How Planning For Plant Turnarounds Ensures Success
Plant turnaround and start-up is an important aspect of plant maintenance that helps improve the life expectancy of assets. It is no longer the responsibility of only the maintenance department but involves organisations to set up a multifunctional team responsible for turnaround planning and execution. A good and detailed turnaround process requires a well-defined work process that helps in the better management of employees, reduced downtime and increased chances of a successful plant turnaround and start-up.
Better Management of Resources
The turnaround steering committee typically consists of the facility’s senior management to manage the turnaround’s scope and budget. This a practical way to define the different job scopes of the team members, outlining the type of activities involved in the process, while ensuring that a clear communication flow is maintained within the team. Hence, a detailed work process outlines the department’s requirements for an efficient shutdown and turnaround process and the organisation is able to better plan for the resources to do so.
Reduced Downtime
Another advantage of having a well-defined work process includes clear identification of the critical path schedules alongside alternative execution methods. The process helps to clearly identify all turnaround work inputs such as risk-based inspection and reliability items, capital works, compliance items, HAZOP study outputs, operational, process engineering and maintenance requirements. Other work development deliverables include an integrated plan (schedule, equipment, and resources), preliminary critical path schedule, budget and audit report. As the scope is properly defined, organisations can identify the most cost-effective approach to minimum downtime to be used.
Increased Likelihood of Success
A well-defined work process clearly describes the timeline, scope, resources and stages of a successful plant shutdown and turnaround. With that, the organisation has the information required to measure turnaround performance and ensure that several important criteria are met. Criteria includes total cost of turnaround and routine maintenance, plant turnaround costs, frequency, number of accidents, number of start-up incidents, number of unscheduled shutdowns and more. Therefore, having a review at the end of the work process provides the organisation with a benchmarking tool to measure turnaround performance while improving the chances of a successful plant turnarounds and start-up. Organisations that complete turnarounds on time, on budget, and without surprises invariably have a defined work process and adhere to it.
Advanced Shutdown Turnaround and Start-Up is a 3-day course held from 21 – 23 Nov 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, designed to improve your company’s approach to planning and scheduling through the provision of a framework for effective turnaround execution. The course provides a comprehensive knowledge base for turnarounds, demonstrates the latest planning techniques for turnarounds and highlights the operational check out and start-up requirements. The course is led by an expert with over 30 years of experience in the field of turnaround management. For more information, please visit us at http://www.opuskinetic.com/training or contact us at info@opuskinetic.com.
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