Location Services Boost Turnaround Safety and Productivity

During a turnaround, time is money. But keeping the dozens of additional contractors and hundreds of additional workers who arrive on site optimally productive is no minor challenge. It’s little wonder that 30% of turnarounds exceed their schedule and 80% experience budget overruns of more than 10%.

Industry leader INVISTA, with its commitment to innovation, is looking to transform turnaround safety and productivity with the help of the United Rentals Advanced Solutions Group and connected worksite devices from Triax Technologies.

In June 2019, managers at an INVISTA Victoria site in Victoria, Texas, began using Spot-r clips and EquipTags from Triax, provided by United Rentals, to support a more productive and safer worksite. In preparation for a January 2022 turnaround, INVISTA added about 650 Spot-r clips and 100 Spot-r EquipTags to provide visibility into the movement of people and equipment inside the site perimeter.

Eliminating sign-in and sign-out areas

One of the biggest safety and productivity gains enabled by the Spot-r clips worn by workers involved entries into buildings and units.

Physically “signing in” workers strains operational resources. “More often than not, the biggest opportunities come from the unintended consequences of worksite organization and procedures. When you take that time spent with a paper and pencil and aggregate that across hundreds of people, that’s a real number,” said Ian Ouellette, vice president of product and chief data scientist at Triax.

INVISTA Victoria was able to largely eliminate sign-in and sign-out areas, and the man-hours associated with them, because the Spot-r solution makes it easy to see where people are. This not only improves productivity, but also, provides enhanced situational awareness of the persons performing work in these sensitive areas.

“It also helped us write some processes and procedures to have people to get in the unit quicker to get their permits than signing in other places,” said Jim Flynn, INVISTA Victoria field service manager.

Measuring time spent in productive and non-productive areas

Part of the plan, in addition to tracking equipment utilization in order to right-size equipment fleets on future turnarounds, was to leverage location services in order to ascertain how much time workers spend in productive and non-productive areas of the plant. This type of analysis is possible based on the Spot-r network deployed at the site, which provides indoors, outdoors, vertical, and horizontal location services of both people and equipment.

“I want to know when they’re in the unit working, but I also want to know when they’re at a gate or in a lunch tent or in a tool trailer — really, non-productive time — and how do we increase the productive time and reduce the non-productive time,” explained Flynn. He hoped to use location services data from Spot-r clips to identify bottlenecks and reveal other opportunities for improving productivity.

“Do we have people lining up at the gate too early to leave their unit? Are they in tool rooms longer than they should be, or in lunch areas earlier than they should be?” said Flynn.

With the help of Triax and United Rentals, Flynn and his turnaround team began by categorizing areas of the 4,500-acre site as productive or non-productive. INVISTA cross-referenced the worker location data by subcontractor and craft, then overlaid that information on the project plan. As the data came in, Triax scored worker activity as “expected” or “not expected.” Data on unexpected activity provided the transparency Flynn needed to start discussions with frontline supervisors about issues that impacted productivity.

“I leave the Triax app open on my computer on all day,” said Flynn. “I can now make decisions much more quickly and bring more value back to the business because everything is visible.”

Identifying opportunities for improvement

Flynn pointed to gate area data as an example of actionable information. While workers typically do a good job of getting to their assigned area on time, they may line up at the gate 15 or 20 minutes early when it’s time to leave.

“As you start seeing that crowd pile up at the gate, you start having discussions with supervisors from the contract company about having those workers work a little longer in a day,” said Flynn.

Tool rooms can become another bottleneck. As Flynn put it, “Tool rooms are a great place for people to hang out.” Materials warehouses are similar. Flynn doesn’t want two or three people going to get supplies that could be picked up by one person. In response to Triax data, he’s asked contractors to add materials expediters to the site. “I don’t want any craft going for materials,” said Flynn. The expediters add to the headcount, but the increased productivity more than compensates.

Driving record productivity

On this turnaround, the plant achieved 63% productivity, compared to an industry average of about 50%.

“Our goal is to improve operations for each turnaround we support with INVISTA. It truly is about leveraging location in order to drive better and safer decision-making. We’ve never seen a number that high on a turnaround,” noted Kevin Noonan, product development manager at United Rentals. Flynn’s goal is to increase turnaround productivity even further.

“It was really good capture for us to see where we’re starting and where we can get to,” said Flynn. “As we grow these turnarounds, I think we’re going to be able to say, ‘This is what good looks like, and this is the expectation we give to the contractors way before we even bring them in, whether it’s 75% or 80% of time spent in the unit.’”

Increasing safety during evacuations

The Spot-r system also showed its worth during an evacuation that took place. During an evacuation, the plant needs to account for all workers within 10 minutes. When the evacuation horn blew at INVISTA Victoria, Flynn could see, in real time, who was at the muster points. If someone was not at the assigned muster point, Flynn could see exactly where that worker was.

“The response time is much quicker, and I’m making decisions much quicker,” Flynn said. In addition, he noted, “You don’t have to put people in harm’s way to look for a person because you know where that person is.”

Limitless possibilities

Flynn has two turnarounds in Victoria next year. “I’m excited about continuing the journey with Kevin and his team and really seeing, ‘Can we move that 63% number up?’ I think we can,” he said. “The question for me now is ‘How do I work with United Rentals on taking it a little further?’ Because as we get to bigger turnarounds, we can dial into zones or floors or whatever we want to do.”

Cole Anthony Kalkbrenner, strategic commodities leader with INVISTA, imagines using the location data from Triax and United Rentals in innovative ways that benefit both the plant and the contractors working on site.

“I’m excited about the roadmap of what Triax has to offer in the future,” said Kalkbrenner. “We haven’t yet unlocked all of these virtuous cycles. It’s definitely something that’s going to grow and be a living, breathing project that will continue to build out. There are unknown secondary and third-order effects that will really be beneficial to not only INVISTA but the suppliers that are utilizing these tools as well.”

For example, Kalkbrenner envisions contractor companies being able to compensate their employees based on their actual productivity. “You start getting into smart contracts and how they can affect productivity and turnaround time — it’s really going to change the game.”