Becht Engineering has significant consulting expertise with improving reliability for chemical plants and refineries as well as upstream projects for oil and gas production. This multi-disciplinary task involves the clients’ representatives (operations, maintenance, inspection and engineering) together with Becht Engineering corrosion, mechanical integrity and reliability experts.
From a process standpoint, your Fired Equipment items are not only some of the most critical but some of the most risky items in day-to-day operations. Add in the presence of open flames and failures can be dramatic. In today’s refining climate, fired equipment is required to run 4, 5, 6 or even 7 years […]
This is the second in a series of Blogs on improving plant reliability performance through improvement in culture, programs and equipment design, maintenance and operation. This Blog focuses on Reliability Beliefs – a key element in organizational accountability for everyone to do the right thing every time. Read the first blog in the series – […]
This is the first in a series of Blogs on improving plant reliability programs through improvements in culture, programs and equipment performance. This Blog focuses on Bad Actor Elimination. The second part in this series is titled Reliability Beliefs – Driving Organizational Accountability (click) Most plants have many pieces of equipment that are chronic problems. […]
The safe operation, maintenance and reliability of roofs in large tanks, does require special considerations in their design, construction and installation practices. Over the past 60 plus years, thousands of tanks with Fixed Roofs with internal Covers, and Floating Roofs, have been used to store Crude Oil and Middle Distillates. Refiners derived significant advantage through […]
Turnarounds (TA) in refining units are executed periodically, on a planned basis, to meet multiple objectives, such as regulatory compliance, process reliability improvement, and equipment inspection and/or repairs. In a competitive business environment, managing TA events in a cost effective manner is a well-recognized challenge. Key Step – Planning Development of a comprehensive Work Scope for […]
Many of the tourist spots around the world have panhandlers. Some of the more creative ones stand on street corners advertising that they will tell you where you got your shoes, for a dollar. Of course it turns out that “you got your shoes” at the corner of Bourbon and St. Peters – or wherever […]
Machinery and reliability people have for a long time observed that when it comes to long life and high reliability, operating at higher speeds compares poorly to operation at lower speeds. One of the primary reasons for having high-speed devices is economics. With high speed you can have smaller equipment sizes with fewer stages. While […]
Risk Based Work Selection (RBWS) is one of the Best Practices used by refiners in managing safety and reliability of operations for a facility. RBWS enables refiners to optimize the scope, cost and duration of major turnarounds (TA). Optimization of the work scope is accomplished by screening individual TA Work List items, using a risk-based […]
Equipment Operators face hundreds of work list items while planning for scheduled maintenance events. For each item the owner must make a decision on whether to repair or replace the equipment to resolve the deficiency. In some circumstances, owners are unable to come up with a cost effective repair solution so they default to the […]
Reliable operations is a key business objective for nearly every manufacturing plant due to global economic pressures and increasing Process Safety Management (PSM) requirements. Pacesetter sites that have been successful in achieving long-term reliability are characterized by Business Units empowered and accountable to meet their reliability targets. Structured work processes, with specialist support, provide the […]
