Challenging the turnaround task/activities to minimize the cost and duration without jeopardizing the plant reliability.

Turnaround in capital intensive industries such as oil & gas, energy sector, petrochemical and refinery is a very expensive event impacting significantly the profit margin of the organization. Therefore, it is very critical to examine each activity of the task list generated for turnaround much before 2 years of turnaround event date.
Some of the questions must be raised such as “How many of the task/activities of list are generated on account of
• Legal requirements imposed upon the company?
• Actual maintenance needs based on equipment manufacturers’ recommendations and genuine requirements evolved by experience?
• Fixing chronic problems, reliability issues, which have never been investigated to find the root cause? Root cause analysis must be concluded before putting in task list.
• Ritual tasks which are simply unnecessary and can be executed in steady state operation?
• Avoidable attrition by process fluids or product substances (corrosion, fouling etc.)?
• Shortcomings inherited from design, procurement, installation and commissioning?
• Inadequacies in the approved plant operation procedures?
• Incorrect operation of the plant?
• Insufficient environmental protection?
• Lack of competence on the part of those (at any level) who operate
and maintain the plant?
• Insufficient preventive maintenance throughout the year?
• Unrealistic expectations by the plant owners (overloading the plant)?
 All such tasks generate cost, but are they all necessary? If they are accepted unquestioningly as ‘maintenance’ tasks then the definition of ‘Turnaround’ may change.
If, on the other hand, it is recognized that all of the tasks on the list can be investigated with a view to eliminating, or at least minimizing, them, then the first step has been taken towards challenging the necessity for Turnarounds.
Also, in choosing to perform a Turnaround (no matter how complex and difficult the planning and execution of the event may be) the management may be sacrificing profit by choosing the easy option.
If, after the careful consideration outlined above, the management still believes it has no alternative but to perform the Turnaround then the same challenging questions should be addressed at the level of the single task, by the appointed planning team, to ensure that the desired outcome is achieved with the minimum input.
Our endeavor is always at https://petchemskills.com to help process industries to ensure safe, reliable, and successful Turnaround.
 #reliabilityengineering #oilandgascompanies #oilandgas #petrochemical #perochemicals #energysector #refineries #chemicalindustry #fertilizers #maintenace #powerplants #assetmanagement #oilgas #turnaroundmanagement