You depend on the reliability of process equipment in your plant to sustain production.
The service life of reinforced concrete infrastructure that supports this equipment can, and over time will, be impacted by deterioration and damage. The impact of infrastructure failure can be as significant as equipment downtime, or more in some cases, and will often cost you a loss in production.
How does concrete relate to production? In simple terms, increased reliability of your civil infrastructure means more uptime, and more profit. Imagine the support structure for a critical piece of equipment unexpectedly needs a repair. Not only will it cost you money to repair the structure, but while the equipment is offline you will spend even more in lost production time. So how do you prevent this? How do you optimize productivity in your facility? Here are three tips.
Tip #1: Only trust a specialist
Would you let an eye doctor fix your broken leg? Not likely. It’s the same for your facility – trust your concrete infrastructure to the experts. STRUCTURAL delivers solutions for concrete challenges safely, successfully, and has a long history of client satisfaction. Choosing the right partner for your concrete infrastructure needs is critical. A specialty contractor focused on the repair and upgrade of existing structures is the right choice – not a company that builds new concrete structures or one who does maintenance on equipment. We will help you avoid repair cycles that could cost you even more production time and money.
Tip #2: Be proactive, not reactive
There are two approaches to repairing your critical infrastructure: reactive and proactive. Reactive means waiting until the problem comes to you. Once this happens, there has most likely already been impact to safety and productivity. You’re then forced to fix the problem immediately. A problem that could have been prevented entirely or one that could have been stopped from causing an unexpected shutdown or major disruption.
The second approach, being proactive, means getting out in front of the challenges and addressing them before valuable production time is impacted. STRUCTURAL works with many petrochemical facilities to develop an ongoing asset management program for civil infrastructure that includes periodic inspection(s) and addressing concrete challenges before they lead to loss of productivity. Your critical equipment needs regular maintenance to perform at its best, and so does your infrastructure. Inspecting your assets prevents unwanted repairs and costly downtime.
Our experts will walk your facility or unit and visually observe the condition of your critical structures. After a list of problems are identified, further investigation will take place as necessary and repair needs will be prioritized. This helps with long-term planning and budgeting. In the end, costs associated with downtime from scheduled maintenance are less than downtime from unexpected shutdowns. You can schedule your maintenance when it is most convenient for your facility and affects the workflow process less.
Tip #3: Investigate-Design-Build (IDB) – integrated approach to infrastructure drives value
What if you could partner with one company to help manage your concrete infrastructure from start to finish? This would save you a lot of time and money. Many of our clients enjoy the benefits of our Investigate-Design-Build (IDB) approach. IDB combines evaluation of concrete infrastructure, along with design and construction of the repairs, into a seamless process. We work with you to develop and/or participate in your asset management program focused on civil infrastructure throughout your plant and give you more time to focus on the process equipment that drives production. Our clients agree that the IDB process helps address concrete more quickly and at a total lower cost than old-school fragmented approaches where inspections go nowhere but in the drawer for later.
Partnering with STRUCTURAL is a win-win, no a win-win-win, because as the industry’s leading concrete experts our mission is to help you proactively address your concrete infrastructure and using our turnkey IDB process we guarantee to increase your productivity.
For more information please visit www.structural.net or call 877-413-0615.
