your post does not make alot of sense. The techniques i speak of are universal and common aross the engineering and construction industry. What really makes no sense is that because Bordynuik has taken so long tinkering with his toys and perfecting things, he has spent $30 million and got nowhere. Time is money. If you would think in in those terms, you would "get" what I am saying.
Capital projects work like this in a company: They spend a % of the capital budget doing varous levels of estimates and studies on a proposed capital investment. To pull some raw numbers out, they may spend 5% of the total on a FEL 1, 10% on a FEL 2, and maybe 3% on a FEL 3. You can look up what those terms mean on the internet. I did, and there is plenty available. At each stage there is a gate. A project can be cancelled at any time.
That is what those companies that tried and failed with the DEC may have been doing. They were just doing their homework and analysis prior to making a bad decison.
The final Go/ NO Go decision occurs after or partly through a FEL 3. At that time engineering is 80% complete, and Procurement is ready to order Long-Lead items. There is no turning back beyond this point.
For example, a project may be 30% complete, yet be over 50% Committed. That is the cost of the parts they have paid for and are in transit. If they were to terminate the project, it would cost them that much.
After the final GO/ NO GO, time is money. They get it done.
In JBIs case, I have estimated the capital cost of the first 3 processors at 2 Million. THat would justify 20% being spent on Engineering prior to making a Go/ No Go decision. That is 400k. At $100/hour that is 4000 hours or about 2 manyears. A team of 5-6 for 6 months. Perfect. After that kind of analysis, it should be a 6-month build by an outside firm.
Double it because it is the first time for the process... still. Something should have been running long ago.
Part of the FEL 1 analysis is ROI analysis. THey know what the return is going to be. Every day of lost production is work so many dollars... the race is on..
ANyway, companies typically go to third parties (Engineering companies) for a coupe of reasons; it is not their core competiency, and it is valuable and sometimes required by securities laws to get a second opinion when such a large sum of money is being spent. I worked on Feasibility Studies for projects over 1 Billion. Companies focus on Sales, Marketing, etc. Besides which, why take on all those people for work which by definition is for a short time?
WHen the project is done, the asset is priced and put on the books as a Capital asset and the project is over. Team disperses.
THe list of engineering companies in Canada that do this is:
Hatch
AMEC
Bechtel
Worley-Parsons... etc...
These engineering companies develop areas of expertise but they all basically do the same things;
Architectural
Process
Mechanical
Electrical
Piping
etc....
Now compare this to JBI...
- they are trying to throw money at the problem without even knowing if it will pay for itself. I have never seen any detailed analysis out of JBI on ROI. Investors should feel better if they get just one machine working profitably before they build a second one.
- they are doing it all inhouse (on the CC they talked about hiring engineers, building fab shops) THis is hugely expensive.
- they do not to my knowledge have a construction package (set of drawings, etc) that would enable an outside firm to build their product. THe closest outfit hat might be able to do that is Islechem. TO my knowledge that is not their function.
- they are moving in some good directions with their modular construction, etc, but they have also spent 2 years doing it...
- they rely on private equity (PIPE offerings)
Most importantly, this is NOT what they told early investors. When I first started posting here in early 2010, I understood that they could always rely on tape revenues, which would support the business while the P2O was developed. That was a complete lie. THen there were multiple announcements about "commercial operations beginning". Never happened.
So.. two things...
If JBI was misleading in 2010 about their prospects... how do you know they will be successful now??
and
how many millions of dollars will be spent before they have something that can at least run continuously (and prove it, of course)... ?
Still not a good investment IMO.
Management...
