It's no surprise a well-integrated operations team helps secure successful turnaround results. But Flint Hills Resources Turnaround Manager Andrew Jakubowski would go one step further: "Ops truly are the people who run and own the turnaround," he said. "In my short career, what I've seen so far -- especially at our Pine Bend facility -- is that successful turnarounds have one thing in common, and that is an operations team that's really driving the turnaround.
"I'm not just talking about the operators though. One specific role is the ops manager -- not that refinery leadership team level, but the guy who really owns the decision rights of the assets and the equipment as well as the operating team itself. If you have a strong ops team, they're going to get a solid scope, a solid plan and a solid execution."
Jakubowski discussed how a relatively inexperienced operations team came together to help set a new bar for turnaround readiness in one of the largest unit revamp projects and turnarounds executed within Flint Hills Resources. Addressing delegates at the AFPM Reliability & Maintenance Conference and Exhibition held recently in New Orleans, he explained this integration resulted in exemplary EHS (environmental, health and safety) results, competitive turnaround cost and schedule metrics, and a successful one-time start-up of the plant's largest crude unit.
"Who's responsible for operational readiness?" Jakubowski asked. "Is it the turnaround group? The turnaround's coming to that unit whether you're there or not. It's got to be your ops team. It's got to be them focused on: What's the scope? What's our decommissioning plan look like? What's the chem cleaning plan look like? What's the overall shutdown timeline?
"Whether during a turnaround or day to day, ops is the center of your refinery. They truly are the decision rights owners, the decision makers. They're going to get input from all the different teams. Safety, environmental, turnaround, projects, your refinery technical groups or your reliability groups -- all of those are people who give information to that ops team and help them make the right decisions.
"Overall accountability for the turnaround lies with operations. That's my bold statement. That's what I believe in, the reason being that when that turnaround is done, they have to operate it. They're incentivizing making sure that it goes well, that they have the right scope done so that their unit keeps running."
Jakubowski also addressed the question of when preparation for the next turnaround should begin, explaining it should "start at the end" -- that is, whenever the last turnaround finishes. But how many sites actually follow that advice is a different question, he acknowledged.
"We should be looking at lessons learned, and they're freshest in our heads at this moment," he said. "We meet three times a week with upper management, with lower management, with ops, and go through what is going well, what is not going well, and write them down. You will forget about them; you're going to go on vacation when the turnaround is done. It's a simple, easy practice, but it's something that we do and that we're proud of.
"Maybe you found some discovery in your turnaround, and maybe that's going to draft some scope that you have in the next one. Are you looking at what potentially caused that failure? Is your inspection team really driving what projects are going to be kicked off so that in two years, three years, four years -- whatever it is for your turnaround cycle in that unit -- you have the right projects identified and actually know that long before you get to your turnaround the next time?
"The end goal should be a work list that's 75-80 percent complete. We're personally not there, but we're trying to get there; that's our target. If you can get to that point where you can knock out your work list, you're going to have a lot more time to focus on the right challenge in your scope challenge process."
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"Successful turnarounds have one thing in common: an operations team that's really driving the turnaround."
-- Andrew Jakubowski, Flint Hills Resources