Prioritize asset management interventions

Asset managers have an astronomical amount of assets under their watch. This includes hundreds of tanks, pressure vessels, pumps, pumps, buildings, buildings, production line equipment, furnaces, tens of kilometers of piping to name a few. Remember that 80 to 90% of the value of equipment on a site is represented by static assets. As a result, it is virtually impossible to monitor all assets simultaneously without adequate and adequate resources.

In order to ensure the integrity, reliability, performance and safety of assets, the staff responsible employs inspectors and hires external firms to have access to certain asset valuation expertise. Field inspectors have a lot on their shoulders. They must prepare for inspections according to safety standards, negotiate with operations to shut down certain equipment, clean assets for the effectiveness of inspections, inspect hundreds of assets according to a rigorous inspection program, write comprehensive asset health reports, and report findings to the chief inspector. This takes a lot of time, which is a challenge for the efficiency and speed of making critical decisions.

In addition, managers obtain inspection results through several PDF reports and some data in Excel in due form. It is an industry standard, a common practice. The work of interspersing the results obtained according to the different methodologies of inspection firms or engineering firms is cumbersome, arduous and complex. The vast majority of the time, asset engineers must comply with the practices of subcontractors rather than imposing a work process that is appropriate to their reality.

As a result, it is not easy to identify incongruities in reports in order to draw quick conclusions. Often, these reports do not include risk assessments or response times. They are composed only of observations or raw results. It is not uncommon to read items like: Emergency brake not properly engaged on the crane. Is it serious? Do we need to intervene? If yes, urgently or not? If the asset manager is not an expert in cranes, he cannot know it. He will have to start time-consuming procedures to verify.

Even worse, some observations are literally impossible to find. Sometimes subcontractors are asked to return to the site to indicate where the defects observed are. This is unnecessarily costly in terms of time and money.

The asset integrity manager is in a situation of perpetual delay, because in addition to responding to constant requests, he must clear reports that are hundreds of pages long. For lack of an adapted tool, he must structure an Excel priority file by himself according to criteria specific to his practice. It is a routine and worthless activity. Especially since a file like this is not alive. Updating an Excel file is a tedious and unproductive task where errors are highly likely. It is unthinkable to keep track of everything that happens on an asset (inspection, repair, repair, accident, expansion, auscultation, shutdown, etc.) manually.

In this context, integrity officers or asset managers note the most important priorities for responding to impending risks. Lower risks are not rated as well, especially if it is an asset that is qualified as moderate risk and is recommended to be inspected again in several years. This asset and all the information that results from it may not be properly noted or monitored since the transcription time in the Excel file is major. In the heat of the moment, it was put aside to tackle stronger priorities targeted by the listener and slowly forgotten.

Consequences of a bad structure  

The consequences of shortcomings such as this one on the prioritization of work in the medium and long term are enormous. The people in place cannot be aware of all the oversights of the past. They obviously cannot know the details of the inspections of the last 10, 15 and 20 years as well as all the events that occurred during the life of each of the assets. Their visibility on priorities is thus oriented according to what they know or what has been noted.

Consequently, the budgets requested for asset management are in line with known priorities. Millions of dollars are thus spent to maintain, repair or replace assets on a planned basis without knowing that emergencies caused by a lack of organizational knowledge will eat up a large part of the amounts granted or require new expenses. These emergencies monopolize teams and generally cost between 6 and 10 times the price of the same project if it had been planned and negotiated.

On average, these types of situations cause 10 to 30 shutdowns of various sizes annually. In other words, investments are not allocated according to the right priorities and shutdowns cause huge financial losses in reduction of production capacity. The costs of unexpected shutdowns can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour in sales depending on the industry.

Obviously, not everything can be magically fixed with an asset health management tool. It is estimated that 80% of breakages or failures are avoidable after analysis. An APM+ like Stelar makes it possible to set up a mechanism for approving inspections and recommendations according to a logical and effective work sequence. The asset manager is thus in a position to receive all completed inspections. It is in a position to assess the severity of the defects observed according to a predetermined severity grid and an asset valuation according to the organization's risk matrix. In addition, it can assess and approve the recommendation issued for the reduction of the risk of each of the assets.

For the asset manager, it is therefore much easier to follow the evolution of the condition of an asset. He certainly has better control over his site and will greatly reduce the number of errors. He will thus be able to question the severity of the defects observed in addition to each of the recommended interventions and their delay. Visualizing information according to the agreed work sequence greatly simplifies the verification of information.

Customer stories 

We frequently receive similar testimonials from our customers. As a result of integrating historical inspection data into the Stelar structure, asset managers can easily see the shortcomings and incongruities of the past.

Some assets in poor condition had no associated interventions and no planned investments. The next inspections for these assets were scheduled for several years following the minimum response time. Emergency and unexpected budget inspections revealed an accelerated deterioration of critical assets. Several situations have proved to be major due to a poor monitoring system: a leaking acid tank, a leaking roof, a split pipe, etc. These are all avoidable breakdowns that have cost millions of dollars in replacement, emergency repairs, emergency repairs, teams mobilized, put back into service, etc.

Customers are becoming aware of financial losses incurred in the past. Indeed, managers are in a position to see that investments in time and money have been placed on less important priorities. This situation increases operating costs. Especially since by leaving high-risk assets without intervention to mitigate the risk, degradation accelerates, which will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of maintenance operations and ultimately in premature replacement. For CFOs, this represents net losses in the millions of dollars.

Prevention: a cost center 

The person responsible for the integrity and reliability of assets is typically seen as a cost center, an expense. This responsibility requires budgets for prevention, which is very expensive. We can draw the parallel with the purchase of insurance without it being mandatory. Ideally, we would not like to pay these fees, but they are highly useful in protecting the organization's finances.

Obviously, managers and their shareholders would prefer to invest in projects that would increase production capacity. Anything an organization could do to improve asset integrity management should be done to free up dollars for reinvestments.

Many go to bed at night knowing that not all risks are properly managed. Stelar could improve the sleep of many managers and they could thus focus on improving the reliability and integrity of plant assets so that it becomes more efficient!