RLG was engaged by a plastics and chemicals company to deliver significant improvements in schedule and cost performance for a $345 million capital project expansion coinciding with a five-year cycle maintenance turnaround (TA). A key area of focus was to integrate the various work streams (comprised of maintenance, sustaining capital and capital project expansion scopes) and optimize the schedule. At the start of implementation, the schedule was estimated at 86 days with a desired target of less than 80 days. The loss in revenue for each day the plant was down was estimated at $2 million, so these six days represented a $12 million prize.

RLG’s Project Excellence™ approach integrated nicely with the project management approach already in play, filling gaps and supplementing with essential elements to drive performance. Over several months in planning, RLG coaches facilitated:

• 38 schedule development sessions – where SMEs and schedulers worked together to outline a level 4 construction schedule
• 35 schedule quality reviews – where small, cross-functional teams evaluated schedule logic for sequence, logic and constructability.
• 14 Theoretical Maximum Performance (TMP™) sessions – were larger cross-functional teams, including contractors, worked together to optimize the schedule closer to “perfect performance”, while ensuring safety remained at the forefront.

Project Highlights

• This was the first time the plant had detailed schedules for both shutdown and start-up phases. The creation of a start-up schedule was key for the plant to use it in the next TA cycle to plan the shutdown considering the major capital expansion that essentially created a ‘new’ plant
• 605 action items resulted from the sessions, were tracked through to completion, to address risks and capture opportunities
• 10 continuous improvement sessions examined and improved key processes, including a frequent problem on many sites: permitting
• 27 days worth of time savings were removed from the different schedule paths prior to the final assembly of the integrated schedule