Reliability
In today’s refining, petrochemical, and energy industries, sustained long term reliability of facilities is a key to safety, profitability and competitiveness. History shows that differences in Operating Expenses between best-in-class refineries, and poor performers, can be as much as 20-30MM$/YR. The cost of unreliability also impacts on lost opportunity via supply disruptions, and most importantly can sometimes lead to unsafe conditions. Our reliability team doesn’t believe in operating in silos and are not afraid to look at all aspects (process, IEAC, mechanical, C&M, rotating, etc.) of Equipment, Units, Plants, and Fleets to drive best in class performance.
Reliability Programs
Do you wonder why RBI, process, operations, rotating equipment, and IEAC reliability programs are many times covered by different functional silos? Do you want to challenge your organization to achieve next level performance? Becht’s reliability division is poised to integrate the full breadth of our multi-disciplinary expertise to help your facilities achieve world class reliability, safety, and profit.
Plant, Unit, and Equipment Reliability Gap Assessments
Due to the constant rotation of positions and site turnover many of our clients face uncertainty on if they’re obtaining the best performance out of their equipment, units and even facilities. Becht brings together our multi-disciplinary teams with decades of experience and owner’s experience to evaluate individual pieces of critical equipment (like Coke Drums) all the way up to refinery wide audits. We help bring together the owners’ team, many times individuals who rarely interact daily, so that implementation is driven sustainably with our clients. We do not deliver a bag of problems for our clients to grapple with, but practical and actionable items ranked high, medium, and low for ease of implementation.
Criticality Screening – Reliability Centered Maintenance
Within an operating facility there are tens of thousands of equipment items across the units and different disciplines. The majority of this equipment is generic by nature and can be grouped into a much smaller number of categories based on equipment type and Criticality. An effective PM program spends more resources and money on the most Critical equipment and less on the lower Criticalities.
Criticality assessment is done through a process of determining the Consequences of Failure. Consequence Levels should align with the corporate Risk Matrix for both Health, Safety, Environmental (HSE) Consequences and for Business Consequences of failure.
RCM and PM action plans are developed and assigned to each equipment type and criticality. Becht offers a library of PM actions plans that covers >90% of Equipment found in plants. This library can be leveraged to cost effectively develop programs at your site.
Equipment Reliability Planning (ERP)
All too often Units have process, inspection, operational, and maintenance plans being carried out by different organizations and silos. The Becht Equipment Reliability Planning (ERP) Work Process brings together all these parts of an organization to achieve holistic reliability, safety and profit goals. ERPs also comply with API RP-580 – Risk Based Inspection for fixed equipment and piping.
The Becht ERP process achieves overall unit reliability for clients by:
- Focusing money and resources on highest risk (HSE and business)
- Applying a semi quantitative process that is transparent
- Uncovering unknown “sleeper” risks
- Utilizing Reliability experts and facilitators to support implementation
- Offering training and mentoring to create an evergreen and sustainable program
Risk-based ERP planning programs are an important component of total life cycle analysis for facilities. In addition to managing the mechanical integrity of fixed equipment and piping, ERPs are also used to identify and mitigate process and operational risks, providing the holistic solution to equipment reliability. ERPs have built in Benefit to Cost analysis, so Inspection and Maintenance plans meet the company’s business goals and are applicable to all types of equipment.
Reliability Tools
Risk Based Work Selection (RBWS)
Inconsistent methods for screening turnaround and maintenance work can lead to missing opportunities for significant risk reduction and return on investment. Becht’s RBWS method is a systematic and consistent approach to screen both turnaround work lists and day-to-day maintenance using historical and industry performance data. Becht’s Reliability Specialists have reviewed Turnaround Work Scopes and Routine Maintenance Plans for over 15 years. Our average turnaround work list optimization is $3 million per review with a reduction of 24% of low ROI work list items.
The RBWS Process:
- Relies on Risk to justify tasks, i.e. “what will happen?”
- Data driven
- Ensures consistency of decision making
- Results in optimized and risk-justified worklist
- Combines risk management, reliability and financial resources considerations
- Ensures maintenance resources are used cost effectively to mitigate Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) and Financial risks
- Results are documented for leadership and future TA
The RBWS process utilizes the Becht software tool, BechtRBWS to document inputs, for efficient facilitation of cross-functional team meetings, and report the results.
Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA)
Failures and equipment bad actors can spoil even the most well intentioned and organized of reliability improvement programs. Becht has been involved in failure investigations for over 30 years for both fixed and rotating equipment in the refining and petrochemical industry. Not only does our team bring world class equipment expertise, but we also bring a structured Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) approach using “cause mapping”, which allows us to harness our experience, in partnership with client team members, to very effectively identify the root cause of failures, and most importantly, develop solutions to eliminate future failures.
In addition to facilitation of the formal RCFA, Becht also brings industry subject matter experts of various disciplines to complement the client’s team and to effectively identify the root cause of failure and develop robust solutions. Driving a permanent solution to typical bad actors is essential for achieving facility reliability goals.
Bides
Many of our client’s face uncertainty with how to effectively reduce risk with their inspection programs. Becht Inspection Development and Execution Strategy (BIDES) is designed to address that with a suite of 76 documents that lay the technical foundation for Damage Mechanism Reviews, Integrity Operating Windows (IOW), Turnaround Risk Based Work Selection (RBWS), and Equipment Reliability Plans (ERP). BIDES empowers inspection and reliability groups to quickly screen fixed equipment and piping for the applicable damage mechanisms, determine severity and probability of failure, and assign appropriate tasks based on level of risk mitigation required. BIDES was built on input from world-class Materials and Inspection Experts with technical leadership positions with owner-operator organizations.
BIDES, as a knowledge base, provides guidance on the following:
- Critical factors identify the applicable Damage Mechanisms
- Lists equipment and areas of the refinery that are commonly affected
- Identifies Failure Modes
- Supplies guidance on monitoring the Damage Mechanism
- Inspection Techniques, Locations & Coverage
- Supplies the criteria to assess the Unmitigated Probability of Failure (POF)
- Allows for the reductions in POF for mitigation actions & materials upgrades
- Allows for the reductions in POF through Inspection