Shutdowns and Turnarounds: Managing Work Scope
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“You plan your scope, you know what you are intending to do, the question is does it turn into reality,” – Shutdowns Manager.
We hear a lot from operations guys worried about the daunting task of properly running a shutdown or turnaround.They are looking for foolproof ways of ensuring that all the correct training is delivered to their contractors before they start the outage. However, what we want to look at here is the difficulties associated with defining scope in the run-up to a turnaround and some best practice guideance for same. An academic paper by Christopher C. Obiajunwa of Sheffield Hallam University in the UK from 2012 is still instructive today. In it he identifies loosely defined scope as being one of the major stumbling blocks to a shutdown. In this piece, we will look at the effective planning process you will need to ensure you manage scope effectively and your shutdown doesn’t spiral out of control during the outage.
Scope….it’s a creep
Shutdowns, turnarounds, outages, TAM management. All amount to the same thing and are common across a variety of industries from manufacturing to pharma to energy. They are usually in a constant state of planning, implementation or review so if you are a TAM professional the chances are you are involved in a live project as we speak.
The range of project management skills that are required to deliver a TAM are distinct from a standard engineering project and we will try to outline one area of that here.
What is clear is that any changes to scope after the scope has been set (and this can be months before the outage begins) will have a knock on effect to everything from budget to staffing.
Scope tends to be drawn from diverse areas of the plant including production, maintenance, quality assurance and health and safety which can lead to different job work orders for each decreasing efficiencies.
TAM is a pressured situation with time, particularly, being a real constraint. For that reason including all of the necessary and avoiding all of the unnecessary work in your scope is essential for a successful turnaround.
Sadly, shutdowns rarely run according to plan as the number of variables are so great. However, using the scope guidelines here you may be able to avoid unnecessary overruns.
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1.Scope Initiation
This is the most obvious place to start, discovering if you need to carry out a shutdown. The process begins with assembling the scope list from process/production, quality assurance, safety and so on as required. It should be noted, as the piece says, your operations team may continue to “identify potential scope” right up until you’ve started your shutdown but this should only be within existing scope areas and must be entirely necessary works.
2. Scope Planning
Planning can seem like a misnomer at times in TAM as the best laid plans can be undone the minute the first machine is opened and found to have an unexpected issue. Planning then is about managing ‘unknowns’ as much as it is about defining ‘knowns’. This poses a number of problems for you as a manager, more notably the ability to operate a functioning budget for the overall shutdown process. According to Obiajunwa, your budget will “rarely” be based in a completed plan, due to the addition of new machines or staff right up until the last minute. So what’s your best approach? Get a best estimation, then try to incorporate that into the overall budget of the company.
3. Scope Segmentation
At this point you subdivide the major project components into smaller, easier to manage segments. Carried out correctly, this can lead to an improvement in cost, time and resources estimates; establish a baseline for performance measurement and control; and allow assignments to be delegated. All in all scope work segmentation is well worth attempting.
4. Scope Verification
This is one of the more critical aspects for your shutdown process, according to the research. The validation process is deployed to ensure that the “approved work scope” contains only what is “necessary to, maintain or enhance” the effective operation of the plant and that a full stoppage of the production process is absolutely necessary. Therefore, as the piece says, it may be necessary to follow the steps to ensure the duplication of work is greatly diminished.“Shutdown managers should therefore devise means of validating the work scope to ensure only shutdown dependent jobs are done and also avoid duplications.”
As can be seen here the critical element in TAM planning is scope and, as we have seen in a previous post from the STO conference, this is a major issue for TAM professionals.
If you would like to learn more about shutdown management software to streamline the process of contractor onboarding and ensure the success of your next TAM. Source.
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