2024 Schedule

Maintenance STO (shutdown, turnaround, outages) events involve major expenditures of time and money for any large continuous process plant. Without careful planning and preparation, they can quickly and easily overrun their target cost and schedule. STO events with a high proportion of capital work are particularly at risk of overrun. Every STO manager knows that if there is capital work to be executed in the STO, that spells trouble for the predictability of the event schedule and cost targets. And most STO managers, when asked why, will state that it’s the fault of the project managers. But is it really that simple? Often the project manager is given a “poisoned chalice,” asked to implement a project within an impossibly short timescale. This presentation will show that the project manager needs to know, before the project budget is finalized, how the project will integrate into the event, and how to approach the integration of project work into an STO event in order to maximize the chances of success and minimize the risk of failure. It will look at setting up the project with a realistic timescale; discuss what should be in an integration plan and why the project manager needs to know it before the STO manager; and discuss how the STO manager can improve the visibility of project progress reporting for STO readiness.