Unicorns, Pixies, and Fairies
Leprechauns, wood nymphs, elves’… shall I go on?
What am I talking about? Well friend I’m glad you asked!
These are all mythical creatures of mystery and whimsy just like an unplanned outage that goes well.
Let me be completely clear, if you do not have everything planned out for your outage and then add in the fact that everything goes wrong, nothing is easy and people suck, you my friend are not going to have a great outage.
Thems the facts. It’s that simple, no ifs, ands, or buts
Back in the dark ages when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was just a little Mug (Freshman) in NY Maritime one of the first things we had to do was memorize this:
The “Riesenberg Saying” “The sea is selective, slow at recognition of effort and aptitude but fast in the sinking of the unfit.”
If you substitute outage for sea you will see what I’m talking about.
Our business, Outages, are not for the faint of heart. We swear, yell and curse each other out and that’s when we are getting along.
To rip into a Boiler or Turbine, lay is guts out all over the place then put it all back together so everything runs right and no one gets hurt, does not happen via “decision by committee”. No one is taking a 360⁰ survey and spot-checking everybody’s feelings around where you should land the cover, it’s got to go where it’s got to go.
We don’t go into the boiler and say make the “final cut” where you feel it would be best, you know, where it would make you the happiest.
Our business, at its worst, kills people and leaves the survivors racked with guilt, remorse and scars on their souls that they will carry their entire life.
So what is a pink footed, unicorn wearing, covered in glitter, scared little girl to do?
Do what I say!!!
Am I dick?…yes
Am I a control freak? …yes
Yes! Yes! A thousand times Yes! (couldn’t resist a little pride and prejudice)
Now that you think I’m an Ass, ask these questions:
Do the units get done on time? Yes
Do the unit’s perform better after the outage? Yes
Did the outage come in on or under Budget? Yes
Did anyone get hurt? NO!!!
How many times have you done this? Over 200
Aren’t these the questions that matter? Does anything else matter in regards to performing an Outage?
My mentor Socrates didn’t have the Magic Finger because he was trying to pass on some pithy folksy wisdom. His number one rule was “trust no one.” Subsequently that evolved the Magic Finger, because he would not trust anyone to actual mean what they say or do what they were supposed to do.
Even after we had all worked together for years he would still check behind us. We still had to start every job with the drum door gaskets nailed up over his desk (“beginning with the end in mind” for a little Stephen Covey vibe)
The Point
“The Outage Expert saying”
“The Outage is selective, slow at recognition of effort and aptitude but fast in the sinking the unfit.”
You can’t let up, it’s not fun, you have to be the designated adult. You have to think of everything. (your team does at least) The minute you think you’re invincible, that’s when the Outage Gods will rise up and bite you.
As far as the “Do what I say,” what I’m referring to is to follow the general principles that I have laid out in the blogs.
I would like to say that there is a bottomless well of knowledge about outages and that I will take me a lifetime to teach you…But the reality is that the principles can be taught fairly quickly.
However the “Secret Sauce” is not in the knowledge of what to do. It’s in the doing of the thing. To do Outages well there must be a dictator. Plain and simple. (a benevolent one hopefully)
That Dictator cannot waver from the rules (for the rules http://www.theoutageexpert.com/o-lord-i-have-never-been-eloquent-exodus-410/ ) for if they do, like Icarus they will fall to earth and not in a good way.
Running a plant is collaboration; it’s a team sport, where even though there is a chain of command, opinions are considered and taken in, to form the final decision. That’s the way all the smart people do it, you never know what gem you may pick up from a discussion of an issue, even if the gem is to further strengthen your own opinion.
Outages are different; the planning phase needs to be collaborative on all levels you just never know who knows what and I’ve often been surprised about how much I don’t know. Right up to the minute before the outage you can have discussions. (I don’t recommend it but you can)
But the minute you start shutting the unit down there needs to be just one person in charge and that person calls the shots. It is the only way to maintain order and control and maintaining order and control is the way to be consistently safe.
The Story
For the story this week I will direct you to the preface for the blog:
http://www.theoutageexpert.com/it-is-what-it-is-failure-however-is-not-an-option/
Tuesday Morning. Everything was looking good, everybody was in the groove and I thought that it looked like we had a chance to make the 12 hours over the next 4 or 5 days. I would be very, very wrong.
About 11 am the lights went out. I’m not being metaphorical, they really went out. The whole plant was black no lights with 150 people in all sorts of places in and around the boiler. First order of business gets everyone safe and find out what happened.
We evacuated the plant, we had to get flashlights and climb through the boiler to get everyone out. Mission accomplished. Everyone got out and nobody was hurt.
When I got to the control room we had determined that the whole grid was down. To make matters worse, the Island mode on our switch yard didn’t work. So we were down as well.
There we sat, black plant with 150 contractors burning money with no idea what to do. We could not get an answer from the grid, so we didn’t know if we were going to be down for two hours or two days. Around two in the afternoon I sent the day shift home and told the contractors that I would make a decision about the night shift by 5 pm.
With still no answer from the grid, I got everyone in the plant together and asked what we can do about this. From the back of the group Joe piped up “why don’t we go after all the valves on the black plant list”. We had by this time successfully implemented Zone Maintenance™ and we had a running list of Black Plant items. The planner (a different one than Outages 101) said he would be right back. In a few hours we had a plan.
Purchasing got every gas or diesel welding machine they could get their hands on, we bought every portable light that Home Depot had and set up all the jobs in a completely black plant. We got valve packing rushed in and went after everything we could.
By Wednesday, around noon, I felt pretty good we had turned lemons into lemon aide. However, we were still down and it was about 10⁰F outside and now we have been down for 24 hours and we had an air cooled condenser that we were freezing up.
We went after the ACC with torches opened up all the drains and drained each cell as best we could.
Then we realized all sorts of lines were freezing though out the plant. We ran around with welders & torches and whatever we could to drain lines. It was like shoveling sand against the tide, but what else were we going to do?
The grid came back up around midday on Thursday. We started to get the plant back up as best as we could depending on what lines were frozen and what we could get running. By Friday end of day shift we had the boilers up and we were starting to get one of the turbines going. We were starting the outage back up with full crews that started since Thursday night shift.
As I was walking to the 6pm meeting, I passed by the Ops manager, whom was playing with the steam dump valve from the steam header to the condenser. When I asked him what was going on, he said, he was trying to calibrate the dump valve. He didn’t think that is was working correctly. I said just leave it until we get the turbine up and all the cells of the ACC hot and running and then we take a look at it. I turned and walked away figuring that he would listen….he did not.
During the 6pm meeting (about 15 minutes after my conversation with the Ops manager) we blew the rupture disc on the turbine. Steam shot straight up out of the turbine. We evacuated the plant again (this time with lights) and got the steam to stop shooting out of the top of the turbine. After a few shifts we changed the ruptured disc and there were no more major problems. We eventually finished the outage.
Gee, Jay how did it all turn out? Well I’m glad you asked.
We finished the outage only 30 hours over the planned schedule. We overcame a 12 hour delay from the sandblast, a 54 hour delay from the grid going down and an 8 hour delay for the rupture disc. The total was a 74 hour delay that we made up 44 hours of, in the middle of all the mess.
We didn’t even go over budget, we spent more than we should, but we were able to manage just a $60,000 overage from traditional spending.
The best of all is, the grid got dropped because of a sudden ice storm. We had insurance, so eventually we got a check from the insurance company the made the outage a profitable event.
Rules of Thumb:
Outages are different remember that (first of the ten commandments)
Every Outage needs a boss (#4 also see http://www.theoutageexpert.com/every-ship-needs-a-captain/ )
If you’re the Boss, It’s no fun but if you adhere to all the rules you can make it fun for everyone else and that’s the highest level of the game, getting everything done well and safe while having a good time. It’s easier than you think, it’s just hard to do
The Magic Finger – Directors Cut
When I was a planner I had the good fortune to work for an extraordinary man… let’s call him Socrates. Much of what I say first came out of his mouth. I miss his teaching and fellowship every day.
Socrates had many lessons about how to run outages, to tell many of them I have to first describe what the Magic Finger is.
To the casual observer the “Magic Finger” looks like the pointer finger on your hand and in truth it is. The magic of the “Magic Finger” is much more complicated to explain but like all things of genius, it is eventually elegantly simple.
My first job with Socrates started in a strange way.
Back in the day we traveled from job to job in 40 cargo containers made into field offices. We were setting up my very first “big” job as a planner, more than a hundred thousand man-hours. We had material to stage, scaffolding to build, rigging to hang, tools to load in. Lot of stuff to do and I was chomping at the bit to get it going
Socrates, however, would not let anything start until he had 10 drum door gaskets on a nail over his desk in our trailer. Being young, brass and ambitious I wanted to start, I had things to do and here was this funny old guy sternly saying NO!
I tried to convince him, tried to go around him, tried to get other Forman to convince him, he would not be moved. Finally after a few days, I overnighted the gaskets. The next day I hammered in nails over his desk and hung the gaskets. Socrates was finally happy, he took his finger and touched the gaskets and said “Kid, do you know what this is?” holding his finger towards me “It’s a Magic Finger”
I burst out “are you ****in kidding me, I have over 50 trucks of stuff waiting to get here and you give me this magic finger BS, your nuts”. Luckily, Socrates was a very patient man, he laughed at my juvenile outburst. He then said come with me. We walked outside and touched all the nose tubes, the burner corner parts, the superheat pendants, I could barely contain myself, I had work to do! And this guy was making me touch each part that was lying around the plant. After each thing he would make me touch it with my “Magic Finger” and hold it up to him. This went on all day, after a while I just relented I figured today was shot tomorrow is another day.
The next day I had a veritable army of manpower, equipment and stuff to do. I told one Forman to get the nose tubes and get them in the north well, another Forman I told to get the burner parts laid out etc. etc. all day long people asked me where things were and miraculously I knew (or I should say my “Magic Finger” knew) the day went very well as did the entire outage.
During a different outage years later, I did not use my magic finger. I was too busy and too important I had people for that now. We were installing a system on a high pressure 1.4 million pound per hour boiler that would pressure drop and desuperheat the steam to 400 psi with 10 degrees of superheat.
I was told that one of the three main stop valves were being delivered, these were big valves but we were in the “big” business nothing scared me. I got the call from receiving that the valve was here. I got the forklift guy on the radio and told him to pick it off the truck.
Sometime later he came up to the trailer and said he couldn’t get the valve off the truck. I belittled him “awe did the big bad valve kick your ass”, He just looked back at me and said “it’s a big valve and it ain’t coming off the truck, it’s your problem now smart guy” and then he stomped out of the trailer.
I found one of my Foreman “can you go down and get the valve off the truck, the forklift driver is having a bad hair day”. Off went the Foreman and he soon came back “That’s the biggest valve I ever saw, It’s not coming off the truck”.
I was incredulous, I was the “great and powerful…well me” now I had to stop what I was doing and walk the three blocks to the elevator and down to the street, and back another two blocks to get to the truck, cursing loudly and liberally as I went. When I got to the back of the truck and turned to see the valve I nearly fell over just from the sight of it. It was absolutely the biggest valve I have ever seen and I knew instantly I was an ******* (you know the word). We had to send the truck to our crane yard and lift the valve off with a 50 ton crane.
The magic of the “Magic Finger” is contained in the phrase “if you didn’t see it, or touch it, shut the “F” up”. Try this test, Ask a question and listen to the answers you get more times than not you get something that is resembles an answer but not the answer.
For example:
“Do we have a spare shaft”
A. “There should be one in the warehouse” …you see this does not answer the question does it!
“Can someone check the shaft is in the warehouse”
A. “That’s the ware house guy/girl’s job they should know
“Can we call them right now and see if the shaft is in the warehouse”
A. “I’m on the phone with them they say that there is a shaft on the shelf”
“Is it the right shaft”
A. “It should be”
This can go on and on, I’m sure I’m being over dramatic and this never happens in your plant.
Lets take the “Magic Finger” out for a spin and see what that conversation looks like
“Do we have a spare shaft”
A1. “I don’t know, my “Magic Finger” did not see it or touch it so I’m shutting the “F” up”
A2. “Yes”
A3. “No”
This seems much simpler to me, but then again I’m a simple guy.
Moral of the Story:
Being able to communicate clearly and succinctly doesn’t happen overnight. It takes work and work takes tools. The “Magic Finger” is a tool; it is a tool that gets used over and over again and again. It has never failed me although I have failed it many times
Rule of Thumb:
Listen to the answers you get, If they are not to your liking, teach them about their “Magic Finger”
Directors Cut Notes:
Socrates would be in the middle of a conversation about the job and suddenly hold up his crooked pointer finger and if someone had not touched whatever we were speaking about (usually me in the beginning) all conversation would stop and you had to go out right then and there and come back with a dirty fingertip or he would not speak to you.
After I was fully indoctrinated in the “Magic Finger” society when these instances would happen (He holding is finger up) I would respond with my own one finger salute (the pointer finger, not everything is R rated!)
Once this ground rule was established (as well as many others) it was truly amazing to do great things with Socrates and never have to really say anything.
The highest expression of this seamless team work was that we were able to design and install a class “A” project in a nuclear plant with non-nuclear trained mechanics. In 6 months we demo’d 41 tons of stainless by hand, ran hundreds of feet of pipe, converted 3 fifty foot high tanks all while the engineers designed it in the field with us. We did all this while maintaining all of the nuclear class A package standards. Team work doesn’t even begin to describe it.