Assessing Actual vs. Planned Work Hours of a Maintenance Outage

Using a Simple Methodology to Determine the Best Estimate of the True Productivity Performance Can Lead to Further Improvements Abstract For maintenance outages, job plans are created based on certain labor productivity assumptions.  While there are a variety of methods for assessing actual productivity during the course of work, there is a simple methodology for […]

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Improving the Quality of Detailed Engineering for Construction Work

An Engineering Vendor’s Approach to Measuring and Improving the Quality of its Construction Deliverables The quality of detailed engineering deliverables for construction work can be confirmed using several methods, including checks and reviews by the client, in this case an operating manufacturing plant.  One engineering consultant committed to improving the quality of its work on […]

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Leadership Lessons In Outage Work Selection, Planning & Scheduling

As production outages become costlier and can result in significant profit loss, the need for these to be planned and prepared for the shortest time possible and with greater certainty is becoming increasingly important.  This paper outlines four leadership activities that the author believes are critical to achieving this goal. These include cost-justified preparation steps […]

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Contracting for Plant Outages

~ A Comprehensive Contracting Plan is an Important Building Block to a Successful Plant Outage ~ During planned maintenance outages, many facilities must contract out a significant portion of their work.  Contractor selection is an important step that involves securing the qualified contractor personnel, given the critical role they play in successful outages.  Furthermore, a […]

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Rapid Project Implementation

A project management team was tasked with speeding up the installation of a large number of high-return opportunities by altering their current work process.  This was accomplished by meticulously mapping out the existing project development and execution work processes, identifying where steps could be eliminated or significantly overlapped, and fully understanding and accepting the business […]

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Quality Practices for Process Outages

This paper is an excerpt from the author’s contribution to a panel discussion at the Marcus Evans 9th Annual Chem/Petrochem & Refinery Shutdowns and Turnarounds Conference, August 2017 For continuous manufacturing or process facilities, unplanned production disruptions are extremely costly.  One way to avoid these is to make sure that all work done during planned […]

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Measuring Construction Rework & Delays In Sustaining Capital Projects

Evaluating Rework and Delays can help improve the Schedule Predictability of Construction Projects while reducing Costs The construction industry’s challenge in meeting cost and schedule budgets is greatly affected by rework.  A regional initiative in the early 2000s was tasked with developing a simple tool to capture and analyze field rework at major industrial construction […]

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Identifying Worker Density Constraints During Process Outages

How to Identify a Hidden Productivity Constraint in Your Process Outage Plans and Schedules During inspections and maintenance outages, labor cost is usually a significant expense. In order to meet the required cost and duration goals, worker efficiency is critical. As part of the job plans and schedule creation, a planning team was able to […]

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Critical Mass Duration for Process Outages

Avoid This Surprise When Determining How Long Your Next Process Outage Will Take Continuous processing or manufacturing facilities will occasionally require planned outages to primarily address reliability or maintenance issues.  Due to the high cost of these outages (opportunity and real), careful planning and scheduling practices are used to come up with detailed execution plans […]

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