INEIGHT CASE STUDY:
CS ENERGY
MANAGING MAJOR NEW INVESTMENTS
Based in Queensland, Australia, CS Energy provides customized energy solutions to some of the state’s biggest industries and employers. The company also operates a joint venture with Alinta Energy to provide electricity to more than 214,000 residential and small commercial customers in South-East Queensland. CS Energy’s generation and storage portfolio includes thermal power stations, solar and wind energy, renewable hydrogen, grid-scale batteries, and pumped hydro.
As CS Energy continues to evolve and diversify, it’s making major investments in new energy technologies. The company is currently working on four greenfield capital projects – one in final commissioning stages, two that are partway through construction, and one at the design stage — with a total value of AUD 1.4 billion (USD 930 million).
To manage the projects, CS Energy had been relying on SAP solutions with Microsoft Project, Outlook, and Excel. Manual data entry created the risk of human error in formulas, and multiple file copies resulted in different figures, dates, and conclusions.
Wes Horwood, Head of Future Energy Projects at CS Energy, says: “There’s a misperception that you can manage just about everything in Outlook and Excel. For these big new energy projects, we wanted to bring it all together in a much more controlled, coordinated, consistent, single-source-of-truth approach to project delivery.”
“The two key advantages with InEight are that it’s a single suite of tools that all work together consistently, and that I can get anybody from my extended project team to be part of any project.”
-Wes Horwood, Head of Future Energy Projects, CS Energy
214,000
CS Energy joint venture with Alinta Energy provides electricity to more than 214,000 residential and small commercial customers
$1.4 Billion
CS Energy is currently working on four greenfield capital projects with a total value of AUD $1.4 billion
CHOOSING A TIGHTLY INTEGRATED SOLUTION
Jenny Heit, Senior Project Controls for Renewable Energy Projects at CS Energy, says: “Instead of choosing a variety of providers and doing our own integration to make the systems work together, we chose InEight as a complete packaged solution to cover all requirements.”
CS Energy is using eight solutions from the InEight integrated platform to manage its project portfolio: Document, Schedule, Control, Contract, Change, Completions, Model, and Plan.
Wes Horwood says: “The two key advantages with InEight are that it’s a single suite of tools that all work together consistently, and that I can get anybody from my extended project team to be part of any project. I’m not constrained by the physical boundaries of my organization, and I can work very dynamically. InEight gives me a lot more flexibility and communication across systems.”