Dangote Refinery’s Many Completion Dates
Reasons for the Uncertainty
Dangote Refinery completion dates:
- Late 2018 – Original proposed completion date when construction work began in 2016.
- Early 2020 – Revised completion date when major structural construction began in 2017. Aliko Dangote estimated that the refinery would be mechanically complete in late 2019 and commissioned in early 2020.
- Early 2021 – Revised completion date announced by Devakumar Edwin, Group Executive Director (GED), Strategy, Capital Projects and Portfolio Development, Dangote Industries, in July 2020.
- Early 2022 – Revised completion date announced by Devakumar Edwin, Group Executive Director (GED), Strategy, Capital Projects and Portfolio Development, Dangote Industries. He was reported in the S&P Global Commodity Insights of 01 November 2021 as saying “Dangote refinery to be operational by early 2022 despite shipping constraints.”
- Third quarter of 2022 – Revised completion date announced by Aliko Dangote during a tour of the plant with Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank on Saturday, 22 Jan 2022.
- By May 2023 – Latest completion date announced by the Chairman of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, on Friday 22 April 2022, during a visit to the Nigerian President. He assured that the Dangote Refinery would be ready for commissioning before the end of the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
One is bound to ask why nobody, including the owner and the Executive Director of Strategy, Capital Projects, and Portfolio Development, has been able to tell the project completion date with certainty.
On more than one occasion during the project development, experts had expressed reservation when the project status and completion date were announced. I had also expressed reservation based on the little that I knew about what was happening on the project site.
Now, here are some of the reasons why the status of completion of this project may be fuzzy or why the project has been experiencing continuous slippage:
- Scope Creep
This is where items that were not part of the original scope are being added on a continuous basis. Of course, additional scope items require additional resources and time. This may impact milestone or project completion date. However, we are not aware of any major change in the project scope in recent times. Therefore, this is probably not the reason.
- Incomplete Scope Statement
If the project team does not have a complete scope of work that captures all the work, and only the work, required to complete the project then they will ‘discover’ some scope items when they think they have completed the project.
- Poorly Defined Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Without an appropriate Work Breakdown Structure that decomposes the scope of work into manageable work components for management, measurement, control, and reporting, the project team doesn’t really know how much work they have to complete or have completed.
- Poor Progress Measurement
Finally, without a robust, integrated, progress measurement system that is appropriate for accurate measurement of all components of the work, and that rolls up accrued progress from the lowest to the highest level, then there is no way to tell how much work has been completed and how much remains to be completed. Without this, a popular construction project control saying turns up:
“The project attains 90% completion the day after it starts and stays there for ever after.”
I suspect that this is one of the major reasons behind the many completion dates of the Dangote Refinery.
- Ineffective Recovery Plan
As I stated in my essay on How to Prepare a Recovery Plan that Works, no project runs exactly as planned entirely on its own. Many factors come into play during project execution with negative impact on project progress.
A competent project team, armed with an effective recovery plan, can bring the project back on track regardless of what happens. That is why organizations need to register their staff in my course.
This is obviously one of the major causes of the many missed completion dates of Dangote Refinery.
Well, do not take my word for it. Devakumar Edwin, Executive Director Projects, Dangote Industries was reported as saying that they have laid out plans to catch up with the delay period and they are trying to put it into action. If it works out well, they will still be able to maintain the original completion dates and if it doesn’t, the maximum delay period will be 2 months from the completion date of early 2021.
Well, the catch-up plans did not work, that is why the completion date is now end of 2022 or May 2023. He needs to register his people in my course.
Because of this uncertain completion date, Nigeria, according to Reuters, will spend 9.6 billion dollars on fuel subsidy in 2022. This is 47% of the cost of Dangote refinery and petrochemical plant built with 20.5 billion dollars. That is the cost an organization pays when it does not know how to prepare a recovery plan that works.
Does your team know how to prepare one?
Download a free recovery plan checklist here.
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