Chapter 16
Executing Plant Startup

Introduction

The previous chapter explored the general process of planning for startup.

This chapter introduces the sequences of executing these plans. The bounded activities shown in Figure 16-1 are the subject of this chapter. They are:

Fig. 16–1 Stages in the execution of plant startup.

• Mechanical and electrical completion and precommission (SME).
• Commission, performance testing, and postcommission management (SCPP).

The approach of the previous chapter continues and a network or flowchart of startup activities is introduced. The needs and objectives of availability engineering and management associated with each are then identified. This identification is used to form a flowchart of availability engineering and management within the bounded activities of Figure 16-1.

Mechanical and Electrical Completion and Precommissioning

The importance of defining contractual terms applicable to startup was discussed in Chapter 15. The definition of mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning is such a case.

Literature varies in the definitions of completion and precommissioning. Mechanical and electrical completion is sometimes defined as a milestone. Other times reverse definitions are given to completion and precommissioning.

Therefore, it is still necessary to define mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning. For this book they are as follows:

• Mechanical and electrical completion attempts to assure the following:
  Equipment is installed correctly.
  Equipment works correctly.
  Instrument and control systems work.
  Plant components and subsystems are ready for precommissioning.
• Precommissioning is the preparation of plant subsystems for commissioning as a system. Its primary objective is to discover and eliminate problems that would otherwise appear at a more critical stage. Accordingly, it involves
  Tests such as simulations, hydrotesting, and equipment rotation.
  Discerning that all plant functions and procedures are in place.
  Assuring that production materials are in place and ready.

The deliverables for mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning are coded as “TSME” (traditional startup activities for mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning) in Figure 16-2. Figure 16-3 flowcharts the associated availability engineering and management deliverables. Its deliverables are coded as “ASME” (Availability startup activities for mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning).

Fig. 16–2 Deliverables for mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning stages of startup (SME of Figure 16-1).

Fig. 16–3 Activities for availability engineering and management in mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning stages of startup (SME of Figure 16-1).

TSME1. Checkout, Installation, and Commissioning Instrumentation and Control System

Mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning of the instrumentation and control system is a special problem. Testing of the instrumentation system and the control system is often done in separate locations. The instrumentation system cannot be installed and checked until the plant is close to being completed. Meanwhile the control system is tested at the supplier’s facilities.

The controls still must be precommissioned as a system. Therefore, the instrumentation and control system is actually commissioned as the remaining plant is still being precommissioned.

The requirements to check, install, precommission and commission the integrated instrumentation and control systems are as follows:

• Test and calibrate control system hardware and software at the supplier site.
• Install the control system at the plant site.

• Confirm that the infrastructure for instrumentation is installed and able to support testing. Infrastructure includes power, air, cables, tubing, etc.
• Check the instrumentation system for installation, connections, leaks, etc. Calibrate instruments for range and bias.
• Function test the instrumentation and controls as a system.

ASME1. Confirm that the instrumentation and control systems will serve the role of providing data to availability management (Figure 16-3). Availability management has concerns for the instrumentation and control system. It is a source of reliability data. It may also have a role in the scheme to monitor and detect imminent failures.

The testing and evaluation plan for availability engineering will have identified specific aspects it wishes to confirm during these startup activities. These will be related to the reliability and monitoring data to be collected. It will also wish to confirm that the systems and elements that transfer data to the availability-centered improvement, change, and data management systems can perform as planned.

TSME2. Confirm Acceptability of Installation and Construction

The objectives for confirming the acceptability of equipment installation and plant construction are as follows:

• To determine if there are variations between the baseline design (construction documents) and the actually constructed and installed condition (as-built documents).
• To evaluate these variations or confirm that they have been evaluated.
  To verify that the as-built conditions have been incorporated into the plant baseline design documents and data and that they have found their way into the improvement, change, and data management functions and systems.

ASME2. Availability-centered confirmation of acceptable installation and construction (Figure 16-3). Availability management is concerned with confirmation for the following reasons:

• To determine if there are as-built conditions pertinent to availability performance.
• To evaluate changes against the current baseline availability design.
• To decide whether these changes will require that the testing and evaluation plans for availability performance be revised.

The second case attempts to determine whether plant reliability, maintainability, and availability characteristics and economics have been affected. The review will discover if a design change is needed. Such changes are either to reverse the as-built condition or counter it. This can include the realignment of maintenance operations.

Therefore, availability management is concerned with the earliest possible identification of any divergence from baseline design. Options to change the plant’s design will become increasingly limited as time passes.

TSME3. Determine Mechanical and Electrical Completion of All Subsystems

Mechanical and electrical completion of all plant subsystems is established. They include production, ancillary, utilities and materials handling subsystems. Previously developed checklists and other control documents and procedures are applied to make this determination.

ASME3. Availability-centered overview of established mechanical and electrical completion (Figure 16-3). An availability-centered review of completion will have the following focus:

• To participate in the testing and evaluation of requirements if there is an availability-centered interest. Such interest will have been determined during the plant design phases.
• To determine if in the act of achieving mechanical and electrical completion, there were changes in equipment or the subsystem of which they are part.

TSME4. Deploy Operating and Support Functions and Systems Elements

The deployment of operating and associated support functions and systems was planned in a previous activity (TSP8, Chapter 15). At this time, their planned deployment should be drawing to a finish.

ASME4. Availability management: Participate and monitor deployment of plant operating elements (Figure 16-3). Availability management is concerned with the deployment of operations and its support functions. The availability scheme will have planned that some maintenance tasks and roles will be assigned to operating functions. Thus, availability management must confirm that these roles are treated in deployment.

Another concern is the points of interface between maintenance and operating functions. One is the equipment tagging and tracking system which is the interface where the actions of production process operations influence time-to-maintain. These interfaces can also be the cause of an accident during maintenance.

Therefore, availability management may be involved directly in the deployment of such crossover elements in the availability scheme.

TSME5. Deploy Maintenance and Support Functions and Systems

Planning to deploy the maintenance operation was the result of the stage for planning for startup (ASP9, Chapter 15). The deployment of the functions and elements of availability performance should also be drawing to a finish. This is especially so for the maintenance operation.

As part of deployment, there may be support requirements during mechanical and electrical completion and precommissioning. The subject equipment may require maintenance functions to respond to a failure.

These are important opportunities. This is because more than just plant equipment should be subjected to test and evaluation during startup. The maintenance operation functions and elements are also subject to scrutiny as these opportunities arise.

This requirement appears identically in Figures 15-2 and 16-3 as TSME5 and ASME5.

TSME6. Deploy Testing and Laboratory Functions and Elements

Laboratory and testing requirements are an integral part of plant startup and subsequent commercial functioning. They are applicable to the following:

• Testing incoming materials.
• Quality testing of the produced product.
• Equipment condition monitoring and acceptance for assuring compliance to specified mechanical performance.

At this point, the deployment planned earlier (TSP13, Chapter 15) is drawing to a finish.

ASME6. Availability management: Confirm deployment of pertinent testing and laboratory provisions for availability performance (Figure 16-3). Availability engineering must be concerned with elements that are part of the availability scheme. These are associated with requirements such as testing lubricating oils and other plant materials and conditions related to reliability.

TSME7. Make Production Materials Ready

The operation functions have been deployed or are now late in the process of being deployed. One milestone is making the plant production materials ready for simulation and final commissioning. This activity has minimal relevance to the availability discipline. It is presented here for completeness.

TSME8. Final Confirmation that All Systems, Materials and Operating, Maintenance, and Administration Functions and Elements are in Place

Before commissioning, it is necessary to make a final overall assessment to determine that all necessary materials and plant operating, maintenance, and administrative functions and elements are in place. This includes the availability and maintenance management information system and its ability to begin collecting equipment and maintenance task detail history. The functions and elements of quality assurance and control, safety management, etc., must also be confirmed. Assessment should also verify that the required training has been accomplished.

ASME8. Confirm that all necessary availability functions and elements are in place (Figure 16-3). Availability management should both involve and subject itself to the confirmation process and requirements presented in the previous section.

TSME9. Simulation Runs for Confirming Function and Controls

Simulation runs involve plant components and subsystems. The objective is to confirm that they are functioning correctly. Depending on the contractual terms for startup, this may be the first time the operations and maintenance functions and systems are called into play. In other cases these tests may have been part of mechanical and electrical completion activities.

ASME9. Availability management: Respond to failures and evaluate maintenance response during subsystem simulation (Figure 16-3). Equipment failures may occur during these tests. When this happens, the operators should isolate equipment for maintenance. Maintenance will be called upon to return the failed item to availability.

At that point the operators will remove the item from isolation. This will present opportunities to evaluate the maintainability dimension of the availability scheme under stress. What needs to be determined is whether the proactive plans for maintenance response to failures can be carried out as expected.

Commissioning, Performance Testing, and Post-Commissioning

The definition of the term commissioning varies. Some define it as testing plant subsystems. When this is completed, the plant is ready for the introduction of raw materials and any associated gases or liquids to the production process. Others define commissioning as making the plant live for normal functioning. The operating parameters are then adjusted to attain the specified process performance. The second definition will be the one generally applied in the following discussions. The first definition comes closer to defining the process of commissioning described above.

The combined deliverables for plant commissioning, performance testing, and post-commissioning coded as “TSCPP” (traditional startup activities in commissioning, performance testing, and post-commissioning) are shown as a network of activities in Figure 16-4. They are each presented and described in the following section. A flowchart that represents the associated availability engineering and management process for startup is presented in Figure 16-5. Its deliverables are coded as “ASCPP.”

Fig. 16–4 Deliverables for plant commissioning, performance testing and post-commissioning stages of startup (SCPP of Figure 16-1).

Fig. 16–5 Activities for availability deliverables in the commissioning, performance testing and post-commissioning of startup (SCPP of Figure 16-1).

TSCPP1. Final Check of Plant Status and Setup

The subsystems and associated equipment have been confirmed by inspection, simulation, and testing to be fit for their purposes. All plant functions and their elements have been trained and deployed. All equipment has either a status of readiness or is isolated from the system. The objective is now to make sure that the status of all plant elements is consistent with what has been reported.

ASCPP1. Declare status of availability management elements in the final check of plant status and setup (Figure 16-5). The availability management and maintenance functions and system must verify or declare the status of these elements. This is to confirm their capacity to respond as needs arise in the plant. The required response may be analytical processes or field actions. The status of the availability-centered change, data, and management functions and systems are core elements of both possibilities.

TSCPP2. Commission Subsystems

Initially, the plant subsystems may be commissioned individually rather than commissioned for the entire plant. This may be in the order of utilities, laboratory, input materials handling, ancillary equipment, stages of production and reaction, product storage, and materials handling.

The objective is to gain confidence in the subsystems as an operating system and in the operator’s ability to control them. The strategy also recognizes a much higher than normal probability of equipment failures during first hours of use.¹

¹ Some feel such a preconception must be eliminated. They look to availability design and implementation to progressively reduce such failures to a “theoretical” zero.

Thus, the divide and conquer approach confronts such needs and challenges in a less stressful situation. It also helps control the hazards inherent to commissioning a new production system.

ASCPP2. Availability management: Support failures and evaluate maintenance response as subsystems are commissioned (Figure 16-5). The maintenance operation will continue to gain experiences in the field. This is because many more than usual mechanical problems can be expected to arise. Many occur from infancy failures. They also occur when attempts to operate subsystems for the first time place unusual stresses on individual equipment.

Evaluation processes must be formulated as part of the living availability design scheme. These should be positioned to evaluate maintenance actions, procedures, and management functions as they are applied.

TSCPP3. Start up Plant to Prove Fitness for Operations

The plant is run to confirm that it is fit to fulfill its purpose in terms of technical performance and productivity. The nature and determinates of fitness are a function of whether the plant involves a batch or a continuous production process. Some plants may involve both.

The batch process. Fitness for a batch process plant is concerned with achieving the following:

• The correct mixture of materials.
• Production sequences.
• Critical production parameters.
• Confirmation of the process and procedures for routine production.

The continuous process. In contrast, the fitness of continuous discrete or process manufacturing is concerned with achieving the following:

• Stable operating conditions.
• Confidence in the ability to achieve a reasonable running time without an upset.
• Confidence in the instrumentation and control system.
• Product specification.

ASCPP3. Capitalize on the opportunity to test the fitness of the availability scheme (Figure 16-5). This stage will continue to generate maintenance needs that will challenge and, thus, test the availability management and maintenance operation scheme.

The short-term capacity to test the plant hard design for availability performance is limited. Reliability and maintainability can only be tested as data and information are collected and analyzed over the long-term. This is the purpose of the living analysis capability of the availability scheme.

Therefore, determining fitness with respect to availability performance is only possible in terms of whether maintenance operations, field actions, and resources are appropriately provisioned, effective, and efficient as planned. Even this presents a limited number of short-term possibilities.

This limitation is a reason why the capacity to design and model plant availability is so crucial. Otherwise, there is no legitimate means to confidently establish an expectation of performance. Performance will only become somewhat apparent much later in the plant’s life.

TSCPP4. Run to Performance Test and Acceptance

The objective is now to run and test the plant for design conditions, rate, and productivity. The requirement is to bring the plant to controlled steady-state conditions. It is then to achieve the specified process performance for a specified period of time. The following outcomes are possible:

• Achieving the goals.
• Overcoming the problems of achieving those goals.
• Falling short of goals with no possible means of remediation.

Adjustments will be required if the plant cannot achieve its performance goals. Individual or multiple changes may need to be made to the production process, plant functioning and resource levels. The plant design should be changed only as a last resort.

ASCPP4. Adjust availability scheme to fit performance test results (Figure 16-5). The maintenance operation scheme will offer possibilities for adjusting plant performance to meet its goals. Chapter 1 showed that reliability and maintainability are partially a function of the maintenance operation. Thus, plant productive capacity and, therefore, cost structure may be adjusted. Specifically, operational availability (A₀) in Figure 9-4 may be shifted with respect to achievable availability (A_a). This is accomplished by changing the maintenance intervals by changing human (including overtime hours) and material resource levels. Organizational effectiveness can also be revised. This is done by appropriate staffing and varying the power of organizational structures and processes.

One purpose of the improvement, change, and data management functions for availability management is to allow such determinations. They supports the reformulation of the availability scheme for most profitably matching the actual plant production process performance.

TSCPP5. Post-Commissioning Management

The startup process will generate data, changes, etc., that must be managed. Failing to manage these as a resource is a potent source of risk to all aspects of plant productivity and safety. Such risks are the worst kind because they creep unnoticed into the plant’s being.

The general requirements of post-commissioning management are as follows:

• Final evaluation of modifications and organization of any follow-up activities.
• Filing of tests and other data in the appropriate data and change management systems. These are, in essence, baseline performance and initial settings.
• Plans and needs for post startup audits of performance.
• List of problems for follow-up.
• Confirmation that all data collection systems are in place and functioning as planned.
• Achievement of the initially planned levels of spare/repair parts, components, and material for normal commercial operations.

ASCPP5. Monitor availability-centered elements of post-commission management (Figure 16-5). Availability management is deeply concerned with these aspects of post-commission management for the following reasons:

• Any plans for modifications and changes in response to the reservations list may change the system and, therefore, elements throughout the availability design.
• The startup test and setpoint data may be the initial point plant data that the living availability engineering process will draw upon.
  Availability management will influence the nature of planned audits. One goal of availability engineering is to test, evaluate, and improve the plant and, therefore, its own performance.
• Availability engineering and management is directly responsible for parts, components, and materials inventories. As such, it will be sensitive to the need to treat parts as a moving target as plant performance rapidly becomes more reliable.

Summary

This is the final chapter for discussion of the plant construction and startup phase. The general startup process was described. This was the basis to in turn describe one for availability management.

It was established that the full availability scheme should be in place at the end of startup. This includes the maintenance operation and the many overall availability management functions and systems.

The early stages of commercial life will challenge them because plant functioning will progress along a learning curve, Meanwhile, equipment failures will be greater as they decline to a normal level.

Therefore, availability management during startup is a crucial dimension of early success because it will help shorten the time to achieve the first production and target production levels. The success at this stage, however, is based on the success of availability engineering and management during the design phases.

Bibliography

Construction Industry Institute. Planning Construction Activity to Support the Startup Process. Austin, Tx. 1990.

Harrison, Roger. Startup: The Care and Feeding of Infant Systems. Organizational Dynamics. Summer 1981.

Horsley, D.M.C. and Parkinson, J.S. Process Plant Commissioning. Institution of Chemical Engineers. Rugby, Warwickshire, England. 1990.