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ZCO is a Mechanical Engineer, Locomotive Reliability and Quality Consultant, Reliability and Maintenance Consultant with world-class expertise in plant operations, maintenance, engineering and reliability management in the refining and chemical industry.
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Recently a major oil company requested that an assessment be conducted to determine their readiness to begin a major plant turnaround. A major turnaround contains all the same elements of a major project except that the work is conducted on a 7-day per week, 24-hour per day schedule. As a result, the accuracy of the Critical Path schedule became a focal point of the review.
The critical path or longest continuous string of activities went through the main fractionating column in the plant. The main fractionator is the column that performs the final separation of products before they leave the plant. In order to obtain better "cuts" (reduce losses of higher value products into lower value streams) with reduced energy cost, the number of trays in the column was being dramatically increased.
Several contractors were involved in the work being done in and around the main fractionator. A contractor specializing in tray installation was assigned to perform the tray work. A boilermaker contractor was assigned to install new nozzles that penetrated the vessel walls at new tray locations. And a piping contractor was assigned to run the piping from all the new nozzles to their final destinations.
In preparing the critical path plan, a general contractor was assigned to oversee the assembly of the complete plan. The piping contractor prepared the basic structure of the plan around the order in which piping would be installed. Next came the boilermaker contractor to install tie-ins on vessels. The work of the specialty tray contractor was represented by "dummy" tasks of an assumed duration as "place-holders" while the specialty contractor completed detailed planning.
After all or the individual elements of the plan were installed in the schedule, a duration was calculated using the Primavera program. This duration was advertised throughout the company and used to set up logistics and purchases of supplemental materials during the outage.
It was at this point that the readiness review was requested.
There were two major problems.
First, the "dummy tasks" had never been removed and the internal work sequences never properly connected to predecessors and successors so the critical path duration being calculated was incorrect.
Second, the logic of the order in which nozzles, trays and piping were installed was incorrect. Nozzles needed to be installed first to both set the level for new trays and to serve as the starting point for installing piping. Piping was a close second to the critical path duration and, if piping waited on nozzle installation, would become the critical path.
These finding resulted in several changes. The timing of the boilermaker crew needed to be moved forward. The timing of the specialty tray contractor needed to be moved back. The arrangements for supplementary supplies had to be extended because of the longer outage. By the time the mistake was found, it was already too late to reschedule the large crane that was planned for major lifts to the upper part of the fractionator so some of the lifts were done in a less efficient manner.
Read other articles by this KKAI Associate:
RAM Analysis of a Moderate Sized Chemical Plant
Root Cause Analysis of Hydrogen Compressor Failure
Application of Reliability Block Diagram Analysis to Overall Plant Configuration
Fixing Responsibility for Project Delays Due to Weld Defects
Mapping from Failure to Successful Repair in a High Volume Environment
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Kevin Kennedy & Associates, Inc.
Rapid Response Engineering® Solutions
3905 Vincennes Road, Suite 320
Indianapolis, Indiana 46268
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