Shutdowns, Turnarounds and Outages: 5 Best Practices to Mitigate Risk and Achieve Effective Business Outcomes

When personal computers or mobile devices fail to respond, our first instinct is to power down the system and reboot. The uninitiated may ask the same about industrial automation and control systems:

Why can’t you simply press a button to shut down the systems to make the necessary modifications and then reboot?

You know the answer to this question if you have performed system upgrades or a modernization project before. Industrial control system updates or migrations are anything but simple. No matter the size of the project, they often require a planned approach involving a facility shutdown, turnaround or outage (STO).

Critical in nature, STO projects require proper upfront planning, scheduling and early engagement with an instrumentation and control (I&C) pre-commissioning team. Large capital expenditure (CAPEX) projects usually drive outages, which require a shutdown of the entire facility or a specific process area.

Outage to-do lists may include instrument calibration, substation maintenance and internal equipment cleaning. Engineering teams typically lead CAPEX project efforts to get the project started on time and implemented. Maintenance and operations teams usually have their own large list of tasks that must be completed at the same time. Lack of resource bandwidth can make this process stressful for personnel, so third-party expertise may be required, especially when legacy systems are involved.

At this point, you might think staying status quo is preferable to tackling an STO project.

We get it.

Executing any project in a facility always has an element of risk, as changes in one section of the facility can potentially cause issues in another and upset production. Since STOs are outside the normal operating condition, additional measures are required such as identifying safety risks, defining procedures and making sure audit processes are in place.

As scary as all that sounds, you can no longer sustain running a continuous or batch process on an aging control system as it comes with a host of challenges:

• Declining system reliability
• Cybersecurity vulnerabilities
• Hard-to-find spare parts
• Reactive versus proactive maintenance
• Excessive downtime
• Increased production costs
• Declining workforce knowledge on legacy systems
• Quality risks and safety concerns

Your facility must run efficiently, reliably and predictably to stay competitive and attain the required business results. You need agile and flexible processes to improve speed to market and meet customer demands. As capacity demand is high at many manufacturing sites, performing STO projects are rare and well worth the time and effort. So how can you update or digitally transform your facility and handle STOs with the least risk?

Long before the work begins and depending on your project requirements, these 5 best practices will help you mitigate risk and alleviate any potential concerns or challenges associated with performing STOs:

1. Perform Upfront Planning

• Start early and develop a comprehensive plan and define the scope of the project:
  • Is the project an upgrade, process control improvements or a migration?
  • Are you going to reuse existing instrumentation?
  • Do you need to select a new platform and if so, is it highly customizable and scalable for your application?
• Gather input from key personnel to ensure company targets are met.
• Look at the big picture to align the team and expectations.
• Estimate and justify the costs and get stakeholder buy-in:
  • Understand the process – what deliverables are needed and what is the deadline for submittal?
  • Who are the stakeholders with a say in getting your project approved?
  • Gather the data needed to develop a solid justification that credibly identifies and monetizes all the potential benefits of the project.
• Develop a commissioning strategy.

2. Develop a Project Execution Plan (PEP)

• Make safety a priority. STOs are high-risk events so safety planning and coordination should be a key performance indicator (KPI) to help define the project’s success.
• Schedule internal or external resources to execute system updates or legacy system migration, configuration, and quality checks to avoid duplicated work.
• Include proper resources – operations, maintenance, engineering, contractors, and project managers. Their knowledge and feedback are critical to help define the scope as they are the ones who must live with it.
• Perform proper testing and verification BEFORE attempting to run the process with the new control system.
• Determine whether a Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) / Site Acceptance Test (SAT) are required.
• Decide whether you require training or commissioning for those involved in the project (e.g., a FAT / SAT is a good opportunity to start the operator training process).
• Are you planning an outage or a hot cutover? Few projects in operating plants can stop operation for construction. In most situations, production must continue, so a hot cutover of the new equipment is often a key project requirement.
• Consider having a SWAT team in place to fix issues logged on to the Problem Log for efficiency.

3. Identify and Mitigate Risk

Consider some of these areas during the upfront planning process to avoid risk:

• Production delays
• Additional operating expenses (OPEX) or CAPEX costs for missed target dates or delays
• Missed revenue
• Poor documentation of the legacy system or a lack of knowledge about technology
• Hidden functionality in HMI and unforeseen application complexity
• Interfaces with other systems
• Non-compliance issues (ensure compliance with the latest standards and bring automation systems up to current standards)
• Equipment/spare parts deliverables

4. Document Requirements and Develop a Schedule

• Gather and document required specification information during the early planning stage:
  • piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs)
  • instrument specifications
  • single line diagrams
  • loop sheets
  • other pertinent design documents
• Develop a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) chart and communicate it to the team so everyone is on board as to their role in it.
• Schedule management and development - a well-thought-out STO schedule is a critical component of the RACI process and should be done before any work begins.
• Establish project controls, monitoring and reporting.
• Ensure risk management.
• Develop plans:
  • Engineering
  • Quality
  • Health, safety, and environment (HSE)
  • Procurement
  • Construction
  • Testing, training and commissioning
• Integrate outage activities with start-up activities – do not wait until all the work is complete.
• Establish daily status meetings during the outage.
• Ensure proper site supervision to drive accountability.

5. Avoid Common Mistakes

• Poor planning – this is perhaps the biggest contributor to a failed plan. Contributing to poor planning could include a lack of experience in the upfront planning process, missing key items or not engaging enough of the right people.
• Failure to involve the entire team early in the process.
• Failure to identify risks.
• Poor QA/QC – finding too many problems too late.
• Lack of expertise on multiple systems and platforms.

Following and employing some of the best practices mentioned here may not be as easy as pushing a button, but with the right team in place, a successful shutdown, turnaround, or outage project can be realized.

If your facility lacks the resource bandwidth or experience implementing an STO project, consider engaging an experienced third-party resource to work alongside your project team. Third-party field service teams perform this work safely every day and have experience in multiple control system platforms. The right trusted partner can help you overcome STO project concerns or challenges and successfully achieve the desired competitive business outcome.