Lessons learned practices in the engineering, procurement and construction sector

The exploitation of lessons learned to improve performance on future projects is highly desirable for many construction organisations. The vision of an organisation that can readily recall what went well on a project and attempt to recreate those successes as well as avoiding the repetition of past mistakes offers commercial sense. This paper adopts a case study methodology to investigate how Canadian Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies address lessons learned on their construction projects. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations for UK companies regarding how the process may be improved in terms of encouraging lessons learned to occur, the timing of lessons learned sessions, identifying participants, the format for documenting lessons learned and how these should be disseminated.