Outages and shut downs occur every day in the business world. Offices may have shutdowns to move from one location to another or to update to a new software system. Manufacturing plants, ore mines and every production facility imaginable all require equipment maintenance outages for repairs or replacement. How these are planned and implemented make all the difference between success and failure. Most importantly – they must be done with safety in mind.
Do you find any of these issues with your shutdowns?
- No one knows when or what to do
- Procedures are thrown out because they are wrong
- Shutdown or start up time takes too long
- Timelines not correct
- Safety becomes an issue
- Risks are not uncovered and prevented
- There is no review before the outage
- Contractors walk into disasters
- No written plan to follow
- Building the same plans and procedures over and over
Solution:
Our Shutdown and Outage plan involves not only building the plan (see project planning section), but also questions are presented, reviews are planned, steps are taken to look for missing information, and correct procedures and risks are identified. Gathering all the parties involved with the outage and working through issues and problems before the commencement of the outage ensures that items will not be missed and project risk will be minimal. Safety is a huge concern during an outage because workers are doing non-normal processes and usually equipment is being dismantled in awkward ways. At Leadership Initiatives, workers health and safety is most imperative. Period.