As one of the most significant maintenance investments an industrial facility makes during a given year, a turnaround is a high-stakes event that can cost millions if something goes wrong. Who you select to manage your turnaround is a critical factor in success. It’s essential to find a contractor that understands your facility’s maintenance needs, meets your expectations for safety and quality and has the tools and experience to keep the project on schedule.
Here are a few tips that will help ensure your turnaround is successful.
Safety
The number one consideration of any turnaround project should be safety. Your contractor should fully understand the safety considerations of the facility and the equipment being maintained to make sure the turnaround project is carried out incident free and stays on pace. Look at safety records. When a company can demonstrate a solid safety record, you can be assured safety has been its top priority, which goes a long way in recruiting and retaining experienced turnaround team members.
Quality Control
Poor quality on a turnaround project results from a number of different factors, including inexperienced team members, a lack of quality controls, poor communication and ineffective tracking of benchmarks. Be sure your contractor’s turnaround team has extensive experience executing turnaround projects from conception to completion on turnaround projects. In addition, find out more about their Quality Control program and how they mitigate mistakes. Ask how the company measures success on turnaround projects. Finally, because communication is a critical factor in delivering a quality work product, ask how turnaround managers and superintendents communicate to teams on the ground.
Scheduling
Advanced planning is absolutely essential to a successful turnaround project. The pre-planning period should include a thorough understanding of the scope of the project, why it’s important to the facility, a thorough analysis of equipment, what personnel will be required and a detailed schedule for completion. When operations resume, will you immediately hit, or even exceed, your performance benchmarks? Remember, it is essential to establish realistic goals during the scheduling phase. The last thing you want is for the turnaround team to over-promise and under-deliver.
Experience
Think of a turnaround team as a specialty labor force. An effective turnaround team has worked in this space for years and understands the simultaneous need for safety, quality and staying on schedule.
Taking time to understand your specific needs on a turnaround project and who can meet them is a worthy investment of your time.
Advantages of Performance Contractors’ Turnaround Group
Performance Contractors’ Turnaround Group is a specialized sector within the company that has been providing high-level turnaround services since 2012. This dedicated team has completed complex projects on dozens of job sites coast to coast. It offers:
- Extensive experience. Site Managers have an average tenure of 17 years with the company, while Superintendents average 12 years.
- Specialization. Performance Contractors has a specialized team committed to performing effective and efficient turnarounds.
- A commitment to safety. Since 2016, Performance Contractors’ Turnaround Group boasts a perfect 0.0 Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR).
- Quality Control. The Group’s weld reject rate is well below industry average.
- Company-owned equipment. In-house equipment is at the disposal of the Turnaround Group and does not have to be outsourced. These assets far exceed our competitors.
- Depth of resources. Situated within Performance Contractors, the Turnaround Group has at its disposal vast company resources, including safety experience, technology to track metrics, and an experienced labor pool that brings years of experience with a wide range of process units.