Shutdowns, turnarounds and outages are complex, high-cost undertakings that have impacts across the entire business, from shareholders and board members to front-line maintenance workers. When not well-planned and managed, STOs can create safety risks, unplanned downtime, and cost overruns, resulting in reduced profitability if the organization is not able to return on schedule to full operating capacity. On June 18, 2015, at 11 a.m. ET, Plant Services will be hosting a webcast on STO strategies featuring a live question-and-answer format with two industry experts. Bellow are six takeaways from the upcoming presentation.
1. 85% of all STO work happens before you touch anything physically, before the shutdown. During our webcast, Joel Levitt, Director of International Projects for Life Cycle Engineering, will explore:
- How do you initiate STO?
- How do you identify work / scope?
- What are the estimated benefits / yield?
2. Identifying scope is one of the most challenging STO elements, and getting people to adhere to scope is difficult. People often forget to add necessary tasks until the middle of STO.
3. Scope creep can be disruptive to the STO process. Steve Carr, Principal Consultant for Life Cycle Engineering, will be offering our webcast attendees tips on:
- How to get identified work into your EAM
- How to manage your spend
- How to build in room for "discoverables" - additional work that needs to be added
4. During the webcast, Joel will explore tips on mitigating STO risks, including:
- Safety
- Cost overruns
- Unplanned downtime
5. The decision to stay in-house vs. hire contractors depends on time, duration, and extent of STO. Keeping communication flowing constantly between in-house and contracted teams is essential. Also, it is best not to hire contractors for STOs that are timed close to holidays or summer vacations, as the best workers are often unavailable or on vacation
6. Identifying common KPIs used by leading organizations to track and measure the success of their STO programs and events, including:
- Safe shutdown
- Tracking on budget
- Contractor burn rate (tip: use clock in / clock out system)
- Finished on time
- Finished on budget - often won't know this for weeks afterward, due to contractor billing