Over and Done

Yesterday, I finished up a very difficult, project. 

For two months I got up at 4:30 in the morning, showered, and drove to work in the dark on what the locals called the “death highway”, fifty five miles, one way, of two lane highway that wound up, down, around, over, and through some of the most desolate canyon land the extreme northeast plains of the Texas panhandle has to offer.  The posted speed limit was 70 night/65 day; Texas wasted its money on the signs.  If you drove less than 75 miles an hour, the vehicle behind would be right up your tail…more than that, and you’d find yourself fast approaching a slower vehicle in front.  If things went well, you’d be cruising along at just under 80; if they didn’t, you’d be in line with several other cars, bumper to bumper, waiting impatiently for the short, occasional, passing lane…and then jockeying at break neck speed to get around the slow poke who was holding everyone else up before the two lanes merged back into one.  Flowered crosses littered the route, placed there by the loved ones of those who didn’t quite make the pass before a car coming from the opposite direction topped the oncoming hill or rounded the next curve and both vehicles experienced first hand the physics of inertia, someone losing their lives in the process.

For two months, I averaged sixty work hours per week…sometimes those hours were crammed into five days, a couple of weeks into six or seven.  Most of the time, the hours were jammed into five day weeks; considering when I got up and then arrived back home each day I was lucky to get six hours of sleep each night.  Late each Friday afternoon, with the exception of two days, I dragged myself to the Amarillo airport to catch the Continental Express non-stop jet service to George Bush International in Houston where my man picked me up for the additional hour drive back to our home; at just after six every Sunday afternoon, it was the same plane ride back…I was almost on a first name basis with Amarillo airport security. 

I could be a rocket scientist because I am involved in one way or another with the petrochemical industry and petrochemicals are always used in rocket science.  Yes, I could be a rocket scientist in the same vein that Zoe Ellen Brain says ad nauseum that she is a rocket scientist because she writes computer programs that could be used in the space industry.  And, Leigh could be a rocket scientist because her business produces products that could be used in giving directions to the aerospace industry…and another friend of mine who plays music could be a rocket scientist because she plays music that the aerospace industry has surely listened to.  Of course, neither myself, Leigh, nor my other girlfriend friend claim to actually be rocket scientists like Zoe Brain does, realizing, that only the ignorant would recognize one who is peripherally involved in the aerospace industry as such.  No, the truth is that I’m simply a contract consulting engineer whose career has focused on the engineering and construction processes of very complicated heavy industrial complexes.  The project I just finished up qualified for that label in trumps. 

Here is a brief and simplified history of the oil industry as a background. 

Most are aware that oil was not discovered in the South or offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, however, by the 1920s and ‘30s, there were thoroughly proven oil reserves in the Permian Basin (Midland/Odessa, Texas), Spindletop (south east Texas), Southern Louisiana, Oklahoma, and North Texas…to name just a few in this region.  Most of the major oil refineries along the Gulf coast were initially built in the ‘30s, many of those in the later part of that decade to process oil in anticipation of the United States entering WWII, but the history of many modern refineries go back at least a decade earlier. 

Refining oil in the very early days was not a whole lot different than distilling whiskey, but instead of being called stills they were called crude distillation units (to this very day there is not a refinery in existence that does not have at least one crude unit…it’s the very tall cylindrical columns one sees when they drive by a refinery; it’s generally where the refining process starts)  And, there were oil refineries all over the place, almost all of them configured the same way.  In those early days, the refining process focused of capturing what is known as the lights…first was kerosene, then a little later when the mass production of cars came along gasoline became big, and then, progressively, diesel fuel, fuel oil, and naphtha.  What was left over after the initial refining of the lights was given over to the production of lubricants, what most simply call motor oil and grease.  The bottoms product was what we all used to call tar or asphalt.  Technology for these early refineries was messy and extremely dangerous; fires and explosions could often be a daily occurrence. 

These very early refining processes wasted a lot of the hydrocarbons contained in the feed stock, the crude oil that comes out of the ground and is fed into the refinery.  In those days, natural gas from the well itself (for which there was absolutely no use whatsoever) was simply siphoned off to a flare and burned; everything else that was not strictly the focus of the refinery was often dumped in a pit, and also burned.  As the years went by, however, and the petrochemical requirements across the technology spectrum changed, the process engineers (chemical and/or mechanical engineers) realized that by developing different refining processes, they could get more refined products out of the same amount of feed stock, and do so with crude oil that was often less than optimal in quality.  At an almost exponential rate, starting in the very late 30’s and continuing up to this very day, oil refineries became increasingly complex…in fact, oil refineries are actually rated on the complexity of their processes.  You can read about that rating system HERE   if interested.  The bottom line is the more processes there are in a refinery, the more efficient, yet the more complex each is…and, unlike the very earliest refineries, they are all configured differently.  Today’s modern refineries are extremely complex with many, many different process units.   What is important to remember is that the vast majority of the major oil refineries today evolved from being essentially identical and simple, into massive extremely complex beasts that refine crude oil down to the absolute lowest common denominator, wasting almost none of the crude feed stock, and that each refinery can and, way more often than not, is completely different from the one that may be, literally, just across the street from it. 

The oil refinery of today is a marvel of engineering, though perhaps one would have to be involved in something similar to what I am to fully appreciate it.  On more than one occasion, at more than one location, I’ve stood from afar looking at what appears to be nothing more than a massive web of tangled steel chaos and been amazed that everything I’m looking at was designed to be there and is performing a certain function that makes everything else work. 

But, there is a caveat… 

The refineries, almost to the one, didn’t start out the way they appear when I arrive on-site.  As mentioned, they are constantly morphing and more likely than not, have been doing so for the past sixty years or so.  As the years rolled by and the technology improved, certain old refining processes were abandoned and new ones took their place…some refining processes were modified…and the existing processes had to be constantly maintained.  The rub, is that when one process unit is modified or upgraded, it invariably affects another process unit (or two, or three, or even more)…pressures increase/decrease…line sizes changes…heat and material balances are affected…things get more complex. 

Refineries are very seldom if ever completely shut down, even in major hurricanes the basic steam systems are left running, though they are not making product.  There are several reasons why refineries are seldom brought completelydown.  One is that refineries are in the business of making money and if the refinery is shut down completely, it’s not producing product and not making money.  Another is that once a refinery is brought completely down, it can take quite a while (days and days) to bring it back up.  The operators who run, control, or otherwise make a refinery produce do not have the ability to intellectually retain the knowledge required to start up a refinery, not because they are not smart enough to do so, but because of the complexity of the refinery system itself; bringing a refinery up (or even a process unit) from a complete shutdown is not like throwing a switch, opening a few valves, and then sitting back and watching pressure and flow gauges on a console…there are very, very specific written procedures that must be followed in order to bring a completely shut down refinery back up and into production and process incorporate many people to do so…and these procedures must be followed to the letter.  To say that failure to follow written process unit start up procedures can be catastrophic is gross understatement.  You can read HERE about what happens when refineries don’t follow written process unit start up procedures correctly.  This particular incident example happened at our old friend BP’s (British Petroleum) Texas City, Texas refinery in March, 2005.  On page two, from BP’s own report, one will read the following statement, emphasis mine: 

“Several steps in the startup procedure were omitted or not followed. The Board Operator overfilled the Splitter and overheated its contents without understanding that the very high liquid level and base temperature would contribute to a high pressure. The outside operators used local practices to control unit pressure instead of a purpose-built system, without understanding the possible implications.” 

The “possible implications” BP mentions so nonchalantly at the end of the quote above was the likelyhood of a massive explosion…which indeed did occur, killing 15 people and injuring 170 more, some of them severely so.  Which brings us to one, at least to me, of the most important reasons refineries don’t bring their plants completely down:  the most dangerous time to be in or even around an oil refinery, even if the written procedures are being followed (and generally they are), is when it’s being brought down or, particularly, when it is being brought back up.  Refinery management and everyone who either works in or around refineries know this, so in order to minimize the need to completely shut down their units, redundant process units are often in place.  As well, certain units are safer to bring down and start up than others…certain units are not absolutely required to be up in the first place and if one goes down, though overall production might suffer, the refinery as a whole will never blink an eye. 

Nonetheless, maintenance, and the need to add, remove, modify, and maintain the different process units in a modern oil refinery is an absolute necessity.  The failure on BP’s part to properly maintain their refinery was another major cause of the Texas City explosion cited above.  Refineries simply have to bring units down and start them back up from time to time in order to exist…and this is done during one of two different times, either an unplanned shutdown (when something goes severely snafu) or during a scheduled shutdown and turnaround. 

And this is where I fit into the picture. 

The issue facing me on this project was that the completion of three, very high profile capital improvement projects within the same complex was behind schedule, which was causing the scheduled shutdown and turnaround date to be delayed.  These  are very much planned shutdowns, the date often planned to the day, and months, sometimes years, in advance.  Many, many specialty contractors are contracted to bring in literally thousands of personnel on major turnarounds to work around the clock in an effort to get whatever modification and maintenance work that needs to be done…done… and then get the refinery up and running with all units online, producing at the refinery’s full production rated capacity.  It’s a juggernaut that once put into motion is extremely difficult to stop without causing the loss of more money than I could count.  On the job I just finished, the three projects involved absolutely had to be completed and online before the start date of the turnaround work could commence…and they weren’t on schedule to be so. 

You might ask, was Susie sent in to single handedly make a silk purse out of this construction pig ear?  Hardly, I wish.  No, not at all, but was facility project management in trouble?  Yes, they sure were.  And, the status quo was not acceptable to the local’s corporate overseers.  So a few like Susie were contracted to come in by local project management and, to put it politely, make suggestions to the locals as to the most prudent way to proceed in order to minimize the delay of the upcoming turnaround…and, to put even more pressure on local facility project management, corporate project management brought in their own corporate people to look over all of our shoulders.  That last fact didn’t disturb me in the least, I’m a contractor and regardless of how things would turn out I knew I would be gone after a month or two anyhow.  But it really put the careers of the company’s local project management team under a microscope…and on the line. 

The whole thing involved one major national prime contractor and one major international prime contractor with a few well know engineering firms sprinkled in…anyone reading this would recognize all of them immediately if I were to give names, which I can’t, even if I wanted to…along with, of course, the facility’s own local project management staff and, almost simultaneously to my arrival, project management from the facility’s corporate office. 

Compared to many projects I’ve worked on, the scope of work was not all that big; I can’t say exactly how large, but I will say it was under $100 million.  Considering the contractors and design engineering firms involved, all renown in their own right, the work should have been a breeze.  But, unexplainably, and it always is unexplainably, somewhere along the line, probably six months or so ago, the project got completely out of control. 

Many do not understand the concept of exactly what project controls is nor what a project controls engineer does…which is what I do and what I am.  Many engineers, my husband included (who is a Mechanical Engineer, PE with almost as much construction management experience as me) has no use whatsoever for project controls engineers.  Such is the case with many project managers…until, as was the case here, the project comes unglued. 

So what is a project controls engineer, and what do they do and why are they ever needed? 

Invariably we are degreed engineers in one discipline or the other, it doesn’t much matter which one…at the least, we have to have a very firm grasp of all of the engineering disciplines and completely understand the big picture of the project process.  Next, we must have absolute and vast experience in construction processes and construction management.  One thing that really needles practical engineers and project managers is that a project controls engineer can almost effortlessly step into any project or engineering management position (because we have been there before) but someone who is an engineer or project manager, with very few exceptions, would be lost if they were instantly inserted into project controls.  That is what we are. 

What we do is essentially what our name implies, we control the project, but not in the context of, as an example, telling a certified welder how to weld, but in regards to measuring the project from the perspective of time and cost, and the relationship that both of those have to each other as a function of the construction process as a whole.  That is not mumbo-jumbo double talk; it is exactly what we do…and it absolutely controls the project.  A good project manager will not walk into a project meeting without having his project controls engineer right beside him. 

Why are we ever needed?  Well, on small projects we really aren’t needed if there is a good project manager at the helm.  I will define a small project very subjectively as a project with a start to completion span of say less than six months, and (not or…it’s a time/cost/project complexity thing) under $10 million or so in cost.  But on large complex projects, it’s so extremely easy it isn’t funny for project managers to get completely lost with regards to what work needs to be done next, which sequence they should follow in doing the work, how many men he needs to do the work, how fast the work needs to be done, how much all of those things will cost when finished (even if he does do it the way he is supposed to), how much over or under his budget he is on labor or cost at any given moment, and/or how much when he finishes the project…the list just goes on and on.  And that is where we come in.  Project control engineers constantly analyze the construction project from three different perspectives (time, cost, and construction process going forward) and then advise project management not only of where they currently are in the construction process, but the consequences of following different options should they proceed down any given road toward completion; we suggest different options, each with their own pros and cons, and construction management takes it from there.  To a construction manager who is so lost in a project that’s so out of control he doesn’t know whether to poop or go blind, we are angels from heaven. 

If there was ever a project completely out of control, it was the one I just finished.  But, between us all, the entire team, with a bit of guidance here and there, all is now well.  The project will not finish on time, but the completion delay will only be a couple of weeks, versus a couple of months.  For the client, that differential could easily translate to a savings of millions of dollars. 

Winding things up, with the exception of one female clerk who was so afraid I was going to take her job she morphed into a clam, refusing to so much as even look in my direction, much less assist me in any manner, the other office staff and every single one of the men and women in the refinery operations group were some of the nicest and cooperative people I’ve ever been around…it was a joy working with them. 

It was a tough assignment and I’m really glad it’s over.

I’m tired. 

But the stress is over.  Tomorrow my man flies in and as soon as I pick him up at the airport we head back South, hoping to make Wichita Fall before we call it a night. 

Less than 48 hours from now I’ll be in my home, and in my bed.  Another contract completed.