It would be great if plants could run forever after starting them up, but unfortunately, they slowly degrade as they operate. Equipment and assets foul, corrode, erode, rattles and more. Some can be maintained while the process continues to run, but many require the plant to be shut down.

These plant turnarounds require much upfront preparation and planning to be done to make sure the scope is clear, the execution performed as efficiently as possible, and timeline, budget and quality measures are met.

Emerson’s Sorin Corbu and Julian Annison will host a webinar, How to reduce the risk in your next Shutdown, Turnaround or Outage? multiple times in the coming weeks:

• June 30, 11am CEST / 5pm SGT
• June 30, 2pm CEST / 8am EDT
• July 12, 11am CEST / 5pm SGT
• July 12, 2pm CEST / 8am EDT

They’ll explore the challenges in current practices such as inspections performed during the turnaround, which could have been performed in advance, or servicing assets that don’t require servicing. These types of activities cost precious time that could be applied to activities that are more valuable.

The result of these non-value activities is that 74% of all turnarounds fail to satisfy performance goals, with failure defined as <10% over budget, <10% over planned schedule, or unplanned shutdowns after startup before the process fully brought back on line.

Even with this high rate of failure, continued changeover in personnel and the comfort of the status quo keep many process manufacturers and producers planning and executing the turnarounds in a similar way each time.

Sorin and Julian will discuss ways to more accurately determine the scope of the turnaround, better plan the work to be performed, and offer ways to streamline the execution of the work. One example is the health of control valves, instruments, rotating machinery and other assets can be determined in advanced to help plan and prioritize which assets require work during the outage.

Register for one of the sessions to learn about other examples and best practices to make sure your turnaround successfully meets its goals, makes your facility more reliable & efficient, and operate with less risk.

You can also connect and interact with other plant turnaround experts in the Plan & Design group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.