building, we may end up with a modern plant that still operates in the old way – and much of the opportunity will have been lost.
How can a realistic master schedule integrate construction, procurement, technology installation and the relocation itself while minimising disruption to ongoing production?
The individual schedules are not usually the hardest part. Construction has its plan, the machinery supplier has theirs, and production has its own. The real challenge lies in coordinating them.
The delivery of new equipment is a typical example. It is not enough to know when the supplier will manufacture it. The building must be complete; the foundations must have cured sufficiently; utilities, material-handling equipment and access routes must be available; and the people responsible for accepting and commissioning the equipment must be ready. A single postponed milestone can therefore affect several subsequent activities. This is why there must be one master schedule capturing the key dependencies and the project’s critical path.
The plan cannot cover only the physical move of the machine. It must also include shutdown, dismantling, transport, installation, commissioning, testing and the ramp-up to the required capacity. All of this needs to be planned backwards from commitments to customers. The goal is not to relocate the plant as quickly as possible; it is to relocate it in a way that enables the company, wherever possible, to continue meeting its delivery commitments.
A project of this kind generates thousands of items, deadlines and interdependent decisions. What should a reliable ‘single source of truth’ look like?
My answer is slightly technical: a database, a database, and a database again. But the software itself is not the most important element. What matters is change control over the data. The company must know exactly where the current, approved information on every piece of equipment, cost item, deadline or change is held, and who is authorised to update it. As soon as multiple Excel files, presentations and local lists contain different versions of the same information, the project rapidly loses control.
Specialised systems for managing capital projects and assets are available for major investments. In practice, however, a pragmatic solution is sometimes required: even a very large project can be managed using a well-structured central spreadsheet, provided the data and the update process are clearly defined. On one project, I developed a custom synchronisation tool on top of such a data foundation. It consolidated updates from a large number of people while preserving a single, central source of truth. Technology is an enabler. What matters is discipline, consistency, data ownership and change control.
Process engineers, supervisors and shop-floor employees hold valuable know-how. How can they be involved in planning the new plant while maintaining clear accountability for the outcome?
I would use the word resistance with caution. Very often, people are not resisting the change itself; they are uncertain about what it will mean.
The most effective approach is therefore to show the future state as early and as concretely as possible. Telling employees that the new plant will be more modern is not enough. They need to know where they will work, how material will flow, where their equipment will be located and what their day-to-day work will look like. On one project, for example, we gave supervisors floor plans of the future work areas and asked them to comment on the proposed equipment locations. People with first-hand, day-to-day operational experience can identify issues that are easily overlooked from a project office.
Involvement does not mean diluting accountability. The project team must listen to operations, draw on their know-how and then make a decision. Participation and clear governance are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they complement each other very well.
You have led a wide range of projects. Which one stands out for you, and what did you achieve?
One of the largest projects I was involved in was the relocation of Škoda Transportation to its current premises in Pilsen, including the completion of new production facilities. It directly affected approximately 850 employees and tens of thousands of square metres of manufacturing space, and we completed it on schedule and within budget.
Looking back, its organisational dimension was even more interesting. It was not simply a physical relocation of production: new manufacturing processes had to be developed, production layouts had to be determined and new equipment installations coordinated – all by people who were also responsible for keeping production running. For them, developing the new processes was an additional development initiative alongside their day-to-day responsibilities.
Project management was therefore not just about monitoring deadlines. Its task was to coordinate all the teams and their members so that the company was both able and willing to change while continuing to operate. In projects of this kind, the ability to deliver change on such a scale without interrupting operations is, in my view, the most important measure of success.