People are compelled to pause and reflect when they read the statement of Thomas Reid in his “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,” “In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.”
This is the line that should give us pause and contemplation when we are considering opportunistic turnarounds and outages. Whenever margins decline, and demand is in decline as well, it becomes pretty tempting to cut production and take on opportunistic work. Margins and demand may be strong arguments for taking an outage, but other factors may be like weak links in a chain. Some of us are old enough to reminisce on the old days when we would basically take a unit out of service and then figure out what to do with it! When we least need the production and are making the lowest profits on the unit, that is the ideal time to take it down and perform a turnaround, right?
Comparing it to the Indianapolis 500, when is it the ideal time to make a pit stop? The question may be more practical if it was reversed: When is it a bad time to make a pit stop? If some of your crew members are not in the pit or if your crew doesn’t have all its tools and supplies ready to go, that would be a bad time to make a pit stop. Turnarounds account for the single largest maintenance expense in a refinery. If a turnaround is done without adequate preparation, the costs can escalate dramatically, safety can be compromised significantly and the quality of the maintenance may be reduced severely.
Before embarking on an opportunistic turnaround, the manager should review carefully his front end loading process and consider what advantages are being compromised or abandoned altogether. He should pull his team together and ask some tough questions: How will we ensure proper scope development and definition? How will we manage team alignment? What will be the impact on the bidding process, contractor selection, contractor preparation and pricing? Do we have sufficient time for long-lead items to be procured? What will be the impact on the quality of drawings and job notes? What is the status of capital projects that are being planned for the next turnaround? Is there sufficient time for project controls people such as estimators, planners, schedulers and cost engineers to perform detailed work with a high degree of accuracy? Is there sufficient opportunity for risk identification and mitigation? Is there adequate time to create an effective logistics plan? Will the execution team have the opportunity to construct “what-if” scenarios to compare the pros and cons of several different options so the project can be executed as safely and proficiently as possible? Is there adequate time for us to prepare for and take full advantage of the pre-tar phase?
These and other questions must be answered satisfactorily. When the front end loading process is short circuited, it can place great stress on the entire turnaround organization and may even prompt the silent question: Is it the front end loading process that is not important, or is it the quality of the turnaround that is not important?
With every turnaround he leads, the turnaround manager is putting at risk the confidence of his superiors and the respect of his team. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to push back on the eager “ivory tower,” who maybe has lost touch with what it takes to execute a successful turnaround. There is not much else in the world that compares to the intensity and fatigue of a turnaround. We should help them understand which parts of the process will have to be abandoned or altered in order to meet the shortened timeline. They must know the disadvantages and risks associated with each deviation from the process. In keeping with good business practice, they should formally approve the deviations from the prescribed methodology.
Taking an opportunistic outage may be the best decision. But nothing should be taken for granted when so much is at stake — the safety of personnel is at risk, the environment is at risk, the equipment is at risk and the budget is at risk. The old adage “haste makes waste” is doubly true when it comes to turnarounds.
For more information, contact Mike Bischoff at (281) 461-9340, email sales@tamanagement.com or visit www.tamanagement.com.
