The importance of communication ahead of a turnaround was recently discussed by a trio of Houston-area turnaround managers.
Roy Wilson, senior turnaround event manager at Pemex's refinery in Deer Park, Texas, spoke with Brendan Nelson of Ascend Performance Materials and Jeff Spigener of INEOS.
Wilson said a turnaround is essentially a reliability event and a company needs the right "scope gun" at the right time. Communication around that scope and the criteria for scope-acceptance is key. "You almost can't over-communicate; that's a fact," Wilson said.
Nelson said Ascend publishes a five-year outlook on its turnarounds, which contains the date that the turnaround will begin. He said that Ascend is very intentional about getting that information to everyone at the plant.
"I think that's one of the things about just over-communicating on important dates like that," Nelson said.
He explained that there is a lot of communication, including daily meetings about exactly what is coming up and when it needs to get project scopes.
"There's actually a lot of work that goes into submitting scopes and communicating what we expect when we submit the scope," Nelson added.
Spigener agreed with Nelson and noted that INEOS prioritizes in the same way that Ascend does. "A year out, we're offering scope and compliance stuff."
Wilson asked the panel what tools they use to make sure the entire organization knows, for example, exactly where to go find to out when scope freeze is taking place for turnaround X, 18 months from now.
Nelson replied that emails, daily meetings and even text messages are ways that his team communicates, and added that they were beginning to use Microsoft SharePoint.
"I think we've seen the availability of a tool like that, and just how easy it can be to get information on a centralized site like SharePoint," Nelson said. Ascend ended up putting a lot of documentation and information into SharePoint to make it more widely effective.
Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. It can be used as a secure place to store, organize, share and access information from any device, according to the Microsoft SharePoint website.
"We've gravitated more toward SharePoint just because it's so easy to use and get information on there," Nelson said. Ascend's SharePoint site for turnarounds has its five year outlook, key turnaround dates and development milestones.
Wilson asked the panel if they had been able to weave in some new technology over the past few years to improve communication, and where they saw this going regarding technology improving communication.
"Unfortunately, we haven't made as much progress in that as I'd like to see," Wilson said. However, he said Ascend is looking at new technologies like remote confined space monitoring. "So we will look at that and then other things like how do we get iPads for quality control package signoffs, and how do we get repair plans faster, right from the field to the guys that need to do the work."
At INEOS, Spigener said it has a group that scans and builds 3-D and new map models on the unit. INEOS uses the models for planning, which are given to operators at some point so they can look at them - especially while they putting the unit back together.
Wilson said that PEMEX has started using Microsoft OneNote, which is "one cross-functional notebook for all note-taking needs," according to the OneNote website.
"I see a lot of event teams now using OneNote," Wilson said. "OneNote does several things. It can create a tab per meeting, and one can look back and see the history and how that team has progressed and what the key aspects of the conversation were."
Wilson said that if team members end up with cell phones in the unit, "They're only as good as the contact list you have. It's that simple stuff that people will overlook that will make or break how well your communications are."
Wilson chaired the panel of turnaround managers at the recent Downstream USA 2022, held in Houston.
