POWER April 2017 - 52

OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
1. Share the planning workload. To
mitigate the risk of missing an action during
the outage planning process, utilize resources
across multiple departments. Courtesy: NRG
2. Ask basic questions. To ensure progress is being made on planning tasks, yes or no
answers could be all that is needed. Courtesy: NRG
edge from multiple departments is that the
work scopes used to engage contractors are
likely to be more thoroughly developed.
When scopes are better prepared and presented
early to contractors, they can put the best
team on the project and acquire the needed
resources in advance. It's important to keep
in mind that other power plants and manufacturing
facilities may also be planning outages,
which could create a bandwidth problem
for contactors.
Penny Font, editorial director for 10/12 Industry
Report, wrote in the first quarter 2017
issue that some 7,000 additional craftsmen
might be needed to handle the demand for
maintenance turnarounds in the first quarter
of 2017. If true, the law of supply and demand
could cause outage costs to increase. Not engaging
contractors early enough will almost
always cost your company money that could
otherwise have been saved. This is a common
problem because the actual commitment is
not made between companies until an accepted
purchase order is in place. More times
than not, the purchase order is one of the last
actions in the planning process. When planning
is done well, the commitments can be
made in advance and companies can choose
the best contractor at the best price.
Even when companies are successful in
breaking down silos and obtaining more participation,
many may still struggle to unleash
a planning team's full potential because of the
complicated technology and difficult planning
tools that are in use. To open up communications
and increase success, simpler and more
familiar tools may be the best choice.
In my experience, avoiding complex matrix
charts and simply breaking large projects
down into simple block diagrams that
everyone can understand has been successful
(Figure 2). Let's consider a lube oil change
project, for example. Many experienced personnel
know all of the steps necessary to
complete the project, and most would likely
have it listed on a planning schedule, such as
" Alpha compressor lube oil change budgeted
for $100,000. "
In reality, when the job is broken down
into individual parts, the lube oil change
work task would have the following components:
Determine the type of oil to be used,
determine how to dispose of the old oil, create
the work scope for the lube oil change
out, solicit proposals from oil suppliers, etcetera.
Also, by breaking down large projects
into stand-alone work tasks, key players can
easily understand their portion of the work.
In one situation, for example, it came to
light that a contractor, engaged to perform
boiler tube work, had not had its labor rates
reviewed or vetted in two years. This type of
discovery would not be possible without the
needed, open communications throughout
the planning process.
Open Communications with
Simple Visual Aids
Just as mentioned above about complex technology,
if conversations become too complex
for many on the planning team, it could close
down the needed communications. Visual
aids can be an effective tool for opening up
communications. However, the outage planning
team should remember that using too
many elaborate features in visuals could be
counterproductive.
Gates Matthew Stoner wrote in his article,
" Effectively Communicating with Visual
Aids Made Simple, " (available online at: bit.
ly/GMS_paper) that a presentation with too
many elaborate features, which serve as
powerful distractions, could decrease its effectiveness.
In other words, technology can
be intimidating to those unfamiliar with it
and this can reduce outage-planning collaboration.
Best-in-class companies will discover
ways to work more effectively and more collaboratively
by adopting information-sharing
practices to streamline communication.
Too often, organizations don't deploy technology
innovations in a way that captures
business value, says Puthiyamadam with PwC
U.S. He adds that some companies still see
employees using email and a note-taking ap3.
Simple visuals lead to answers. Using simple, familiar tools, like Microsoft Excel, to create a red/green traffic-light-style tracking
sheet makes incomplete items highly visible. Courtesy: NRG
Station #1 3/27/2017 4/28/2017
52
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POWER April 2017

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