Inspecting & Maintaining Your Plant & Civil Structures

According to the book ‘Asset Integrity Program for Plant Structures’ by Amanda Nurse, plant structures supporting the miles of piping, process vessels, platforms, and ladders routinely used in daily operations often can be given less priority than production equipment. Having a robust inspection and repair program for plant infrastructure is an important component of a site’s integrity management program. The following are some of Ricardo R. Valbuena’s tips for implementing an asset integrity program for plant structures.

In the realm of industrial operations, the design and functionality of plant structures play a pivotal role in ensuring safety, efficiency and productivity. The plant structures Amanda Nurse references include the following:

• • Pressure vessel supports
  • Rotating equipment foundations
  • Walking working surfaces, (e.g. platforms, walkways, stairways, ladders, ladder cages, and handrails)
  • Pipe stanchions
  • Buildings
  • Secondary containment
  • Major structures

In addition to the above, I would also include cooling towers, stacks, silos, and civil structures such as sewers, bunds, dams, roads, bridges, canals, and tunnels.

The first step is to implement an asset integrity program for plant and civil structures that includes:

• • Efficient inspection – focus on the 10% to 20% and keep this list updated.
  • Risk-based results. Do not try to do everything as you will miss the real risks.
  • Provide a quantitative mean of demonstrating a reduction in risks.
  • A repeatable process, from unit to unit, plant to plant. This way you can identify and concentrate on the high-risk areas sitewide.
  • A plan based on industry’s best practices.
  • Decision making support for repairs.

The following practical measures should be incorporated to ensure risks are managed effectively during program execution:

• • Mitigate the high risks right away, do not push these through the planning process or sausage machine. This includes barricading the high-risk areas, holding the cracked fireproofing with a mesh, building temporary ladders with scaffold material, etc.
  • This is not just a cold weather issue where the hot summers and cold winters rapidly deteriorate your fireproofing, concrete, roads or bridges. And walkways and ladders will corrode over time. I have seen severe plant structure deterioration at Caribbean facilities as well as in all year round warm and dry climates in the tropics. This is about prioritization.
  • Unsafe situations have occurred due to spalling of concrete. Concrete sections have dropped and caused “falling objects”. This is a safety critical item and should be prevented as far as possible. The preferred method for prevention of spalling concrete is resin coating of all new concrete and all concrete that has been repaired. This coating prevents water ingress through the pores of the concrete.
  • An assessment based on API RP 2218 Fireproofing Practices in Petroleum and Petrochemical Processing Plants can identify areas of deteriorated fireproofing that can be removed (not replaced), resulting in cost savings and reduced maintenance needs.
  • Keep your sewer systems, canals, and tunnels clean so they can do their job and allow for adequate inspection. And do value these systems as I lost one of my refineries due to severe flooding.
  • Write up a plant structure and civil master plan and follow it. This is essentially your 10-year plan, and its main objectives are to define the critical equipment related actions to be taken to ensure the facilities continue to operate at, or above, current performance levels (HSE, integrity, reliability) for the next operating period assumed to be 20 or 30 years from now.
  • In the interest of keeping this program alive and supported, I recommend you determine, track and make visible the number of inspections required per month, the number of assets that need repairs, the number of saves, the risk reductions achieved over time, repairs completed, overdue inspections, etc. Maintenance of plant structures tends to be among the first categories to be cut out of budgets.
  • Also protect plant structure and civil inspection and repair work that can only be executed during a turnaround, such as the internal fin fan plenum chambers.

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