Turnarounds (TARs) are among the most challenging and complex projects for petrochemical and refinery teams to safely and successfully execute. Since the entire process must be taken offline for an extended period of time, these strategic events must be conducted under strict time constraints with severe financial repercussions for unanticipated delays or inadequate planning, execution and control.
Implementing and applying best practices is essential to eliminating or mitigating performance risks during TARs. The following six best practices will optimize your next TAR:
1.Strategic planning: TARs are scheduled years in advance, often in 5-10 year cycles. The TAR strategy needs to be aligned with an organization's overall business plan, focusing on profitability, maximizing asset performance and minimizing lost profit opportunities. A strategic review conducted with a comprehensive understanding of an organization's priorities, market demand, logistics, maintenance requirements and operational bottlenecks helps in defining a long-term plan and developing a master TAR schedule. This should be a cyclical process that is reviewed and revised after each TAR closeout.
2.Comprehensive scope management: Managing scope can be one of the biggest struggles for TAR teams. Every effort needs to be made to adequately prevent "scope creep," where the TAR's original objectives expand during the course of the TAR's progress. A comprehensive scope challenge process must be applied throughout the planning and execution of the TAR to eliminate all nonessential, non-TAR scope items. Identifying and freezing the scope should be completed 8-12 months prior to TAR execution. Additional scope needs to be challenged through a qualification, control and change process, and if it fails to meet the qualifications, the item should be rejected accordingly.
3.Process safety management: TARs can include an influx of 1,000-plus contractors and their equipment with an excess of 100,000 individual activities, which significantly increases the risk potential of safety accidents and incidents. All safety-related equipment should be pre-inspected to confirm proper operation or replaced as necessary. There needs to be a sufficient quantity of the appropriate portable gas detectors, respirators and fall protection. Safety orientation training plans need to be developed to ensure all contractors are familiar with the refinery's permitting and safety policies and proper use and maintenance of their PPE.
4.Transparent communication: Direct, clear, accurate and timely information throughout TARs is imperative to create a culture of trust, teamwork and problem- solving. These massive and hectic undertakings demand effective and transparent communication to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities, is on the same page and is working as efficiently as possible. Key stakeholders must be kept apprised of all significant developments throughout these events to ensure interdepartmental alignment and avoid miscommunication and delays.
5.Manage and control performance: Realistic key performance objectives for safety, quality, cost engineering, contractor performance and schedule duration must be established and implemented. Since TARs are dynamic in nature, effective project controls should be instituted to affect immediate performance. Field execution supervision needs to be engaged early in the TAR planning process to ensure they clearly understand and are aligned with the TAR's objectives. These critical players need to expect the unexpected, think critically and solve problems. They also need to be assigned the appropriate number of resources or teams to manage.
6.Post-TAR lessons learned analysis: TARs are recurring and cyclical in nature. Adopting a robust continuous improvement methodology is critical to optimizing and refining future TARs. Approximately 30-90 days following every TAR, a lessons learned analysis must be conducted to not only identify the strengths and weaknesses of the TAR performance itself, but also avoid repeating the same organizational and fundamental mistakes. These lessons must be reviewed and integrated into the subsequent TAR preparation.
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