At the start of every year, like clockwork, people take a moment to reflect on the past 12 months and evaluate what they could do differently in the future. It' a time for renewal and resolutions. This year, as you work toward your personal goals, why not add a professional one as well?
Turnarounds by nature offer an opportunity for renewal. These are scheduled events where the entire process unit of your industrial plant is taken offline for maintenance, which allows you to fix or prevent problems before they cause costlier outages or accidents. Even more importantly, they give you a chance to review your plant's overall productivity and assess any areas where you can improve. When it comes to turnarounds, streamlining and improving operations goes with the job, but when was the last time you evaluated the efficiency of the turnaround process?
Increasing turnaround efficiency starts with the initial planning phase. Schedule optimization, budget and safety are key. Time is money, so unwanted delays in your project timeline can be costly. One of the best ways to prevent deadline setbacks, overspending and low productivity is to provide turnaround workers with on-site, climate-controlled accommodations for plant shutdowns.
Fabric structures offer shelter on-demand with a variety of customizable features, including lighting, HVAC, water services and more. These climate-controlled structures offer crews an opportunity to engage in quality break time, increasing productivity when they return to work.
Since you only pay for the structure when you need it, leasing a temporary structure provides maximum flexibility and convenience. There's no long-term commitment, maintenance costs or storage concerns. Plus, an experienced project manager can assess employee needs, deploy a design and install the structure much faster than a traditional construction timeline allows, thereby avoiding costly delays.
When LyondellBasell started planning a turnaround last summer, the company needed a temporary solution to house contractors for safety meetings and breaks. LyondellBasell chose to install two fabric structures that were equipped with lighting and HVAC systems to create a comfortable environment for the 400-plus contractors on-site for each shift.
Temporary fabric structures like those LyondellBasell installed can enhance worker safety as well as productivity. More and more, companies are utilizing fabric structures as shelter for plant turnarounds, where the worksite is affected by extreme weather, containment issues and other potential safety hazards. Engineered to meet worldwide structural, flame-retardant, water-resistant and other requirements, these structures offer protection for your turnaround crews.
Furthermore, blast-resistant tents provide maximum protection, keeping employees as much as 75-percent closer to the process area than standard break tents. "Tool time" is a common concern during turnarounds. When your crews spend less time traveling to and from breaks, you enjoy maximum productivity, cost savings and, of course, safety.
Dan Graupman of Cherne Contracting Corp. says his company routinely uses fabric structures for hazardous or complex jobsites. "Time and again, we count on fabric structures to provide flexible coverage while offering maximum safety for our turnaround employees," he said.
When seeking temporary and semi-permanent industrial fabric structures, look for a company with a documented history of innovation and excellence you can count on to provide safe and compliant tent solutions. Such a company should hold ISNetworld, HAZWOPER, TWIC, DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), PICS (Pacific Industrial Contractor Screening) and OSHA certifications, as well as site-specific credentials, to ensure the safety of its employees and your workforce on-site.
For more information, visit www.Mahaffeyusa.com or call (802) 277-3054 or (281) 377-6993.
