This is the third part of our series of blog posts on turnaround planning and scheduling. In Part 1 we covered all aspects related to developing the turnaround schedule, and Part 2 covers the fun part: optimizing the TA schedule. In this post, we will dive into the wonders of progress updating and reporting during an event.
Progress monitoring of a shutdown event consists of basically three steps:
Gathering the information on actual progress
Crunching the data
Sharing & communicating the data with the TA management team
Step 1 is the most complex given the size and complexity of turnaround events. Nailing the actual progress of all the work fronts at any given point is extremely difficult. This article will not reveal some magical solutions to solve this challenge. It's hard work that needs to be done, period.
Steps 2 and 3 are technically easy once the data is there. Today, however, those steps are slow and overcomplicated due to the legacy tech that is frequently used. However, we believe there is a better way.
Gathering progress information
There are no secrets to this. Someone (or something?) needs to evaluate the actual physical and procedural progress going on “outside.” Turnarounds are complex and involve multiple work fronts simultaneously, making it very difficult to know exactly what is happening at a specific time cut.
How is this done? From traditional to tech-enabled approaches:
Block leaders/contractor supervisors updating their notepads
Block leaders/contractor supervisors updating some type of mobile app
Combination of physically walking the site + 360 cameras on hard hats/drones
The first two are the most reliable but also the most time-consuming, something which does not abound during a TA event. Also, delegating progress gathering to contractors who are also responsible for delivering the work may pose a conflict of interest.
The last one is being brought to sites more and more. It definitely helps reduce the time required to physically walk the site, but it comes with some challenges for turnaround events.
360 cameras typically mounted on hard hats or drones work by comparing what can be seen as built vs a 3D model. This works for physical assets that need to be built and which have a 3D model. But for a 30-year-old heat exchanger that doesn’t have a 3D model and where the scope is to open and inspect, 3D capturing will not give any information on actual work progress. More than 50% of work carried out in turnaround events can't be captured in 3D. Think of pressure tests, welding activities, NDT, etc. It's hard work and there is no way to cut corners.
Crunching the data
The difficulty and duration of this step of the process will depend on the method used for gathering the progress data. If block leaders used their notepads, then the planner would have to spend half a day to a full day just to translate the scribbled notes into actual progress on P6 or MSP. As before, there is no other way around it.
If on the contrary, a mobile app has been used, this step is accelerated as the planner now only needs to “validate” that the progress update is correct.
The second part of this step is crunching the progress update data to understand where the event is in terms of schedule (ahead/behind), resourcing (over/under-resourced), or cost (over/under budget), and potential mitigation measures that need to be taken.
This part is what takes ages when traditional tools like P6 or MSP are used for scheduling. They work simply, one inputs the information and they spit out the changes to the schedule. If the planner wants to generate visual representations of key information that needs to be done outside of the tool, typically downloading to Excel or Power BI.
But even worse, if the planner wants to study recovery scenarios to mitigate the impact of delays, this exercise would take this as they would be required to build scenarios by changing activities one by one and studying the impact.
Communicating with data
Turnarounds are extremely fast-paced environments where communication is key. Any information that needs to be communicated needs to be precise and clear. But not only that, planners should be able to go from event KPIs and high-level criteria to deep-down specifics of what is going on. This is necessary to be able to answer the questions of the TA managers who don’t have all the information and have not spent the last 5 days “fighting” with the schedule.
High-level KPIs are something that most planners have got it covered today. Typically S-curves, Histograms, and other dashboards are used for the event. They allow the viewer to understand where the event is at a glance. The challenge comes when going into the details. It is easy to see from an S-Curve that the event is delayed by 5%, but harder to see which activities exactly are the ones causing the delay. Or which activities are impacted by this delay? Doing this without the planner having to open the P6 file and having everyone roll their eyes and lose attention is very difficult. But also this is the key information that is required to make the decisions that will make or break the event.
New tech can enable this
Why fight with Excel or Power BI to generate dashboards that crash when data is incorrect? Reporting tools in the market allow planners to upload multiple progress updates to quickly analyze them without the time-consuming effort of crunching the data. For example, with Frontline Analyzer, a TA event progress update can be analyzed in under 10 seconds and go from high-level KPIs (S-Curves) to details in less than a minute:
As you can see in the video, going from the event S-Curve to the list of the activities that have a longer duration & are finishing late takes less than 20 seconds.
Moreover, studying recovery alternatives that reduce event duration by finding alternatives that recover the delay takes also less than a minute:
New tech compresses the time required to go from data (physical progress on site) to information (required for decision-making). As a client of us says:
“Worst case scenario, you end up with the same schedule that you started with, it's a risk-free tool. Any benefits that Frontline unearths are a cherry on top”
We believe it is worth a try. Send us your info below and we will show you with a free 30-minute demo, all that our AI can do for you.
This post has covered progress updates for turnarounds. Our next blog post will look at how productivity tracking for specific workfronts (welding, heat exchangers, etc) is done and how tech can automate and boost this during an event. Keep tuned for more.
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