Turnarounds have been a challenging part of the industry for many years. Whether it's work scopes untying, operations failures or shortages of craft, all turnarounds seem to have the same chronic problems. A panel of owners recently gathered at the Downstream, Engineering, Construction & Maintenance Conference and Expo in New Orleans to discuss emerging challenges and lingering issues in turnaround planning. They provided their insight and expertise to help find solutions.
According to the panelists, the No. 1 cause of failure for an event is unrealistic expectations from leadership. Establishing a clear line early on in the planning phase to measure against is important. Roger Burwell, site lead of contractors management for Covestro, explained pure consistency has been extremely beneficial for his plant.
"We've had a major reorganization and restructuring of reporting lines for consistency," Burwell said. "We now report to an on-site manager, which makes our decision and line of authority much shorter, and we can quickly make decisions that save us money. Before this, every division completed reporting differently. When contractors were brought on-site, there was no consistency. If they were working with four different business units, they might as well have been working in four different plants. Management became clear and consistent on how they do things, whether you're working in one side of the plant or the other."
"We develop relationships with our suppliers and contractors, and we try to get everyone involved," said Gerard Pena, turnaround materials management/logistics lead for Covestro. "After each turnaround, we get together with the business units and contractors and document our lessons learned. We keep on learning."
Defining the right scope for a turnaround event can be challenging. When it comes to starting this process, Burwell stated clear strategies in the planning phase must be established.
"The business unit or units need to define what it is they want in the way of maintenance and projects," Burwell said. "This should come to a turnaround organization predefined and preapproved. There should be a general idea of the cost, but there should never be a wish list sent to the turnaround group. Have a clear, defined scope from the very beginning and understand what the deliverables are in terms of schedule, cost and reliability. You should also have a clear, defined schedule from production -- first out, first in."
"To define a turnaround's scope, we look at what we want to do and what's regulatory," Pena explained. "Once we have that information, then we determine if it's a task that needs to be done during a turnaround or if we can complete it outside of the turnaround. We include all engineers in the unit, and we talk to the project people to see what projects are happening in the turnaround. Talking with everyone helps us determine what needs to be done versus what we want to have done."
Managing the scope of the turnaround is also incredibly important to make sure the precise work is completed.
"As we collect the scope of work from production and operations, we also capture the justification for performing each one of those maintenance repairs or activities," said Jaime Plascencia, senior turnaround coordinator for Tesoro. "If there is any wish work, we go through a risk ranking tool. We decide if it makes sense to add this work to the turnaround. Having the right scope and completing the proper justifications and risk ranking is essential."
Changing the scope is often seen as adding jobs, which affects what materials are needed on-site. But deleting tasks from the scope also affects materials and man-hours.
"Before a turnaround starts, we want to have all the materials here 60 days prior," Pena said. "If there are tasks deleted from the scope, it affects us big-time. We've already put in those hours for planning and acquiring the materials. Now there are materials on-site that aren't needed because those jobs aren't being completed."
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"Before a turnaround starts, we want to have all the materials here 60 days prior."
-- Gerard Pena, Covestro
