Project Update - Site Visit

Visited site yesterday for the PRM.  Met the engineers of the Owner and PMC for the first time. Also met the RCM. RCM is very knowledgeable and has experience of constructing a similar plant. This will be an important success factor.

Soil investigation agency has been appointed. Bore-hole locations have been identified. They have obtained the cold work permit to commence their job.

Studied the site: the lay of the land, the contours, the low point (drain), the perimeter roads, the encumbrances. Dismantling of the 3 existing tanks has already begun. 15-20 coconut trees will have to be cut to clear the site.

There is a cable tray passing through the site. It has to be relocated by burying the cables. Burying the cables will result in their derating.

Biggest concern right now is how to barricade the site to safeguard the live storage across the road. Tender specifies 15 m high barricade. Because of the costal location, design wind speed is high (180 kmph). Tall barricade will hence need a wide footing which will eat into the road. The road is very vital for construction access. RCM has come out with an innovative proposal of constructing the barricade in 2 stages, using the retaining wall of the mound for supporting the barricade. Will this proposal be accepted? 

Why Second Hand Plants aren't a Good Idea?

Please read my earlier post on Design Life, before going further.Many secondhand plants from the developed world have found a haven in India. Dismantling and disposing old chemical plant and machinery is expensive in the developed world because of stringent environmental regulations and hence are often available at bargain prices to importers of secondhand plant and machinery. Many of these find a ready market in our country because of lax regulations. We also seem to take pride in importing vintage plants and making them operational again.

While it can be argued that secondhand plants will be inspected and refurbished before being put to use again, we need to remember that a chemical plant has thousands of components and each component has a different useful life. Electrical systems and components are known to have a shorter useful life than rest of the plant. The chink in the armour will be exposed only in the real battlefield and not in mock practice. Remember the nursery rhyme, which spoke about a kingdom being lost for the want of a nail. 

Another drawback of secondhand plant is the availability of spares. When a secondhand plant is relocated, it rarely comes with original spares, for it is already at the end of or beyond its useful life. Many OEMs would have phased out the old models of machinery and spares would be difficult to procure, especially in a new geography. Thus when a secondhand plant breaks down, spare parts will have to be often improvised at local workshops. Not only does this lengthen the plant outage, it also further diminishes the reliability. Operating a plant that is well past its useful life with improvised replacements also makes it very unsafe. The cardinal lesson from the infamous Flixborough accident is that modifications should be designed, constructed, tested and maintained to the same standard as the original plant.

Yet another problem with secondhand plant pertains to documentation, or rather lack of it. Original specification and drawings to which the plant has been built are rarely available. We are talking about pre-computer days here. Even if documents are available, they are not complete and not easy to decipher. They are also not in English, posing an additional problem. In the absence of complete and authentic as-built documents, it is extremely difficult to understand the plant let alone troubleshoot it in the event of underperformance. Procuring replacements and spares can be very arduous. Engineers who designed and operated the plant are mostly dead and gone and are not available to consult.

Ageing and secondhand process plants operate sub-optimally on obsolete technology compromising safety, efficiency and reliability. Getting more out of less is the prime business objective, but this should not be at the expense of safety, efficiency and reliability. 

Not a Real KOM

PLEASE READ THE EARLIER POST BEFORE YOU CONTINUE FURTHER.

Kick-off Meeting could not be conducted in the true sense because the team was not present in full strength.

Good news: Process Engineer is on board.

Bad news: Instrument Engineer has declined to join. We have to start all over again. Role of Instrument Engineer is very tricky.

Copy of the Engineering Guideline hasn’t been procured yet. We don’t know where to get it from.  Team members have to quickly familiarise with this guideline. They have to demonstrate clause-wise compliance when they submit drawings/documents for my approval.

Reiterated priorities

a)    P&I Ds

b)    Layout

c)    Documents for PESO approval

P&IDs are being redrawn, because FEED documents not up to mark.

Went through the residual engineering activities in detail with the Process Engineer: TSVs, gas detectors, isolation valves, purging connections, drains and vents etc.

It is a brownfield project. The site has to be barricaded from the adjacent live plant before construction can start. There isn’t adequate space for the barricade foundation. Need to think out-of-the box. We aren’t paid for that, so we will only highlight the problem. Important to understand the scope and stay within it. 

New Project : First Day

Project Background

The Owner (who shall be nameless) has awarded LSTK contract to build gas storage.  The contractor’s work will be supervised by a PMC (nameless again), who has also prepared the FEED. The Contractor (of course nameless) has outsourced Detailed Engineering, because it is not his strength.  I will be playing a key role in assisting and advising the Detailed Engineering Contractor (DEC)

First Meeting

I explained my responsibility and the authority I need.

The team is yet to be fully assembled. Piping, Civil and Electrical engineers are on board. Instrument engineer has been identified. Process engineer’s resume in hand and looks promising; will interview tomorrow.

We have a copy of the standard to which the engineering shall mandatorily comply. But it is an older edition. New version to be procured and made available to all team members.

Tried to work on a list of “milestones” and the overall schedule, but interrupted by the Contractor, who wanted to meet urgently. So we dropped everything, grabbed a hasty lunch and went for the meeting downtown.

Meeting with Contractor

Contractor wants us to take up on priority 14 documents required for PESO approval. He provided us samples from a previous project.

Contractor asked us to formally request for soft copies from FEED, but provided no assurance that PMC will oblige. If not, we will have to redraw, increasing our effort and chances of error.

Contractor has not costed for piling, but it cannot be ruled out. It will depend on soil investigation study to be undertaken asap. Report will be known in min 4 weeks. Piling will significantly add to both cost and schedule.

Detailed Engineering will be impacted by vendor information and we are concerned if Contractor will place timely orders, though not called for from delivery point of view. Contractor assuaged our fear , but I am not personally convinced it will happen.

Contractor will provide soft copies of documents from a similar project to facilitate our work. Sometimes it is better to start afresh than reuse and own an old document.

Contractor has already prepared a barricading drawing assuming a layout, which apparently violates PESO guideline.  Owner is coaxing him towards this.

Risk Summary

1)      Piling?

2)      PESO approval

3)      Timely ordering for vendor information

4)      Availability of FEED Soft Copy.

Why Process Plant and Machinery have a Design Life?

Not many end users appreciate that process plant and machinery have a specified “design life”. This is usually 20 years and is spelt out in the Design Basis. Special design considerations and codes have to be invoked if critical equipment has to be designed for a longer life. One obvious factor that limits the useful life is atmospheric corrosion. Atmospheric corrosion rates of carbon steel vary from 0.03 mm per year to 0.5 mm per year depending on the environment. Corrosion allowance applied for carbon steel is in the range of 1.5 to 3 mm.

The other reason for “design life” is even less appreciated. Each time a plant is started up and shut down it is subject to stress. Equipment and pipelines are heated up or cooled down, subjecting these to thermal stresses.  Pressure is raised and lowered. Metal undergoes fatigue and wear, grain morphology changes. Longer a plant operates more the number of start-ups and shut-downs, more the stress and fatigue it experiences. This explains why the failure rate of any equipment exhibits the characteristic “bathtub curve”.  Ageing plants are operating at the extreme right end of the curve making them very vulnerable to sudden failure with catastrophic consequences. Ageing was found to responsible for 28% of reported major loss of containment events in Europe between 1980 and 2006.