Activity
  • Improving Capital Project and Plant Turnaround Performance

    Last week’s Petrochemical Engineering & Construction and Gulf Coast Shutdowns & Turnarounds conferences took place in New Orleans. Here are excepts from the full posts over on the Top Quartile Performance site. Beyond Best Practice: The Latest Thinking in Doing Things Differently As process manufacturing and production capital projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, more and more companies have to ask…
  • Improving Capital Project and Plant Turnaround Performance

    Last week’s Petrochemical Engineering & Construction and Gulf Coast Shutdowns & Turnarounds conferences took place in New Orleans. Here are excepts from the full posts over on the Top Quartile Performance site. Beyond Best Practice: The Latest Thinking in Doing Things Differently As process manufacturing and production capital projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, more and more companies have to ask…
  • Improving Capital Project and Plant Turnaround Performance

    Last week’s Petrochemical Engineering & Construction and Gulf Coast Shutdowns & Turnarounds conferences took place in New Orleans. Here are excepts from the full posts over on the Top Quartile Performance site. Beyond Best Practice: The Latest Thinking in Doing Things Differently As process manufacturing and production capital projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, more and more companies have to ask…
  • Improving Capital Project and Plant Turnaround Performance

    Last week’s Petrochemical Engineering & Construction and Gulf Coast Shutdowns & Turnarounds conferences took place in New Orleans. Here are excepts from the full posts over on the Top Quartile Performance site. Beyond Best Practice: The Latest Thinking in Doing Things Differently As process manufacturing and production capital projects continue to grow in scale and complexity, more and more companies have to ask…
  • Top 10 Things to Teach Executives about Stage-Gate Process

    Independent Project Analysis ‘ Paul Barshop highlighted the importance in using the stage-gate process for process manufacturing and production capital projects during his plenary presentation at the Petrochemical Engineering & Construction conference in New Orleans. The typical project loses 22% of the expected net present value when not following the process. He’s working on a book targeted to a senior executive…
  • Opportunities in the Petrochemical Industry

    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…
  • Hardware Considerations in Effective User Requirement Specifications

    Author: Scott Turner This is the final part in the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification (URS). The topic of this final post is ‘Hardware’. As before, I am really interested in seeing your comments on this. I think understanding other people’s views is really important to people who may be reading this. My other posts in this series are: General Considerations Process…
  • Hardware Considerations in Effective User Requirement Specifications

    Author: Scott Turner This is the final part in the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification (URS). The topic of this final post is ‘Hardware’. As before, I am really interested in seeing your comments on this. I think understanding other people’s views is really important to people who may be reading this. My other posts in this series are: General Considerations Process…
  • Hardware Considerations in Effective User Requirement Specifications

    Author: Scott Turner This is the final part in the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification (URS). The topic of this final post is ‘Hardware’. As before, I am really interested in seeing your comments on this. I think understanding other people’s views is really important to people who may be reading this. My other posts in this series are: General Considerations Process…
  • Hardware Considerations in Effective User Requirement Specifications

    Author: Scott Turner This is the final part in the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification (URS). The topic of this final post is ‘Hardware’. As before, I am really interested in seeing your comments on this. I think understanding other people’s views is really important to people who may be reading this. My other posts in this series are: General Considerations Process…
  • Hardware Considerations in Effective User Requirement Specifications

    Author: Scott Turner This is the final part in the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification (URS). The topic of this final post is ‘Hardware’. As before, I am really interested in seeing your comments on this. I think understanding other people’s views is really important to people who may be reading this. My other posts in this series are: General Considerations Process…
  • Fundamentally Transforming Capital Project Planning and Execution

    Executing capital projects grows increasingly difficult as their size and scope continues to expand. I caught up with Emerson’s Kevin Jackson who has witnessed this growth over time. Kevin notes that today 65% of projects over a billion dollars fail . Likewise, 35% of projects under $500 million have failed as well. By ‘failing’ he means that they are at least 25% over budget or late by at least 50% from the planned…
  • Fundamentally Transforming Capital Project Planning and Execution

    Executing capital projects grows increasingly difficult as their size and scope continues to expand. I caught up with Emerson’s Kevin Jackson who has witnessed this growth over time. Kevin notes that today 65% of projects over a billion dollars fail . Likewise, 35% of projects under $500 million have failed as well. By ‘failing’ he means that they are at least 25% over budget or late by at least 50% from the planned…
  • Fundamentally Transforming Capital Project Planning and Execution

    Executing capital projects grows increasingly difficult as their size and scope continues to expand. I caught up with Emerson’s Kevin Jackson who has witnessed this growth over time. Kevin notes that today 65% of projects over a billion dollars fail . Likewise, 35% of projects under $500 million have failed as well. By ‘failing’ he means that they are at least 25% over budget or late by at least 50% from the planned…
  • Fundamentally Transforming Capital Project Planning and Execution

    Executing capital projects grows increasingly difficult as their size and scope continues to expand. I caught up with Emerson’s Kevin Jackson who has witnessed this growth over time. Kevin notes that today 65% of projects over a billion dollars fail . Likewise, 35% of projects under $500 million have failed as well. By ‘failing’ he means that they are at least 25% over budget or late by at least 50% from the planned…
  • What is Operational Excellence?

    Author: Scott Turner A lot of businesses benchmark themselves against other companies in the same industry and against themselves over time using various metrics and key performance indicators (KPI’s). One example of this is Solomon Associates Benchmarking which is widely used, especially in the refining and petrochemicals industry. This benchmarking process is often used to identify your competitive position, optimize…
  • Innovations in Increasing Project Successes

    Emerson’s innovations in process control magazine provides insights into many of the latest technology and service innovations occurring. The latest edition opens with an operating training simulator (OTS) successful implementation at Iberian Lube Base Oils Company (ILBOC) in Cartagena, Spain. The article highlights some of the key benefits: Emerson’s OTS provided ILBOC with a number of benefits including reduced operating…
  • Effective Control Philosophies for Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the fourth part of my five part series on how to write an effective User Requirements Specification. The topic for this part is the ‘Control Philosophy’. The first three in the series include Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification , Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification and Scoping Your User Requirement Specification . The fifth and final part to be written…
  • Effective Control Philosophies for Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the fourth part of my five part series on how to write an effective User Requirements Specification. The topic for this part is the ‘Control Philosophy’. The first three in the series include Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification , Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification and Scoping Your User Requirement Specification . The fifth and final part to be written…
  • Effective Control Philosophies for Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the fourth part of my five part series on how to write an effective User Requirements Specification. The topic for this part is the ‘Control Philosophy’. The first three in the series include Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification , Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification and Scoping Your User Requirement Specification . The fifth and final part to be written…
  • Effective Control Philosophies for Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the fourth part of my five part series on how to write an effective User Requirements Specification. The topic for this part is the ‘Control Philosophy’. The first three in the series include Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification , Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification and Scoping Your User Requirement Specification . The fifth and final part to be written…
  • Effective Control Philosophies for Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the fourth part of my five part series on how to write an effective User Requirements Specification. The topic for this part is the ‘Control Philosophy’. The first three in the series include Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification , Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification and Scoping Your User Requirement Specification . The fifth and final part to be written…
  • Developing High-Level Operator Skills Prior to Startup

    For those that follow the various forms of auto racing, you know that the skills of the drivers typically separate overall race results, even when the racecars are nearly identical in performance. And so it is with experienced, high-level operators in process manufacturing and production facilities. Emerson’s Ronnie Bains shared a recent eptq article, Operator training simulator accelerates learning , with me. The…
  • Develop, Test and Train for Lower Risk Projects

    One way to improve the probability for a successful process automation project is to include dynamic simulation during the design phases to help with configuring the control system, testing before commissioning the system and training the operators before the process goes live. In an earlier post, Building Competency through Operator Training Systems , we highlighted the application of operator training simulators…
  • Scoping Your User Requirement Specification

    Author: Scott Turner This is the third part of the five part series on how to write an effective User Requirement Specification. The topic of this part is ‘Scope’. If you missed the earlier two, see Considerations for Your User Requirement Specification and Process Overview for Your User Requirement Specification . The remaining parts will be Control Philosophy and Hardware. As before, I would very much appreciate…