Achieving successful turnarounds is a group effort, according to Junaid Muhammad, director of manufacturing for Huntsman Corp.
"Make sure your steering team consists of all the turnaround guys as well as the capital guys," Muhammad said. "It's very important both of them are there. Then make sure the teams are talking to each other."
Equally important, Muhammad said, is that turnaround success be well defined and understood by all stakeholders.
"Let the capital guys know what needs to be done, and make sure the turnaround guys know what the capital guys need to do to make the turnaround successful," he said.
Muhammad noted it's also important for the project team to discuss challenges with local operators and team leaders to avoid last-minute construction issues.
"You are spending a lot of cash for a very short time, and at the end of the day there will be great benefits," Muhammad continued, speaking on a panel at the Downstream Virtual Conference and Exhibition presented by Petrochemical Update (Reuters Events). "So it's important to have your 'A Team' involved, whether it's the capital guys or the turnaround guys. Leadership should ensure they have their 'A Team' in, so they can bring 'A Team' results."
Muhammad also recommended teams gather together for regular meetings to share lessons learned from previous projects.
"Six months fly by and a lot of work is getting done, but it's very easy to get blindsided when you're involved," he said. "It's good to have a session once a week or once a month or whatever suits you, where your guys sit down and look at the past projects and have a discussion about 'Have we taken care of all of these things?' That helps a lot."
Standardization and process
Randy Pound, global director of maintenance and reliability for Olin Corp., shared two concepts he believes are key to a successful turnaround strategy: standardization and process.
He pointed to the advantage of standardizing software tools. "For example, the capital projects group and contractors may be using Microsoft Project to do their scheduling, while the turnaround team is using Primavera, and somebody else may even be using some other scheduling software," Pound explained.
Utilizing a single software across groups "makes the process of compiling the schedule so much easier and error-free," he said.
Pound also recommended "focusing on the turnaround as a process, as opposed to an event," to achieve greater turnaround success.
"What I mean by 'process' is we actually follow a front-end loading process for turnarounds similar to what a lot of companies do for capital projects," he said, adding that the turnaround should be viewed as a "complete lifecycle and the milestones that have to occur" in order to foster continuous improvement.
"Thinking of a turnaround as a lifecycle helps bring the teams together, as opposed to just having an event that has a start and an end and then everybody goes back to their separate offices when it's over," he said.
"It's never over," Pound continued. "It's a complete lifecycle and it's part of our asset reliability strategy."
Pound said he believes turnarounds are often judged by their duration, how many injuries occur and the overall quality of the process.
"But turnarounds should be judged as part of integrated asset reliability," he concluded. "[A] turnaround is part of the system. It's not a standalone thing. And I really think that helps bring the teams together."
