Maintenance Shutdowns and Outages is one of the most challenging periods in the industry covering technical challenge, legislation, financial and logistical issues on a large scale, and this is before the consideration of people side with large teams to bring together and motivate. Shutdowns are the most costly and time-consuming of maintenance projects as these lead to loss of production and expenses involved. In reality, the risk on equipment reliability, production integrity and operation efficiency increase due to machinery failure and unscheduled outages. To avoid production delays and costly maintenance repairs, companies are striving to do the shutdown project as effective and efficiently as they can during the first time around.
Planning, scheduling, estimating and managing shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STO) in a plant environment is a complex and demanding function. If STO are not properly planned, managed and controlled, plants run the risks of serious budget overruns, costly schedule delays and negative financial impact of the STO on a plant.