Hydrocarbon Processing - February 2021 - 15

Reliability

HEINZ P. BLOCH, RELIABILITY/EQUIPMENT EDITOR
Heinz.Bloch@HydrocarbonProcessing.com

Plan startups wisely and involve SMEs
DE, a retired former colleague of mine, recounted his experience as an expert witness for ABC in litigation against XYZ.
(Note that I picked the letters A through M for the plaintiff 's
side; N through Z are assigned to the defendants.) Defendant
XYZ was an overly optimistic, perhaps moderately negligent,
supplier of bulk raw material to ABC, the plaintiff. The plaintiff 's profitability depended on the uninterrupted flow of raw
material from XYZ, which was the manufacturer of malfunctioning turbomachines that were clearly involved. The startup
was delayed, and the unforeseen consequential losses for ABC
were far-reaching.
ABC had hired DE as its expert machinery reliability witness.
In his role, DE had to explain to the litigants what ailed the big
process machines and why these, or similar large compressors
and steam turbines (FIG. 1), are known to operate well elsewhere.
DE and his contributing colleague, FG, uncovered little or no
data on the success or failure of whatever actions XYZ's machinery engineers had taken to get satisfactory performance from the
machines at XYZ. However, the plaintiff 's team did not uncover
any documents indicating how XYZ's owners had determined
labor requirements to support equipment startup efforts.
Be this as it may, DE and FG began poring over thousands
of documents after being engaged by the law firm representing
ABC. To make a long story short: XYZ had failed to meet its
contractual obligation to deliver bulk raw material to ABC because the very large turbomachinery trains failed during startup.
The two parties settled out of court after it became clear that
XYZ had revamped its major machinery trains and missed the
startup deadline by a significant period of time. The company
had been warned well ahead of time that its fast-track startup
schedule was unrealistic. Unsurprisingly, defendant XYZ had
encountered several troubles stemming from mechanical problems with a reputable manufacturer's machines. The dry gas
seals in its compressors had failed because no one had paid attention to the steam turbines' slow-rolling requirement. General organizational disarray was evident; organizational disarray
is often caused by too many cooks spoiling an entire meal.
No access to management. For hydrocarbon processing

plants to thrive, subject matter experts (SMEs) must have direct
access to upper management. If their findings and concerns are
being filtered by the various layers between persons empowered
to make risky decisions and those enabled to offer sound experience-based advice, the tracks are set for a collision with reality.
" As a matter of fact, " said DE a year later, " I was offered up to
XYZ's executive VP, along with another machinery SME, to do
a one-day cold-eye review of this fiasco. The VP was sent to the
facility to determine if corporate headquarters would authorize
the plant to attempt a restart. ABC was also in a bad way due to

FIG. 1. Large steam turbine driving a turbocompressor.

XYZ not delivering bulk raw material per their contract, and the
issue even drew regional newspaper headlines. "
DE recalled that the seal gas piping for the dry gas seals had
been fabricated from carbon steel and had not been cleaned after
installation. All of the dry gas seals failed on startup. The compressor manufacturer made its share of mistakes and could never
deliver the unrealistic schedule outlined by XYZ. It was suspected that the schedule had been determined using a proposal
made by KLM, an experienced vendor that had issued a bid not
favored by XYZ. Instead, XYZ had bought machines from NOP
and then expected its staffers to perform like KLM.
The various defendants also had internal problems. Although
not quite obvious, the reviewing SMEs sensed that there had
been dissent regarding the schedule. Regrettably, their cultures
did not allow for the voicing of divergent opinions and, during
the discovery phase of litigation, DE and FG found no potentially " career-limiting " remarks. Yet, their overall impression of a
startup gone wrong was supported by an entry from NOP's field
service engineer: " I don't feel the love... "
The two reviewers were left with the impression that everybody towed the line, and one of the two is now putting the finishing touches on a 300-plus page book on the topic of how to implement a successful startup. It will offer a great number of detailed
startup checklists to those who are willing to read and listen.
HEINZ P. BLOCH resides in Montgomery, Texas. His professional
career commenced in 1962 and included long-term
assignments as Exxon Chemical's Regional Machinery
Specialist for the U.S. He has authored or co-written
more than 800 publications, among them 23 books devoted
to reliability improvement. A recent one, titled, Fluid Machinery:
Life Extension of Pumps, Gas Compressors and Drivers,
was published in June 2020 by DeGruyter (Berlin, Germany). It describes
many equipment-related steps of interest to reliability professionals.
Hydrocarbon Processing | FEBRUARY 2021 15

Hydrocarbon Processing - February 2021

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