What are the best ways to manage a team during a plant shutdown or outage?

The safety of the people in your team is the most important thing! Once confirm all are safe, the next thing to do is to safe park the plant.

Plant shutdown and outages are the most critical phase of plant operations as the operations team members are at the maximum risk of a burnout. The first step forward here is to step back and assess the situation from a bird's eye perspective. Assess the damage, develop a shared understanding with the team what is repairable and what is not. Divide the team and tasks into smaller clusters, possibly as small as a daily plausible. Also have a skip level conversation with the last man on the ground to make sure the personal exigencies if any are handled well before the team sprints off to revive the plant operations. Define clear escalation channel and KPIs for daily progress.

1. Pre-Shutdown Planning: Conduct detailed risk assessments and allocate necessary resources. 2. Clear Communication: Inform the team early, provide regular updates, and emphasize safety protocols and individual roles. 3. Coordination: Ensure interdepartmental collaboration and hold daily briefings to monitor progress and resolve issues. 4. Track Progress: Use project management tools to track milestones and adapt to changes as needed. 5. Post-Shutdown Review: Conduct debriefings to document lessons learned and recognize team efforts. 6. Continuous Improvement: Establish a feedback loop to enhance future shutdowns, prioritizing safety and efficiency.

Managing a team during a plant shutdown or outage demands meticulous planning and communication. Develop a clear shutdown plan, assign responsibilities, and establish communication channels. Prioritize safety with stringent protocols and emergency response plans. Cross-train team members to ensure flexibility and optimize resource allocation. Document processes thoroughly for reference and continuous improvement. Conduct post-shutdown evaluations to gather feedback and apply lessons learned to refine future plans. Be flexible and adaptable, ready to address unforeseen challenges in real-time. Continuous monitoring of key processes ensures quick issue identification and resolution.

In my experience, aligning roles with "Who does What, Why, When, and How" during a shutdown is pivotal. Clear communication ties tasks to skills, enhancing efficiency in managing plant downtime. Harmonizing production and maintenance schedules while allowing buffer periods ensures smoother operations, reducing unexpected disruptions.

Planning is the backbone of shutdown or outages that's why it started well before the SD window. The clarity of scope of works, proper work packages and all the resources requirements need to be done on priority and ultimately a detailed hourly basis activity baseline schedule duly sign off and approve by all involving stakeholders. Remember the float is always zero so vigilance and proper resource allocation in the planning pave way to accomplish SD within planned timelines and make plant commercially available

Identify the critical path and competing critical path upfront so that they have more focus. However every other activity needs to have a job plan and a defined scheduled. Track progress on a shift wise basis. As work progresses at times critical paths shift. A good tracking system will raise prompt flags and allow you to redeploy resources proactively to prevent things from getting out of control.

In plant shutdown planning, buffer periods are crucial for unforeseen issues, ensuring a flexible schedule. Clear communication, easily accessible and responsible, is pivotal for seamless coordination among teams and contractors. Prioritizing a "safety first" ethos within the schedule guarantees that safety measures are integrated into every task, safeguarding the team and the facility.

In my past work experiences,I learnt good practices when it comes to planned or unplanned plant shutdowns. The maintenance planners job is to plan ahead and so is the responsibility of every individual involved in the organization structure from top to lower management to contribute in the planning activities for especially non routine tasks,equipment that run for longer hours,equipment that cannot be handled during operations and those that need attention on every shutdown. Therefore,a planner creates a chart of activities tallying with the manpower and according to task priority so as to stick to the schedule of the shutdown,which is also suppose to be accompanied by checklists for tracking completion to meet deadlines.

Using Gantt Charts, checklists or even fully integrated software will still count on the level of details and who endorse the scoping. Few most essential steps are the key steps to effectively plan well and manage the actual shutdown. Focus on granular accuracy. Plan the HOW ahead of shutdown even if additional procedures are to be developed. Execution team must know the alternative plan upfront. This demands linking the shutdown register with STO scoping to be captured for X?Shutdown. All opportunities must be availed to impregnate reliability into system no matter if some adjustments could be made in initial plan. Eventually STO has to add performance in succeeding operations. Arrange Tooling, Rentals, Skilled Resources well ahead.

There is a two way of shutdown , planned shutdown as per Business Plan or Unplanned shutdown due to lower market demand or non compliance of regulations,however we have to use this opportunities to ensure correction done whatever we have identified during the operation like productivity improvements ,Quality requirements, cost reduction initiatives, preventive maintenance , small modification all these needs effective coordination with cross functional team like production, quality, maintenance, finance ,HR, even we can give effective training in advance across the plants which planned as per BP, Most requirements we have to predict everything we'll in advance except unplanned deviations.

During a plant shutdown, accessible and clear communication channels are pivotal. Using tools like emails, meetings, and reports ensures everyone stays informed and engaged. Responsible communication fosters trust and accountability within the team. It's crucial to maintain transparency, promptly address issues, and encourage an open dialogue, ensuring effective problem-solving and a cohesive team effort.

regardless of whether the outage is planned or unplanned, multiple daily reviews of progress are essential. They will not only facilitate changes at tactical level, but also allow for prompt communication to external functions such as supply chain or sales or finance. Meetings need to be structured with minuted action items so that their progress is tracked effectively.

There are three steps of communication in this situation 1. Pre Shutdown : Meticulous planning discussion cross functionally. 2. During shutdown: In specific time short cross functional meeting 3. Post shutdown: To retrospect and find out the opportunities for improvement

Over communicate in all the possible ways. Design & define communication protocols and make staff accountable for its success. Do discuss protocols in kick off meeting with all stake holders to validate the need of workability and success. Do improve and update protocols if needed.

Use something like P6 to track shift wise progress vs a pre defined detailed plan (level IV). Do not make the mistake of using S curves (they are not for tracking shut downs). For budget and manpower, track daily manpower and ensure that ramp ups and ramp downs are in line with work load.

Acknowledgment of effort and achievements boosts morale and motivates the team. Rewarding performance can also encourage productivity and a sense of ownership among team members.

Daily meetings are critical to identify any risks to the plan of the restart time. Making sure that the finish time is achieved to reduce the risk of overspend and lost productivity. The critical path needs to have one person with the relevant skills to oversee that one particular task and is responsible for making sure the plan is achieved safely.

Regular monitoring of the progress against the plan allows for quick intervention if things go off track. Control mechanisms help in maintaining project scope, quality, and timelines.

In my experience it’s good to have reward scheme in place for the whole period, this could be free breakfasts, hot drinks or other suitable gifts to suit your business. This can also include incentives for safety audits and people working safety / having SOP’s and following the correct safety procedures including PPE ect, Not in favour of bonuses in the form of cash as in reality they are being paid to so the job they are employed to do, however there is no reason you can’t have a successful shutdown being part of a PDM There is also another thing you can do is celebrate after the shutdown with either a BBQ / post shutdown get together to celebrate together.

Recognizing team members for the success of each phase is the best way of building a top notch team. Recognition and celebration must not be at the end only. Do celebrate each significant milestone minor achievements also.

Based on my experience, implementing a reward structure throughout the shutdown period is beneficial. Consider offerings like free breakfasts, hot drinks, or other fitting gifts for your business. Include incentives for safety audits, adherence to SOPs, and following correct safety procedures and proper PPE usage.

To effectively manage a plant shutdown, ample materials are essential. Time is a critical factor in shutdowns, as prolonged downtime translates to financial losses for stakeholders. Occasionally, new materials like valves, pipes, switchgears, transformers, etc., must be installed during the shutdown. It is imperative to dispatch your team to suppliers, vendors, or contractors to verify the quality, specifications, and availability of these materials, ensuring they are ready for use when required.

Shutdowns, Turnaround & Outages (STO) are a question of micro management at all levels with different sets of challenges. Onsite tooling for an aged plant could be a make and break. Unless mocks are done upfront, best in class tooling could not be made available. So a year long preparation is needed for a good slot. Imagine a shutdown involving chemical cleaning, heat exchangers retubing, reactors scallops replacement, catalyst regeneration, refractory repairs of boilers, bearing replacement after rebabbitting of turbines with insulation replacement. A thorough risk management should be functional on top of basic S?Curves and Critical Path Shifts. Nights should be as effective & productive as days are. End results to be logged in LL.

Effectively managing a diverse workforce, including Company employees, Contractors, Vendors, etc., during shutdown execution is crucial for a successful Turnaround. In my experience, the best way is organizing teams based on skill sets, assigning accountability, and implementing team-based performance monitoring. These groups can then be further divided into smaller, specialized subgroups for specific tasks. For instance, one main group can focus on managing shell and tube exchanger jobs, while subgroups handle tasks like blinding, head/channel removal, bundle pulling, and hydro jetting. Clear and transparent performance tracking, along with effective coordination and necessary support systems, are equally vital for overall success.

Pre shutdown planning sometimes needs to be taken off site so that a total focus of the needs of the shutdown are taken in to account rather than having normal day to day activities interrupting the proceedings. Any on site meetings needs to have some good control and minimise the phones and site radio usage to ensure the meeting is kept on task. Attendance of the shutdown meeting should be none negotiable and the identified managers in control of shutdown tasks having responsibility to ensure that the task is managed within the time allocated in the schedule.

It all starts with planning. This includes planning and chosing the right leaders, the team and process. Next is the level of detailing. High visibility and timely communication is an important component. Be prepared for surprises and unknowns. Risk management is to be shared with he team. I can share a details if your are available