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Management of shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages (STOs) has improved substantially over the last twenty years. Issues such as competitive pressures in manufacturing (from globalization) and increased utilization levels of power generation (due to increased demand for power and continuing mechanization and automation) have placed an aggressive focus on managing STOs to minimize downtime of continuous production assets.
Company Culture
A culture created for “Turnaround Excellence” starts with the organization as a whole, not the individual. What is company culture? Company culture is the fabric of an organization, and is evident in everything an organization does and impacts how its employees and contractors act. It is driven by leadership and corporate objectives. True success in getting employees and contractors to participate in the company culture with heads, hands, and heart, is not just about “engaging them” in employee programs, but about what kind of leaders they have and leadership's focus and commitment.
If you only talk about projects and schedules, there is nothing for employees to connect with personally. If your company culture is strong and systemic to the business – from the shop floor to the c-level – everything matters. You imprint decisions, values, and memories onto an organization, and it and everyone in it acts by nature to its culture.
How can an organization “Walk the walk” and “Talk the talk” around safety, training, recognition, reward, work ethic, governance, process, communication, honesty, responsibility, ownership, and leadership?
Operations Integration into Process
Successful operations integration comes from communication between senior management, project leadership, operations, engineering, maintenance, and contractors to obtain buy-in, form alliances, common goals, and objectives early in the process.
Key areas include:
Effective and Strategic Steering Committee
A steering committee represents the strategic part of the TA planning and execution process. It is where the planning for STOs start, where most optimizations, decisions, and issues get resolved. The steering committee drives the initiative, motivates the team, fosters leaders to solve key issues, and sets up expectations for the project, employee, and contractor.
Scope Development
The scope needs to be comprehensive and the foundational document for an STO.
Elements include:
Contractor Strategy
Developing a comprehensive contractor strategy is one of the key factors in the success of an STO. Contractor management is identified as a major issue for STO events for many reasons, including the challenges derived from an aging workforce, shortages in technical skills and crafts, outsourcing of maintenance functions, globalization, and more. This has led to major competition among asset-intensive industries for contractors of decent quality at a reasonable cost. The issues and processes range from sourcing the contractors to managing them on-site.
Several issues include:
Project Management
Many organizations have made significant progress on how STOs are managed. Many of these companies have recognized that STOs are repeatable events that follow a lifecycle and can be optimally managed through formalized processes and systems which fit that lifecycle. Doing so enables learning, re-use of information, and effort from previous similar events.
Turnaround / Capital Project Integration
STOs become challenging when you have turnaround priorities combined with a capital project. They are different processes that need to be integrated and communicated when they cross over. A capital project is a long-term event, while a turnaround is hour-by-hour. Integration of the two is critical for the planning stages of a successful turnaround. Turnaround teams involved in capital projects should address the key factors of internal resources, trades, skills, availability, spares, and simultaneous contractors. Oftentimes, turnaround teams get involved with capital projects way too late, when they would benefit from being aware and involved with them from the start.
Scheduling and Managing Change
There must be communication between the turnaround team, contractors, and operations to guarantee the continuity of the project and its 24x7 active schedule. How you control and track the progress and react to the unexpected is important.
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