Relying on more than 30 years' experience with turnarounds in the oil and gas industry, Joe Jackson has compiled a "baker's dozen" list of various challenges that commonly lead to problems during these scheduled maintenance events.
Joe Jackson, project process assurance for LyondellBasell.
The list of challenges includes poor integration with capital projects, subpar field productivity and a host of other concerns, according to Jackson, project process assurance for LyondellBasell.
But the most prevalent top-tier issue that impacts the success or failure of a turnaround, Jackson said, is the human factor -- specifically the availability and retention of qualified craft.
Citing projections compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jackson highlighted three messages that have emerged in workforce participation trends between 2010 and 2020.
The first message is "people haven't retired as much as they were expecting, probably because of the financial crisis and the impact on retirement [benefits]. A lot of people have chosen to remain in the workforce," Jackson reported in a webcast recently offered by Petrochemical Update (Reuters Events).
The second statistical message Jackson shared is a decline in the population of men in the workforce and an increase in the population of women.
"That might pose specific challenges to attracting women into the crafts and other job roles that are more nontraditional for them," he said.
The third message from the labor data, according to Jackson, is "all the big projects going on right now have sucked up a whole lot of resources that would normally be available to the turnaround."
Jackson emphasized the importance of "scope scrutiny" to an organization's ability to find and retain its workforce.
"Hopefully, [scope scrutiny] reduces the challenge in some ways so you need fewer craftspeople to help take care of the physical work in the field," he said.
The ability to "ferret out competition within the industry through inside channels" increases the chance of obtaining and retaining available talent, Jackson said.
"There are groups that have developed that talk about what's going on in their industrial neighborhood so they can figure out who's doing what when and see what the pulls on their talent pool are," he elaborated.
Jackson also recommended maintaining turnaround contractors through multiple projects, when possible, as well as considering "a multiyear deal with a contract organization to greatly reduce the scramble for talent."
Holding on to 'tribal knowledge'
Developing a reputation of loyalty to contractors and employees helps organizations win the war for talent during turnarounds, Jackson explained.
"Also, is your site one of those sites that is a preferred work location for contractors?" he asked. "If your site treats the contractor in a way so he wants to work there, chances are you can attract them there [over competitors' sites]."
Jackson also endorsed the idea of soliciting and recruiting industry retirees.
"I'm sure everybody is [recruiting retirees] now to use all the resources and the brainpower they have," he stated. "People's roles seem to change and transition quite frequently. New process engineers and management who rotate from [craft work] roles into corporate roles, do you have the tribal knowledge, or do you have to figure out other mechanisms to remember your learnings?"
Among all of an organization's groups, integration is the common thread holding turnarounds together.
"It takes everybody's inclusion to make things fit and work right in a valid plan that can then be optimized and is effective, efficient and competitive," Jackson concluded. "Integration, seamless work execution, optimization of the facility's downtime and shared resources all help keep these things moving."
