Emerson Exchange 365

The petrochemical industry has benefitted from the huge supply increase of natural gas and liquids from shale gas here in the U.S. I’m in New Orleans for the next few days at the Petrochemical Engineering & Construction conference. Simultaneously the Gulf Coast Shutdowns & Turnarounds conference will be happening.

Each conference has a Twitter hashtag you can follow at #PEC16 and #GCST16. I’ll be using these hashtags to share things I learn. The event organizers also have a Twitter account, Petrochemical Update, which will provide updates over the next two days.

Emerson’s Jim Nyquist, Jason Sarnataro and Nikki Bishop will be participating in panels to discuss trends and innovations in finding ways to improve project performance and more efficient turnarounds.

This afternoon, Jason will be on a panel, Operational Readiness: Turnover of Project and Commissioning Start-up with panelists from Hargrove Engineers, Southern Company Services and Praxair. The focus:

• As a project nears completion, a sound process for turnover from the Contractor to the Owner is employed to ensure that the project meets schedule and cost objectives.
• In this panel session, hear valuable lessons learned in ensuring quality, reliability, and efficiency during the Commissioning and Startup process.
• Hear best practice advice from Owners and Contractors experienced in delivering capital projects effectively.

Jim’s panel will be tomorrow morning on Beyond Best Practice: The Latest Thinking in Doing Things Differently. Panel members will be from Valero Energy, Braskem Idesa, Albermarle, AVEVA and moderated by Westney Consulting. The focus:

• For the past 25 years’ owners and contractors have been implementing Frond End Loading & other best practices, yet project performance hasn’t really improved
• Now projects are faced with core issues such as; owner/ contactor interface and loss of project experience: hear key approaches to contract strategy/ risk management & competency development to tackle such challenges
• Discuss the latest ideas & best practice advise around ‘doing things differently’ and implementation strategies to better improve project outcomes

Nikki’s panel will be tomorrow afternoon and part of the Shutdowns & Turnarounds conference. It will be on effective scope management and include panelists from DuPont and Motivata and Fluor. The focus:

• Full project controls alignment and why this is necessary- planning, costs, schedules, forecasting, and reporting.
• Proven best practises for aligning objectives and avoiding ‘scope creep’ which drive costs up and result in overruns
• Mitigating the risk of overruns by agreeing on the scope and ‘freeze date’ for a given project: Our experts will share insight on when scope should be agreed and how to stick to it

More coming on each of these over the next two days and I hope that if you’re in or serve the petrochemicals industry that you’ll find some of the flow of news and insights to be helpful.

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