Operational Excellence for Steam Plants and Utilities Management

The Documentation of Steam Plant and Utility Process Equipment

Steam and Utilities plants should maintain current documentation on all the steam, condensate, boiler feedwater, power generation and plant utility systems. This will include an overview description, the basis for design and the control philosophy. An overview description of all the interdependencies of the utilities to all site's process plants. Documentation for all battery limit tie-ins to each of the process plant systems and their ownership defined.

  1. A written summary describing each Steam Plant and Utility system will include:
    1. Simplified Process Flow Drawings (PFD)
    2. Process Engineering Flow Scheme (PEFSs) and Process Instrument Drawings (PIDs)
    3. Mass and Energy balances
    4. Steam boiler specifications
    5. Power generation equipment, turbines specifications
    6. Pressure piping and pressure equipment specifications
    7. All pressure equipment regulatory inspection frequencies
    8. Safety valve and safety relief valve specifications and regulatory inspection frequencies
    9. Equipment descriptions that include the capacity and normal operating load range during operation
    10. Electrical drawings
    11. Instrumentation descriptions including simplified loop drawings
    12. Control Narratives
    13. Operating instructions for normal and abnormal situations
    14. Emissions monitoring equipment

  2. Detailed description of fuel and electrical systems including capacity, normal loads and limitations:
    1. Purchased fuels with contract heating values
    2. Any process unit produced fuels used in boilers with the design heating value
    3. Electrical power generation capacities
    4. Electrical power import systems with capacities

  3. Load shedding ( steam, utilities, electrical ) and the operations plan for each process plant:
    1. The allocation to each process unit of each supplied utility system when at reduced capacity.
    2. Electrical power total black-out or other total utilities loss.
    3. Interuptions of the purchased fuel supplies to the Steam and Utility plant.

  4. The site should maintain utility balances by process units for the following conditions:
    1. Normal operation
    2. Start-up / shutdown
    3. Upset and abnormal operating modes

  5. Regular reviews of projected future plant usage of steam and supplied utilities, to be available for planning purposes.

Reliability Plan for Utilities

Steam and Utilities plants should maintain a reliability plan for all the site utilities. This plan should contain:
  1. Defined ownership of each utility system with defined accountabilities.
  2. Identify, track and the mitigation of reliability issues and problem areas using a threats mitigation system for each utilities' availability.
  3. Boiler and pressure vessel annual/biannual inspection and recertification.
  4. Emissions monitoring verification and reporting frequencies.
  5. Include the Steam Plant and Utilities systems in a Safe Plant Production work process to:
    1. Determine all equipment critical, standard and target limits and set alarm notifications values.
    2. Standardize the types of communication and planning within and across the operations shifts.
    3. Manage situational awareness.
    4. Enable a proactive monitoring of the processes and specific critical equipment.
    5. Define and document a method for managing abnormal and upset operating conditions.
    6. Tracking and monitoring of all the critical equipment variables.
  6. Include the Steam Plant and Utilities systems in a Reliability Centered Maintenance work process to manage equipment care by the analysis of failure modes.
    1. Identify cost-effective operator surveillance.
    2. Identify planned maintenance tasks including the redesign of equipment.
    3. Critical equipment sparing philosophy.
    4. Critical parts management.
  7. Include all Steam Plant and Utilities units in an Equipment Integrity work process.
  8. Include all Steam Plant and Utilities systems in the Turnaround work process to ensure the work planning, preparation, execution and all lessons learned are documented.
  9. Steam Plant and Utilities management control strategy, including the management of:
    1. Steam and Utilities curtailments.
    2. All risks between integrated Utility systems to prevent a domino effect during malfunction and upsets.
    3. Cost effective rental of temporary facilities.
  10. Steam Plant and Utilities plant defined emergency procedures and emergency drills.
  11. Evaluation of asset decommissioning proposals with respect to their impact on critical system availability and reliability on all integrated utility systems. Evaluate the impact on the availability and reliability of the future planned and unplanned maintenance.
  12. Include in all capital projects an evaluation of the impact on Steam Plant and Utilities' reliability.

Steam and Utilities Plant Staffing and Competency Plan

    A staffing and competency plan for the Steam Plant and Utilities should contain:
  1. The certification and licences required to manage and operate the boilers and pressure equipment defined by provincial government regulations.
  2. Job competency requirements, current gap assessment, and gap closure plan for all staff supporting the site's Steam Plant and Utilities.
  3. Certification, and education plans for all operations, maintenance and technical staff positions.
  4. Succession plan for Steam Plant and Utilities operations, maintenance and technical staff.
  5. Staffing level requirements based on normal operating and maintenance conditions as well as staffing plans for start-up, shutdown, turnaround and emergency situations.