April 8, 2024 The Tormod Team

Site Readiness Assessment: Safe Startups, On Time and On Budget

A manufacturing plant was a few months away from a $110 million capital project startup when it discovered there was insufficient product storage capacity for their major expansion. This would have bottlenecked production resulting in lost productivity and revenue.

How can you be prepared for startup? Begin the process early to ensure operational readiness with a Site Readiness Assessment (SRA).

Ensuring Operational Readiness is the 8th stage in the Asset Life Cycle, completed by effectively utilizing the Site Readiness Assessment (SRA) tool. Tasks associated with preparing for the SRA should begin as early as Stage 4 (Design and Engineer) and should continue until the site is fully prepared for the upcoming change. Completion of tasks/items generated from the SRA may extend as far upstream of Stage 9 (Commissioning and Startup) to provide the site team with confidence that they possess The Technical Right To Succeed in operating new assets and processes. This same logic applies to turnarounds focused primarily upon Maintenance & Repair tasks because change can occur from any tasks that intervene upon normal asset operation.

What is a Site Readiness Assessment?

An SRA, also known as an Operational Readiness Assessment, is a disciplined, structured, documented tool that is used to objectively assess and verify all stakeholder groups are properly prepared to ensure the safe, compliant, high-quality, on-time, and on-budget performance of a major project or major turnaround (also referred to as an outage). Any event that creates, or has the potential to create significant change in the performance of a site will benefit from a professionally executed SRA.

An SRA is a structured, documented assessment consisting of 900 +/- questions, tailored for the specific site and project. Questions are separated by subject area, normally by site department.

Issues identified and corrected thanks to a disciplined SRA include a lack of a Bills of Materials in the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), missing or insufficient training for operators, maintenance mechanics, quality testers, and other plant personnel, missing Material Safety Data information, and lack of new maintenance procedures or tools identified for new equipment.

An SRA can mitigate risk by ensuring all departments and functions are aligned with the requirements for a successful outcome and can maximize return on investment by adhering to the schedule and budget.

Stakeholder Groups

It is important for all stakeholder groups to be represented during an SRA. Stakeholder groups with input into the success or failure of a major project or turnaround include the following:

Environmental compliance – new materials, wastes, regulations, monitoring, treatment processes
Industrial Hygiene (safety) – new equipment with new hazards
Plant Security – security, traffic, weighing, record keeping, hazardous materials, etc.
Manufacturing – new or changed products, new training requirements
Maintenance – new equipment, spare parts, maintenance techniques, inspection requirements
Logistics – inbound and outbound shipment volumes, modes, and schedules
Supply Chain – new suppliers, new materials, etc.
Quality – new specifications, new customers, new testing methods
Accounting & Finance – new accounts, new materials, changed prices, reporting changes
Procurement – new materials, parts, tools, suppliers, contracts, foreign currency requirements
Information Technology – new IT systems, network demands, data storage/reporting
Human Resources – new people, new schedules, new roles, new labor rates, etc.
Sales & Marketing – effects on inventory management and customer shipments
Plant Employees – are they informed, trained, equipped, and prepared for the change?
Plant Suppliers – are they given sufficient information to help with the change?

Conducting an SRA

Traditionally, two SRAs are performed: a “Baseline Assessment” and a “Final Assessment.” The agenda and methodology for both Baseline and Final Assessments are nearly identical.

Baseline Assessment
The Baseline Assessment should be performed 12-18 months prior to the major event (i.e. the startup of a major capital project or turnaround). The Assessment Team prepares the assessment questions, schedules times and locations to meet with the site’s subject matter experts and department leaders and visits the site for a period of 2-5 days, depending upon the size and complexity of the project/turnaround and the size of the assessment team.

The SRA team first conducts a series of interviews with subject matter experts in a small group setting. This is called “the conference room assessment.” Answers to questions from each subject area (stakeholder group) are documented in as much detail as possible. There may be unknowns during the Baseline Assessment, but these are important and documented.

When the initial interviews are completed, the SRA team goes into the field to complete the Field Verification phase of the assessment. Objective evidence from the field is documented alongside answers that were provided in the conference room interviews. Any gaps between “reported” and “field verified” information are documented to keep the entire team aligned and data-driven.

After documenting “as answered” and “as verified” conditions to 900 +/- questions, the SRA team compiles a detailed report showing the status of every question. Each question is part of a designated subject area or stakeholder group, so the report shows the current level of readiness of every stakeholder group. This data is provided in detail to help the team understand the current readiness level of every group.

The Baseline SRA is used to prioritize which identified gaps will be closed, who will be responsible for closing each item, and by when this will be completed. These decisions are documented via the Rolling Action Items List (RAIL).

Routine RAIL Update meetings should be conducted, documented, and communicated at least monthly during the 12-18 months that are available between the Baseline Assessment and the major event. If prioritized gaps are not being closed every month, Site Readiness is not being effectively managed.

Final Assessment
A Final Assessment, following the same methodology as the Baseline Assessment, is performed 2-3 months prior to the major event. Ideally, all previously prioritized and managed gaps are verified to be sustainably closed. If not, these gaps will be identified and highlighted to all stakeholders so action can be taken prior to the major event.
The Final Assessment also helps identify any new gaps that arose between the Baseline and Final Assessments. This is normal, especially for large, complex projects or turnarounds. As scope, schedule, and cost evolves, new gaps (sources of unreadiness) arise.

Working with an Experienced Team

Tormod’s Teammates conduct SRAs across multiple industries and bring best practices for the benefit of our clients. To learn more about how an SRA can help your project, turnaround, or major change initiative, contact us today.

Maintenance Outsourcing

August 21, 2023 The Tormod Team

Turnaround Management: A Vital Component of Asset Life Cycle Management Success

Many companies have lost their turnaround management expertise in recent years due to retirements, corporate downsizing, increased reliance on contractors, reduced training and development funding, and talent recruiting challenges.

Some companies never offered or were forced to eliminate a career path for personnel who possess turnaround management skills. Lack of viable career paths, stressful work, and frequent overtime, make attracting and retaining talent to the turnaround management function extremely difficult.

Here’s what leaders need to know about turnaround management to achieve the technical right to succeed in effective Asset Life Cycle Management.

Turnaround Management

A turnaround, also known as an outage or a shutdown, is a budget, planned, and scheduled event designed to maintain and/or enhance the reliability of manufacturing assets. The performance of these downtime events establishes the cornerstone for how a plant’s assets will perform between turnarounds when the uninterrupted supply of finished goods to customers is vital to your company’s profitability and reputation.

A turnaround includes maintenance and replacement tasks, instrumentation and equipment calibration, electrical and mechanical integrity inspection/testing, installation of new capital equipment, and other tasks that must be completed while manufacturing equipment is down, cleared, and locked out.

The primary purpose of turnarounds is to ensure that the assets perform safely, productively, reliably, and at the optimal manufacturing cost until the next scheduled turnaround. This leads to safe, environmentally compliant, high-quality, and profitable manufacturing operations.

Keep in mind that the duration of the turnaround shouldn’t be the primary focus. When it is, decisions become short-term focused and lead to ongoing potential safety risks, unplanned downtime, long-term asset performance problems, and high manufacturing costs. The problems can last much longer if these short-term decisions cause significant equipment damage. The primary focus of a turnaround should be to ensure that the assets will be able to operate safely, in compliance, and reliably until the next scheduled turnaround.

Determining the Turnaround Schedule

Hours during a turnaround are extremely expensive—from both a direct cost and the opportunity cost of lost or delayed production. The following factors may cause turnaround hours to be expensive.

- Equipment is being rented.
- Your products may be being provided to the supply chain from higher-cost plants.
- Highly paid contractors are on the clock.
- Overtime costs may be high.
- The high concentration of people in a small area poses safety risks and can reduce work efficiency, thus increasing the cost per unit of work completed.
- Expediting costs due to “discovery work” or parts ordering mistakes are high.
- Managerial personnel are being fatigued at a fast pace.

These costs make an impact, and they’re at their highest during a turnaround. While it’s tempting to schedule as many tasks as possible during a turnaround, it’s best to include only jobs that require the equipment to be down. All other work should be executed at a different time when costs are lower.

Schedule vs Cost

Management must decide whether the turnaround is schedule-driven or cost driven.

If the turnaround is schedule driven, the objective is to do whatever is possible to minimize the length of the turnaround’s critical path and get the plant back to full productivity as quickly as possible while maintaining safe, compliant performance.

If the turnaround is cost driven, all efforts are made to complete the full scope of work safely and at the lowest possible cost. Cost-driven turnarounds normally last longer because crews are staffed and scheduled to achieve minimum cost rather than to complete the turnaround as expeditiously as possible.

Both schedule-driven and cost-driven turnarounds should be well-planned and executed. Management needs to decide, communicate, and support the “Schedule Driven vs. Cost Driven” decision based on the current needs of the business. Both strategies are valid and can lead to profitability.

Turnaround Execution

The number and types of resources required to execute a turnaround safely and effectively depend upon several factors. These include the number of work orders to be completed, the complexity and diversity of the planned work, the number of shifts per day, the turnaround’s duration, and the number of companies whose work must be coordinated.

Turnaround Team

Five key leadership roles are necessary for the proper execution of all turnaround work.

1. Turnaround Manager
2. Contractor Coordinator
3. Planner
4. Scheduler
5. Safety Coordinator

Large, complex turnarounds may require multiple people to fill one role. Conversely, it may be practical for one person to fill more than one role for very small turnarounds. A role does not automatically justify a headcount. These decisions become apparent by considering best practices and historic turnaround performance while planning, scheduling, and estimating costs.

Ensuring effective turnaround management is necessary for reliability. Turnaround management teams must have well-trained, experienced, professional, focused, and highly disciplined personnel. The need for focus cannot be overstated. Turnaround management is a full-time job. If turnaround management must compete with daily “firefighting” around the plant, the urgency of firefighting will always win the battle for teammates’ focus. The result of a lack of focus is a sub-optimal turnaround that could lead to many months of sub-optimal asset performance while awaiting the next turnaround. Remember . . . the primary performance measure of a turnaround is how well the assets perform until the next turnaround.

Team with Tormod

The Tormod team has deep and diverse experience from all organizational levels of manufacturing. We understand turnaround management processes and best practices, so we can provide our clients with the solution that works best for them. Our Team can supplement your existing team to fill critical gaps or fully manage some or all aspects of your turnaround management process. We can also provide training, coaching, and mentoring to help develop our clients’ turnaround management leaders.

As we are aware, the quantity and quality of turnaround management talent is declining quickly in every industry. It will require different decisions and modes of Teamwork to combat this trend. Asset Reliability is the economic backbone of every manufacturing company. If you’re looking to improve plant reliability, manufacturing cost, and turnaround performance, contact us today.

Environmental, Health, Safety, & Security

August 3, 2023 The Tormod Team

Industrial Hygiene 101

When it comes to safety, most people think of events that cause immediate injury, but these are not the only risks to your personnel. Industrial Hygiene is concerned with the prevention of exposure to contaminants and/or physical agents that cause disease processes in the body. It addresses the long-term occupational health of your personnel.

What is Industrial Hygiene?

Occupational Industrial Hygiene is the discipline of anticipating, recognizing, evaluating, and controlling health hazards in the working environment with the objective of protecting worker health and safeguarding the community at large.

Personnel can be exposed to potential contaminants at your facility by four routes of entry:

Inhalation
Absorption
Ingestion
Injection

The best way to anticipate and identify risk is by performing a walk-through survey of a given process or area at your site. This approach will allow you to establish potential health risks, identify engineering controls, and establish what, where, and whom should be monitored. Once your process or area has been walked, you can develop a qualitative analysis that determines similarly exposed populations and develops a sampling plan for potential exposures.

Contaminants and/or Physical Agents to Sample during an IH Assessment

The next step is a sampling assessment. Samples must be collected in the breathing zone of the personnel being sampled. The breathing zone is a one-foot diameter area from your nose/mouth.

Some contaminants and physical agents to be sampled during the industrial hygiene assessments include:

Noise
Dust/Respirable and Total
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Inorganic Compounds
Metals from Welding & Grinding Operations
Combustible Dust
Quartz Silica
Lead Paint
Asbestos
Radon
Heat Stress
Mold/Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)
Radiation

Exposure sampling is conducted using a heat stress monitor, sample pump with sample media, passive badge, noise dosimeter, etc.

The photo below shows noise dosimetry in action (left), a WBGT monitor used to conduct Heat Stress Monitoring (center), and a sampling pump with a respirable dust sampling cassette attached (right).

Using Industry Standards

Once samples are collected, the results are compared to regulatory or guidance levels to determine if potential exposures are below the established occupational exposure limits (OELs).

The primary standard to compare against for industry regulatory compliance is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs). Teams can also use the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommended Exposure Limits (RELs).

Once laboratory analysis of the collected samples is complete, results should be compared to the most conservative established exposure limit. If results are above regulatory or guidance levels, controls should be developed and implemented whether engineering, administrative, or Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), to reduce potential for exposure to below regulatory or guidance levels.

Partnering with Tormod

Have you walked your process or area lately? Get a fresh perspective with Tormod. Our industry professionals will conduct a qualitative assessment of potential exposures within your facility. Our Team holds advanced degrees with cumulative knowledge of over 100 years.

We will work with you and your Team to eliminate potential exposures by identifying, quantifying, and controlling hazards.

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Procedure Development

June 28, 2023 The Tormod Team

Procedure Development: How to Boost Your Plant’s Performance

If you were given a procedure to follow, such as changing a flat tire, how many steps do you think you could remember in the correct order six months from now? What if your safety and the safety of those around you depended on your accuracy?

It used to be accepted in certain plant environments that experienced workers could perform from memory – and procedures were unnecessary. However, we know this is not the case in a successful, safe, and optimized plant, especially as older generations retire, and younger personnel are hired.

Procedures are the primary tools for safe facility operations. These tools bridge the gap between technology and human beings. Technology, for the most part, will operate as designed until an update is needed. The human element introduced by operators adds a certain level of unpredictability. This can be mitigated with proper procedure development.

Human Performance Modes

There are three human performance modes found within human-factored procedure writing including knowledge-based, skill-based, and rule-based.

Knowledge-based space occurs in procedures when using phrases like “if necessary” or “if deemed appropriate”. This increases the risk for error because the language is subjective based on the operator’s knowledge and experience level. In the event that personnel are not equipped with the right knowledge to make the right decision, this can lead to safety incidents.

Skill-based space occurs in procedures containing highly practiced, routine activities. The level of detail must be suitable for a newly qualified user but may also contain sufficient checks or verifications in conjunction with users employing their own human performance tools, or skills. A checklist is a good example of a procedure in a skills-based mode. Mistakes in this mode are typically the result of inattention or lapses in memory, unlike knowledge-based space where the user simply does not know what to do. It is also important to consider that just because your personnel were trained once six months ago doesn’t mean they will be successful in the field. Your personnel need repetitions to remain in skill-based procedure space.

In the procedure development world, rule-based space is most ideal. This can be accomplished using conditional action steps, with phrases such as, “if, then” and “when, then” in your procedures. This empowers personnel with specific criteria and information to make educated decisions. For example, instead of saying, “when the pipe gets hot”, you could say, “If the temperature reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then open the valve.” Specificity is key for rule-based procedures.

Improving Efficiency with Consistency

Not only do human-factored procedures need to be specific and technically accurate, but they also need to be consistent. You don’t want your personnel wasting time in the field trying to decipher the procedure or flipping through pages to find the right information. If personnel are focused on the procedure and not on safety or efficiency, accidents can happen.

Instead, you want your personnel focused on completing the job that they were assigned. Consistent procedures put people in the right frame of mind to get the job done right the first time.

The consequences of deviation result in increased labor costs, labor fatigue, and increased costs due to incidents and shutdowns. The bottom line is that good procedures improve efficiency by reducing the number of accidental shutdowns caused by human performance errors.

Consistent, concise, and logical procedures are ideal. Don’t let your procedures become the problem.

Getting it “Write”!

Properly written, human-factored procedures keep personnel in a rule-based space. Whether you are in a nuclear plant or in a manufacturing facility, your procedures should be written for the least experienced qualified user. Seemingly minor details like the size of the font, the amount of white space on the page, and bolded words are all part of making the procedure an effective tool.

Tormod’s Procedure Professionals Association’s (PPA)certified writers can help you with standard operating procedures, training plans, and original equipment manuals. Our Team of subject matter specialists, including safety specialists and Controls & Automation specialists, and our Team of multi-disciplined engineers including process, mechanical, electrical, and industrial engineers, have the experience and understanding required to ensure your team’s safety and your plant’s efficiency.

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Maintenance & Reliability

June 5, 2023 The Tormod Team

Root Cause Analysis: An Important Tool for Maintenance Organizations

When you replace a fuse on a non-functioning machine and your machine starts running again, it does not necessarily mean the root cause of the failure has been fixed. There is a reason the circuit was drawing more current than it was designed to – and this should be addressed as well. Approaching the situation with a root cause analysis, rather than a temporary fix, helps to prevent future issues.

What is a Root Cause Analysis?

A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a way to identify the cause of a machine stoppage or production deficiency. An RCA identifies all casual factors that contributed to a reaction resulting in equipment failure and/or a downtime event. RCAs should determine what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening again.

Root Cause Analysis Tools

A simple RCA can be performed by using the “5 Whys Method.” Once a problem has been identified, utilize this method by asking “why” five times to analyze the complication and discover the root cause.

More complex RCAs require a diverse team of stakeholders to identify all potential causes and solutions. Problem-solving techniques such as Pareto charts, Fault Tree Analyses, and Ishikawa Fishbone Diagrams are structured approaches that allow for visual representation of data.

Performing a Root Cause Analysis

To perform an RCA step-by-step your team must:

Analyze the problem and identify any symptoms to form a problem statement.
Collect data that could be related to the problem from all potential sources.
Analyze the data to determine causal factors and related timelines.
Question each causal factor to see how it affected the next until you determine the root cause(s).
Recommend a leader or team to implement solutions that are scheduled by all members of the RCA team.
Consider and identify other assets or processes that are similar or can be affected the same way. This allows you to proactively address issues within your system before a similar failure occurs.

Thoroughly investigating the solution does not adversely affect any related parts of your process. Resist the temptation to skip ahead. Some members of the team may insist the root causes are already understood and it is not necessary to investigate further. However, jumping to conclusions increases the likelihood of partial solutions that do not address the underlying system gaps and fail to prevent similar events in the future.

Contributing Factors

A properly executed RCA may identify several factors that should be addressed within the maintenance organization. Solutions should be developed and prioritized based on how much the factor influenced the failure, the difficulty of remediation, and how long it will take to implement.

The most common sources of contributing factors that could impact a failure are:

Machinery – Is there a defect in the manufacture of the asset? Did a part break? Was a part not functioning properly?
Management – Were necessary adjustments made for maintenance availability? Were production levels set in line with the machine’s design parameters?
Manpower – Were your personnel trained in the machine’s capabilities? Did they perform the processes correctly?
Materials – Were the materials, including raw and substituted, used as intended by the original equipment manufacturers?
Method – Do the processes and policies strengthen or harm the system?
Milieu (mother-nature) – Was the asset operating in an environment that it wasn’t designed for? Was it too hot or humid?

Implementing Solutions

Once the RCA is complete, your team or leader must implement solutions to facilitate the repair. Implementation should include training of personnel to properly operate equipment to ensure they are handling the asset properly.

Working with Industry Specialists

Tormod’s industry specialists have the knowledge and experience to participate in and facilitate root cause analyses at your site.

To partner with Tormod, contact us.

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Talent Optimization

May 13, 2023 The Tormod Team

Talent Recruiting: Strengthening your Organization’s Performance Foundation

Just as the strength of the foundation controls the shape and life expectancy of a building, the talent recruiting phase of an employee’s career life cycle establishes a high-quality foundation for the success of both the employee and the organization.

Talent recruiting is a fundamental practice that directly impacts the culture and success of an organization. Organizational leaders should prioritize this practice to create a culture of clear, direct, and energetic engagement.

If leaders consistently model a commitment to recruiting key talent, it will spread throughout all organizational levels, creating pride, teamwork, ownership, high morale, and company-wide success. Committed, engaged, success-minded talent must be valued.

Finding High-Quality Talent

Identifying, recruiting, and retaining high-quality talent is becoming more challenging for all manufacturing-related organizations. Causes that contribute to this challenge include:

Demographic shifts
Retiring generations
Changes in career interests
Trends toward remote work
Desire for work flexibility
Different skills needed to support new technologies
Constant flow of information making competitive job offers easily visible and actionable

Other significant challenges to retaining talent include cost-cutting at the expense of the organization’s culture, eliminating financial incentives for long-term retention, and eliminating training, apprenticeship, and internship opportunities.

The Cost of Replenishing Talent

With the shift in today’s business world, traditional approaches to talent identification and recruiting require improvement. The knowledge of older generations is continually retiring from the manufacturing workforce, and in many cases, this knowledge was contained in the minds of personnel, as opposed to being stored and maintained. Succeeding generations often scramble to cope with this “knowledge retirement.”

The total cost of recruiting professional talent is widely accepted as being equal to one year’s salary for the position whose talent must be replaced. Thus, replacing talent for a role with a base salary of $120,000 would be approximately $120,000 when all costs of recruiting, testing/screening, relocation, onboarding, required training, and profit delays are considered.

Professional Recruiting

The importance of leaders’ words and actions related to the success of Talent Optimization cannot be overstated. The organization’s culture will inevitably mirror organizational leaders’ behaviors.

Organizational leaders have three primary alternatives to manage talent recruiting, which can be blended, if desired.

Internal Recruiters

This is the Human Resources (HR) or Recruiting Department. Organizations may be fortunate enough to have trained and experienced recruiters or may be relying upon HR generalists. HR department personnel may find themselves absorbed in the day-to-day requirements of supporting the business and may struggle with recruiting new talent.

Contingency Recruiting

Contingency recruiting offers recruiting opportunities to multiple external recruiters. With this method, the first external recruiter to submit a resume of a potential candidate, who later gets hired, receives the recruiting fee. This method results in a “recruiter sprint” rather than investing the time to fully understand the details of the role and thoughtfully identifying and screening candidates.

The burden for screening candidates is shifted back to the hiring company. The stated recruiting fee for contingency recruiting is often lower than retained recruiting because the contingent recruiter’s time commitment in the talent search is significantly lower than that of the retained recruiter’s.

Retained Recruiting

This approach partners with one experienced, professional recruiter to seek talent for one or more specified roles. The retained recruiter has the full responsibility to identify, screen, interview, and propose a small set of qualified, interested, and recommended candidates in a timely manner. This recruiting method provides a close, long-term relationship between the hiring company’s leaders and the retained recruiter. This collaboration leads to consistency in building the company’s talent foundation.

The apparent price of retained recruiting is normally higher, but the overall long-term cost of Talent Optimization is significantly reduced, as the company attracts better talent that stays and grows with the company.

When selecting a talent recruiting approach, organizational leaders should consider the following:

Are internal company recruiters trained, highly experienced, and fully aware of the nature and requirements of the roles for which they are recruiting?
Are internal company recruiters able to focus on their recruiting assignments? Are roles being filled with excellent candidates in a timely manner? A maximum effective workload for an experienced, trained recruiter is approximately seven (7) unique roles.
If “Contingency Recruiting” is being tried, who within your company is managing and tracking the results from these contingent recruiters?
Would a long-term, collaborative relationship with a dedicated professional recruiter who understands the details of the roles for which talent is being recruited help the company’s performance and talent retention?

Teaming with Tormod

At Tormod, we know the details of the roles for which we recruit because we, as individuals, have served successfully in those same roles, and can quickly understand a resume, compare it to the roles’ requirements, and ask pertinent, penetrating questions of a candidate.

This familiarity provides much higher quality talent identification, screening, interviewing, and recruiting productivity. When Tormod is retained for a talent search, our client gets access to our entire Tormod team. We utilize all of Tormod’s resources to ensure that our knowledge is engaged and provides optimal results.

As retained, focused talent recruiters, Tormod’s experienced professionals learn your business challenges, strategies, and objectives to identify, analyze, and improve your organization’s talent results while reducing your long-term cost of Talent Optimization. We are passionate about maintaining and enhancing the quality of talent in manufacturing organizations throughout our country. Recruiting is not a business transaction to us – it is a passion. Would your organization benefit from teaming with Tormod? If so, contact us today. The time for foundation-strengthening is now.

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Commissioning & Startup

April 28, 2023 The Tormod Team

Commissioning & Startup: The Bridge Between Mechanical Completion and Operations

If your facility was designed with a check valve 15 feet off the ground, or with a pressure relief valve without a bypass loop, it could cost you downtime and lost production – not to mention safety concerns for your personnel and community.

Poor planning at the beginning of the design of a facility can result in excessive changes to the design during the construction phase and delays to the commissioning & startup phase. This can occur with a large capital project or a simple shutdown, but it’s preventable if you’re prepared.

How can you ensure that you are ready for startup as scheduled?

What is Commissioning & Startup (CSU)?

Commissioning & Startup (CSU) is the asset life cycle phase during which the project team transitions the project from Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) to ongoing manufacturing operations. Rather than being confined to one formal stage of the asset life cycle, CSU covers several stages. CSU is the last critical phase of a capital project before the facility is placed in operation.

During CSU, trained professionals inspect, test, and qualify the assets (equipment, instrumentation, control systems, etc.) in your facility to verify that they have been installed properly and will operate safely. Experience suggests that breaking the plant down into systems and subsystems helps isolate potential issues during this part of the process, while maximizing your chances of a successful hand-off to operations.

Planning, Communication, & Coordination

Ideally, planning and budgeting for CSU should begin during FEL 2 or FEL 3 and include all stakeholders working together. Proper coordination involves the collaboration of different viewpoints from all stakeholders – construction, operations, engineering, and CSU – discussing and sharing schedules for increased efficiency.

Not only does this ensure your assets are built correctly, but you also streamline the transition from construction to commissioning followed by operations.

Working with CSU specialists in the early phases of a project grants knowledge and insight toward the operational aspect of the facility versus just the engineering side. This cost-effective and time-saving approach allows all stakeholders to ask questions, evaluate, and bring attention to potential design issues and can mitigate risk down the road.

Coordination and constant communication are essential to the success of any project. Reports, schedules, calls, meetings, emails, on-site personnel, and verbal communication are just some of the ways to alert everyone of project delays or current issues. When these methods are used properly, the project path is made clearer and corrective actions can be put in place to mitigate any time lost.

With all stakeholders working together and with proper communication, a project will meet milestones to save both time and money.

Training is Part of the Process

Your operators need to be trained in the processes and procedures of your new facility, including what to do in emergency situations or shutdowns. In addition, your operators should be involved in the walkthrough of the facility while developing the punch list. This type of involvement allows the operators to build familiarity with the plant before the plant is running.

The amount of training will depend on your personnel. Having personnel with 20 years of experience or more is obviously different than having new personnel who have never worked in a plant environment. Tormod has worked with all experience levels, and we are confident in our ability to train your operators before the plant begins operation.

Using a System Turnover

When executing commissioning activities, it’s our belief that the best approach is under the systemization method. As opposed to a block turnover, which is based on commissioning associated to location, a systemization turnover is based on the individual systems and subsystems within your facility.

A systemization turnover increases your project’s efficiency whether they are greenfield or brownfield designs. With proper coordination and communication, the construction activities can be executed around the preidentified system and subsystem, allowing for commissioning activities to be executed in a predefined order. This approach allows for both construction and commissioning to run parallel to one another.

A block turnover typically delays commissioning because the team must wait until the predefined blocks are completed and turned over. In most cases, predefined blocks are large and boundaries are difficult to navigate. As a result, you are exposed to potential safety hazards and complicate the turnover process from construction to commissioning. A system turnover can help mitigate both safety and turnover concerns. Each system and subsystem can be isolated from the construction of others and safely commissioned.

The Domino Effect

By using a system turnover, planning your commissioning activities early in the project phase, and coordinating with construction, you create a domino effect that saves you time and money.

If your CSU group is not inspecting, testing, and qualifying assets as you go, you could find out at startup that you have bad equipment or a piece that was installed incorrectly. This delays your startup and will cost you additional money to fix the problem.

However, using the domino effect, your CSU group will be conducting loop checks, testing pumps, flushing systems, and more to ensure everything is correctly installed and working properly. This means that once construction completes a system, commissioning then takes over that system, and if any issues are found by commissioning, construction can fix the problem while they are still on-site.

Working with Tormod

Preparing for commissioning & startup – whether when designing a completely new facility or working through an outage at an existing plant – is not a one-size-fits-all activity. There isn’t a list of ten or twenty items that every facility must complete. Clients and contractors should work together to determine the right solutions and the right skilled teammates to have involved in the project.

Tormod, a Hargrove company, has industry specialists with operations experience to determine real-world applications of how the design of your project will affect operations and maintenance.

Working closely with the engineering, construction, and operations groups, our Team will help determine the best design for your facility and will develop procedures and training documentation for your staff.

To partner with Tormod or learn more about our Commissioning & Startup capabilities, contact us.

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Procedure Development

April 17, 2023 The Tormod Team

Procedure Development: Creating a Safe Working Environment

When you buy a new car, you receive an owner’s manual that provides you with information about maintaining your car, troubleshooting issues, and what to do if your car breaks down.

Operators of the equipment in your plant require the same type of collective information to sustain the integrity of the asset and handle emergency situations.

Whether you are upgrading your systems or have entry-level personnel who require training, you must have updated procedures that inform the operators of how to approach any given situation.

What is Procedure Development?

Procedure development is instructional documentation provided to plant leadership that gives plant personnel the information needed to operate and maintain the asset during its lifecycle.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) – under sections 29 CFR 1910.119 (Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals) and 40 CFR Part 68 (Risk Management Program for Chemical Accidental Release Prevention) – require systems containing hazardous chemicals to have procedures based on process safety management.

The main reason for these written procedures is to create a safe working environment for your plant personnel and community, reducing the risk of injury and damaged equipment.

Mechanical Maintenance Procedures

To maintain the integrity of the mechanical equipment at your site, you need maintenance procedures that not only inform your staff but also comply with OSHA guidelines.

Your mechanical maintenance procedures should include the following:

- Preventive maintenance (PM) schedule – a step-by-step guide on how to perform the maintenance on the asset
- Job instructions
- Critical spare parts list based on components in the field
- Frequencies of maintenance tasks for the entire system
- Safety precautions
- Equipment descriptions

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Procedures

For every asset at your manufacturing facility, your process safety information should be collected and organized in the form of a standard operating procedure (SOP), which is required by OSHA. Your SOP should include system overviews about startup, normal operations, emergency shutdowns, startups following a turnaround, operating limits, and safety systems.

Developing the Right Procedures

Regardless of a greenfield or brownfield project, collaboration among the operations team, design team, and a process safety management coordinator, is critical in developing your procedure documentation.

After completing a process hazard analysis, a team of qualified individuals – field operator, DCS operator, or electrician – should meet with engineers to discuss the system and provide solutions and specific instructions for any potential issues.

Working with Industry Specialists

Whether you are developing new procedures or updating current ones, Tormod’s Team of multi-disciplined engineers, including three Procedure Professionals Association (PPA) Certified writers, will use best practices to ensure your documentation meets industry standards and recommendations.

Create a safe working environment for your plant personnel by teaming with Tormod. Contact us today.

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Maintenance & Reliability

April 3, 2023 The Tormod Team

Maintenance Optimization: Getting the Best Return on Investment Out of Your Resources

The most common approach to analyzing maintenance costs is to view it as a cost center, a line item on the P&L that captures how much money was spent to keep the equipment running that year. Another paradigm is to view maintenance costs as investments in the reliability of your plant’s assets.

When asset owners view maintenance as an expense this often results in a run-to-failure mentality that produces a highly reactive maintenance culture. The overall cost of this type of behavior is much higher than the alternative.

Asset owners who view their maintenance operations as an investment reap the rewards of a safer plant, increased productivity, better customer satisfaction, increase profits, and lower overall cost to run the plant.

Maintenance Optimization Treats Maintenance as a Profit Center

Maintenance optimization is the process of assessing an organization’s maintenance structure to determine if they have the resources to support a specific manufacturing process. Steps usually include developing the existing team, identifying gaps in tools, systems, talent, or training, and implementing strategies to fill or minimize these gaps.

Depending on your financial resources, you may be limited in your operational decisions. Think of your budget as an investment tool to facilitate the utilization of reliability processes within your plant. The costs of maintenance-related changes are often outweighed by the increased reliability of your equipment and therefore, your production.

Here are a few ways to get the most benefits out of your resources in your pursuit of operational excellence through maintenance optimization.

Hiring the Right Maintenance Personnel

Your maintenance staff is your greatest asset in terms of improvement suggestions. They are intimately familiar with the capabilities of your machines, potential causes of failure, and possible improvements to operator behaviors.

If you are typically only concerned with finding the lowest-cost mechanic, you’re still in the mindset of reactive maintenance. In today’s manufacturing environment and with shifting trends in the workforce, it is more important than ever to work with professional industrial maintenance personnel.

Your maintenance personnel must understand the technology and possess the additional trade skills needed to support the complexities of your equipment. Look for personnel with certifications of their expertise, as well as those who attended trade schools or received a degree dedicated to industrial maintenance.

Equally important is establishing diversity of team members on each shift, including experienced members with historical knowledge of the equipment and mastery of the trades needed to maintain it. These highly valued members of the team must be selected not only by equipment or trade knowledge, but their willingness to share and train the next generation of the maintenance team.

Training your Operators

Maintenance isn’t just about fixing machines. If you have an asset that needs cleaning and lubricating every 12 hours, waiting for maintenance-specific personnel can decrease productivity. It is ideal to rely on operators who can facilitate many daily cleaning, lubricating, and inspecting tasks involved with your production processes. Providing operators with the skills and tools for autonomous maintenance repairs will not only create productive, self-sufficient workers, but will also develop their sense of ownership for the equipment and assets they operate.

Training operators on basic maintenance procedures ensure your asset will run correctly, increasing your productivity and decreasing its downtime.

Decision-Making with CMMS Systems

Plant managers should rely on dedicated management systems to track resources and assets to ensure they are being properly managed and maintained.

A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) captures information and minimizes the human influence on data for performance analytics. A fully populated CMMS can track the cost of maintaining your asset in terms of labor, replacement parts, and material to determine if that asset is nearing the end of its life cycle and/or identify design limitations that can create bottlenecks in production.

A CMMS provides the ability to collect and analyze data to determine if an asset can be expected to run well, if there is a potential risk of failure, and what the cost of that failure would include. It is also used to ensure spare parts and materials are available in the event of a failure, or a plan is in place to procure or obtain a suitable replacement.

The data from your CMMS, regardless of the cost or quality of the program itself, is only as good as the data you put into it. Your CMMS requires time to populate, manage, and report, which can introduce additional costs and resources.

Evaluating Assets and Processes

Evaluating your assets and processes with the use of CMMS data can eliminate losses and increase productivity. The goal is to plan for reliable production. If you can increase production in an 8-hour shift, that is an improvement through proactive maintenance.

Completing a root cause analysis of an unplanned downtime event determines the cause of the deficiency and the impact of the failure. Whether there is an environmental cause or a defect in the manufacturing, you must facilitate the repair and operate in a manner conducive to the asset. It is also important to determine if this root cause exists in other similar applications or equipment so it can be addressed prior to failure.

To streamline production, examine how much it costs to maintain a particular piece of equipment versus the investment of purchasing a new asset. How would that impact production? Can you modify the asset or is it better to replace it?

Identify losses in production and smooth the manufacturing process to eliminate quality defects from the equation. This could be simply adding a conveyor to reduce operator handling of the production process.

Determining the most critical causes impacting your production helps you direct your resources and best facilitate improvements.

Transitioning to a Condition-Based Approach

At your manufacturing plant, you have a reasonable expectation your assets will be available and in good condition to operate for their scheduled time. However, most plants operate on the premise of reactive maintenance. The asset will run until it fails and will be fixed until it breaks again. If an asset fails, and you have 20 operators on a line that goes down for a couple of hours, that is a cost of productivity.

Don’t wait until the asset breaks down. Be proactive.

Preventive maintenance is one option that provides service on a time-based schedule. For instance, changing the oil in your car every three months is a type of preventive maintenance. Automotive manufacturers have determined the recommended lubricant to be changed in your car after a certain number of miles have been driven. This recommended mileage may be adjusted slightly for driving styles, but you could be incurring unnecessary maintenance costs.

Your assets are similar. With a time-based approach, you may be scheduling maintenance every 3 months, when the asset only needed maintenance once a year. Oil sampling and analysis can determine when the lubricant is reaching the end of its useful life and allow time to plan and schedule a replacement.

By using established tools and systems in your facilities, you can not only reduce your overall maintenance cost by reducing downtime, labor, and material, but also by intervening before a problem occurs. This is an example of predictive maintenance and is based on the condition of your asset. With the use of sensors and other tools, you can identify physical evidence to tell if something is running in an abnormal condition.

Transitioning from a time-based maintenance approach to a condition-based approach allows you to determine if an asset is at the beginning of failure and gives you the time to acquire the parts, the availability of the equipment, and the ability to perform the required maintenance without interrupting the scheduled production time.

Optimizing for Operational Excellence

The benefits of maintenance optimization include increased machine availability, increased productivity, streamlining production, identifying bottlenecks, and smoothing the manufacturing process.

Maintenance optimization considers how your team, tools, systems, and infrastructures support your overall manufacturing process. By effectively managing your resources, you can take steps toward improvements in processes and efficiency of operations to increase productivity.

Let Tormod design an improvement plan that empowers your maintenance team to achieve “world-class” capabilities. Schedule a meeting with Tormod today.

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Environmental, Health, Safety, & Security

March 15, 2023 The Tormod Team

Combustible Dust Hazard Assessments: What You Need to Know

Knowing the hazards of combustible dust and its effects on the surrounding environment is crucial for many asset-owning managers. Materials that can be categorized as “combustible dust” include metal dust, wood dust, coal and carbon dust, plastic dust, organic dust (sugar, flour, paper, soap, or dried blood), agricultural dust, and textile dust. Combustible Dust Hazard Assessments inform manufacturing leaders of the potential hazards and the corrective actions for their facilities.

For example, imagine you’re the manager of a plywood plant. After arriving at the plant in the morning, you notice several vacuums on your plant floor. You come to find out that the newly-hired janitor —hoping to easily clean up messes and adjust ventilation — purchased these vacuums to use in your shop.

However, the janitor didn’t consider the electrical classification of the vacuums. When he put the vacuums in your plant — electrical devices in an atmosphere where there’s dust, a dust cloud, or where dust could be propagated — he just created ignition sources. Ignition sources are an obvious hazard — so how should you mitigate risk within your plant?

Here’s what you need to know about Combustible Dust Hazard Assessments.

Comply with NFPA Codes and Standards

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a combustible dust compliance directive, updated in October of 2015. Through the OSHA General Duty Clause, asset-owning companies must read and understand the OSHA Compliance Directive and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) codes to prevent a fire, flash fire, or explosion hazard and potentially a citation from a regulatory authority.

In September 2020, NFPA published the deadline to complete the Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment every five years in accordance with the NFPA standards 652 and 654.

OSHA requires this regulatory requirement due to the dangerous nature of combustible dust.

Protect your People, Property, and Neighboring Areas

Combustible dust is exactly what it sounds like. It’s ignitable and has the potential to create an explosive environment. Therefore, your workforce, your property (including your equipment), and the surrounding areas such as residential neighborhoods or shopping centers are susceptible to damage.

Even if your facility has a fully automated process, you can still incur combustible dust issues. Completing a Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment ensures the protection of the people and property in and around your facility.

Satisfy Insurance Company Policies

Your insurance provider will conduct a third-party audit at your site each year. With the requirement from NFPA, the auditor will ask to see your Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment, and if you don’t have it, the insurance provider can drop coverage from your facility or increase your premium.

Due to COVID, there were few audits being conducted in 2020 and early 2021. Since late 2021, as the impact of COVID has lessened, the number of audits has increased, which leaves many companies scrambling to complete hazard assessments.

Engaging with Industry Specialists

Most companies don’t have the in-house resources to complete a Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment. Therefore, outside contractors are often needed to remain in compliance.

If you are an asset-owning leader in need of an outside contractor, it is ideal to work with someone with an engineering background — someone who understands conveyance, bearings, and chain drive systems. Contractors with mechanical and electrical backgrounds will be able to understand concepts such as static discharge and their ability to create an explosion.

Contractors must be well versed in the NFPA regulations 652 and 654 and must understand combustibility. With different types of facilities like grain handling, metal cutting, agricultural sites, and paper mills, you should work with a contractor well-versed in process design who understands how your facility operates.

What to Expect Before Conducting a Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment

Your contractor needs to have an overall grasp of your facility before conducting a proper assessment to confirm that it’s required.

Prior to the Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment, your contractor will:

Ask preliminary questions to determine the type of dust.
Conduct a site visit to determine the condition of the facility.
Request pictures and videos of your facility.
Collect dust from your site and test it in a laboratory (this is called a “go or no-go” test).
Request facility equipment drawings/schematics to perform benchtop modeling for the combustible dust assessment.

If the dust at your site is a “go”, it failed the combustibility test and could explode. Your contractor will schedule the Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment.

Conducting your Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment

The Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment will consist of a walk-through of the facility. Each area of the facility that has potential for combustible dust generation will be reviewed and ranked for risk based on the current condition of the facility and the likelihood and severity of an explosion. If there are any existing safeguards, such as Hot Work programs or dust collection systems, to prevent ignition or propagation from a localized explosion, those will be captured and reviewed during the assessment.

During the assessment, your contractor will investigate the following topics including but not limited to:

Housekeeping
Ignition source controls
Use of properly rated portable vacuums
Condition of standard operating procedures (SOP)
Employee/operator trainings concerning the hazards of combustible dust.

If you operate a Process Safety Management (PSM) site, other topics will be considered including the review of new equipment, the requirement of flame-retardant garments, and the inclusion of a fire suppression system on the enclosures of the combustible dust equipment.

Your contractor will also interview the operators of the equipment in these areas while onsite to compare the current conditions and procedures with the procedures stated in your SOP.

Once your assessment is complete, the contractor will issue a report with their findings and recommendations to mitigate risk at your facility. Examples of recommended installations include fire suppressors, isolation valves, ventilation or dust collection systems, and central vacuum systems.

Often, design changes to dust-collecting systems are required or ventilation systems need to be adjusted. Your contractor may also spec equipment and provide cost estimates for purchasing.

Regardless of the specific recommendations, your contractor will ensure that you are aware of what modifications need to occur for your facility to comply with OSHA and NFPA regulations.

Teaming with Tormod for your Assessment

Tormod provides clients with customized solutions that meet OSHA and NFPA requirements through Combustible Dust Hazard Assessments. With a Team of industry specialists, Tormod offers in-house design mitigation of fugitive dust and electrical classification studies to determine risk and mitigate ignition sources.

To schedule a Combustible Dust Hazard Assessment with Tormod, visit our website.