Historically, this chemical plant managed their own outages and hired individual contractors for each specialty area. Outages were considered adequate but inefficient. The entire process was not well-planned or coordinated, and they lacked an overall ‘big picture’ perspective. As one of this plant’s go-to contractors, Proconex was receiving purchase orders and service requests piecemeal—there were 72 different purchase orders and the number was growing. Proconex identified this pattern as an ‘outage event’ and recognized the opportunity to improve outcomes.
The Safety Valve Maintenance team at one of the east coast’s largest natural gas and electric utilities has been working with the Atlantic Valve Services (AVS) team, consisting of four technicians, for almost ten years. Over that time, the client has adopted and streamlined how they handle their maintenance for over 200 safety valves at their primary location, using best practices in the industry, as well as lessons learned from a well-honed team. One of their standard practices involves planning prior to a shutdown, as well as discussions post-shutdown.