About Us
Purdue University is launching a new center of excellence named Purdue EPCOM, which is The Center for Facility Delivery Work Process Excellence. EPCOM is an acronym for Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Operations and Maintenance. This new center of excellence offers engineering and construction project delivery work process solutions for large and small companies.
The Purdue EPCOM Team
The Purdue EPCOM industry consultants and academic-applied innovation experts have enjoyed many years working together in many segments of the heavy engineering/construction industry. This was done in various relationships with owner and contractor companies and universities around the world. They have now come together under Purdue EPCOM to push the limits of operational excellence. The Purdue EPCOM focus is on its strategies to deploy improvements that support member and client due diligence. Evidence is available for the success of Purdue EPCOM strategies through decades of industry performance. One challenge/opportunity is to bring the best of what other industries have done into the heavy engineering/construction industry. Learn more about the Purdue EPCOM team members.
Improve Project Planning and Execution
The Purdue EPCOM mission is to facilitate rapid improvement of operational excellence for its members and clients through corporate cultural realignment, collaboration, influencing policy and governance, training and/or continuing education.
At the recommendation of industry leaders, Purdue EPCOM was formed to assist company executives leading operational excellence initiatives, addressing performance and labor force education challenges, while identifying innovative solutions through collaboration.
Purdue EPCOM will lead the industry by finding improvement opportunities for planning and execution in any phase of project delivery—project definition, detailed engineering, procurement, construction or operations. Breakthrough to full implementation of solutions will be facilitated with full skill and stakeholder engagement from industry and academia.
Rapid Continuous Improvement
Purdue EPCOM builds into its members and clients the knowledge, competence and capacity for rapid continuous improvement and sustained commitment to operational excellence.
In short, the EPCOM center integrates the most appropriate solutions, whether the solutions are industry best practices, value-driven practices, empirically-customized practices or current-need-customized practices. To overcome barriers, Purdue EPCOM integrates carefully-matched solutions which create discernible benefit to stakeholders in the facility delivery process.
Supported by Purdue University Research
Purdue EPCOM researches advanced principles and processes (means and methods) and develops advanced tools (IT solutions, etc.) that support the path to operational excellence. The renewed emphasis is to eliminate work processes and/or habits that frustrate clients, for example, to better integrate:
- Robust opportunity shaping
- Facility project performance criteria (basic data) extraction and deployment
- The full range of engineering disciplines, (including, but not limited to, construction engineering, optimized operations and total productive maintenance)
- Management toward reliable time reduction (higher productivity) and lower cost of facility delivery
- Reduced schedule and startup cost to design production rates and quality
- Sustained implementation and executive priorities for improvement
Aligning Academics with Industry Needs
Purdue EPCOM enhances Purdue University undergraduate and graduate education with new courses, content and competency validation with advancing industry-aligned certification. Purdue EPCOM also trains working professionals, including distance learning and Professional Engineer (PE) preparation and integration of improved principles, means and methods into the curriculum to improve the next generation of professionals working in the heavy engineering/building, plant and infrastructure construction industries.
Our Focus
The Purdue EPCOM focus is on process improvement for all phases of facility delivery, including front-end-loading/preplanning, detailed design, procurement, construction, operation and maintenance. The emphasis is on balanced improvement of KPIs such as safety, quality, cost, schedule, and sustainability for both owners and contractors.
