In his role as operations manager at Flint Hills Resources, Hardy Kemp focuses heavily on operational turnaround readiness. “We want to make sure there is a definite break between planning and actual execution,” he said.
Kemp, who recently led a turnaround discussion at the AFPM Reliability & Maintenance Conference and Exhibition in Austin, Texas, said he believes turnarounds should begin as soon as the current process is closed out.
“First, we solicit feedback from everybody who participated,” he said. “We ask for them to give us positives and negatives. Therefore, there is an opportunity for improvement in a turnaround. The turnaround steering team then comes together and takes a look at the responses. We prioritize them and pick the ones we can actually make a change to.
“During the event, we come together about three times a week for whiteboard sessions. We have lunch together to discuss what went well, as well as things we can improve going forward. If you have a discovery that surprises you, make sure you understand exactly how it happened. Do I have the right reliability strategy? Sometimes we even do too much. We go above and beyond, and it costs us a lot of money to keep it more reliable than we really need.”
According to Kemp, it is important to remember how adding one small scope can affect the entire event.
“Let’s all play in the same sandbox,” he said. “Let’s pull resources from the same labor pool. It’s that incremental resource you add to your event that could jeopardize the turnaround. It makes it a lot more complex. I also have to think about how much I’m spending for the reliability I’m going to get. Why am I going to spend $5 million on something I can replace every five years for $500,000 or even $1 million. I don’t know if I want to spend the $5 million upfront. I may be happy with that reliability.”
Kemp adheres to the following seven phases to ensure success:
1. Strategic — The most important thing from an operations side is to make sure objectives are met. Primary objectives determine the success of the event. If you meet those, you’ll have a successful event. Secondary objectives are ones you would like to meet, but you can’t do so if it jeopardizes the success of the primary objectives. You also want to be sure you follow practices in QA/QC.
2. & 3. Definition of scope and scope development — What is key here is to always come back to the objectives. A lot of people pick objectives but don’t apply them very well. If it does not jeopardize the objectives, do you include it in the scope? That can be hard. You put certain people on an operations team and say, “We’re not going to do this.” The response may be, “Well, why not? It’s cleaned out. It’s ready to work on.”
4. Planning — The RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed) model can be very helpful. Turnaround success relies heavily on communication. You have people who are doing all sorts of different jobs that are coming together to execute an event. Multiple people can be responsible for something. Multiple people can be consulted. And multiple people can be informed of progress made. But only one person can be accountable.
5. Turnaround readiness — During this phase, there are meet and greets where the nightshift operations person is brought in with the general foreman superintendent. They review the scope together. Prior to the event, start building communication between the teams.
6. Shutdown and decontamination — This is a team that is put together and led by process engineers. They are accountable for executing the procedure and utilizing the operations team outside of the shutdowns. You usually start with building what the shutdown timeline will look like. What did they do last time? What were the lessons learned last time? If you can improve the planning aspect of the turnaround, then you should be able to improve the overall shutdown operation.
7. Execution — Get everybody focused. Even if you’re not going to be a part of the turnaround, you’re going to be a part of the piece outside of it. Keep calm, cool and in control so you don’t influence or impact the event.
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