Shutdown and Outage Strategy and Planning

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Name:	Shutdown and Outage Strategy and Planning
Acronym:
Type:	Glossary Item

Definition:

An organisation’s processes for the identification, planning, scheduling, execution, and control of work related to shutdowns, turnarounds, or outages (STOs). Definitions vary across industries and organizations but generally involve lengthy planned production stoppages or reduction in operations to perform maintenance in the case of shutdowns, and refurbishment, refitting, rebuild, or upgrading in the case of turnarounds. Outages are generally unplanned interruptions of shorter duration due to factors such as power supply interruptions or equipment failures. An STO event is measured as the period commencing from safe system shut down, hand-over for maintenance, isolation, performing the required work, system hand back to operations, to safe system start-up and restoration of required service levels. In some industries, this may also require certification before hand-back to operation, and recalibration to a larger system or network.

Statement:

STO strategy and management involves an impact analysis, the development of strategy, policies, objectives, actions, processes, scope requirements, work packages, resourcing arrangements and approvals, and management of events that ensure effective management and alignment to the organisation’s business continuity management. The strategy needs to find the optimum trade-off between the efficiencies of fewer but more extended shutdowns or outages that have a higher impact on production against more but shorter shutdowns or outages that have less impact on the organization but result in less efficient delivery of work.

The planning and management activities within the scope of this subject include:

Impact analysis and planning for all stakeholders and the environment.
Development of STO strategy, objectives, and policies.
Risk and contingency planning for catastrophic or costly issues occurring during the process.
Asset infrastructure and business continuity planning.
Development of STO management processes.
Project Management best practices, scope and work package formulation, and application of critical path planning.
Approval processes to undertake the shutdown inclusive of internal approvals and regulatory approvals.
Communications to internal and external stakeholders affected.
Post STO-event appraisal and improvement planning.