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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 and will often cost you a loss in production.
How does concrete relate to production? In simple terms, increased reliability of civil infrastructure means more uptime, therefore more profit. Imagine the support structure for a critical piece of equipment needs an unexpected repair. Not only will it cost 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.
How infrastructure reliability increases production
Would you let an eye doctor fix your broken leg? Not likely. It’s the same for your facility — regarding your concrete infrastructure, trust the experts. Structural Technologies delivers solutions for concrete challenges safely and 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. Structural Technologies will help you avoid repair cycles that could cost you even more production time and money.
As for tip two, 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.
How infrastructure reliability increases production
The second approach, 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. Critical equipment needs regular maintenance to perform at its best, and so does infrastructure. Inspecting assets prevents unwanted repairs and costly downtime.
Structural Technologies experts will walk your facility or unit and visually observe the condition of your critical structures. After any 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 three to use the “investigate-design-build” (IDB) method, an 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 Structural’s IDB approach. IDB combines evaluation of concrete infrastructure with the design and construction of the repairs into a seamless process. Structural will 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. 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 Technologies is a win-win, or better yet, a win-win-win, because, as the industry’s leading concrete experts, its mission is to help you proactively address your concrete infrastructure, and using the turnkey IDB process, you are guaranteed to increase your productivity.
For more information, please visit structural.net or call 877-413-0615.
