Planner Role - Time and Scope Managment

Time and priority management is essential to maintaining the maintenance backlog and ultimately increasing confidence that "Approved" Work Orders are prioritized and queued for execution. In order to begin to achieve a level of competency it is important to first understand the current condition and compare to the plan. To clarify, the plan was to develop a backlog where all Work Orders were prioritized, planned and estimated with target dates.

Below are a few steps to discuss with stakeholders in order to have a clear discussion about the role "Planner". Because lack of stakeholder support is a leading cause for the breakdown of Maintenance success, stakeholder alignment is the lynch pin for establishing a cohesive environment.

Scope Management

   1. Typical list of tasks you are responsible for and currently perform as a Planner

1. Scope jobs in field
2. Create job plans on CMMS
3. Scope jobs in field
4. Identify & Order Material
5. Create reusable job plans & maintain data base
6. Create WO’s and schedule 3^{rd party contractors}
7. Produce detailed cost estimates as required
8. Manage Backlog and Target CMMS
9. Produce high-level weekly contractor schedule outline
10. Run adhoc Reports to determine Backlog health

  2. Typical list of tasks you currently perform as a Planner that you are not responsible for

1. Sort and manage work orders directly from Operations
2. Create Work Orders for client
3. Provide emergency coverage for Priority Urgent and Emergency Work orders
4. Manage & delegate FCR’s
5. Scope/manage priority Urgent and Emergency Work Orders
6. Manage poor Work Order reporting practices ( Poor WO prioritization, verbal WO, unnecessary break in WO)
7. Assisting with management of daily work activities
8. Identify the 4 or 5 major time consumers that consumes your day
9. Managing Priority Urgent and Emergency Work Orders
10. Managing daily work activities due to lack of understanding of Planner roles and responsibilities
11. Managing & delegating FCR’s
12. Managing & delegating Break in work   

Time Management

1. Identify the 4 or 5 major time consumers that negatively impact productivity and work towards developing a balance between being at the desk, meeting with stakeholders and being on site.
2. Set a routine based on Work Order Priority, Target Start Date and magnitude of scope.

Estimating - Factoring Productivity

In the Maintenance and Turnaround environment we have sanctioned a dysfunctional relationship with productivity by imposing a static view that often fails to respond a strategic initiative. The premise of productivity factors is rather simple in definition as Output divided by Input of resource effort impacts the earned value delivery of a service, product or result. However the influence of organizational factors including waiting conditions, complexity of work, resource limitations, logistics, weather, accessibility to tools & equipment, scope creep, rework are all factors impeding delivery of marked achievement. Also it is important to realize productivity rates are relative, in that they mean nothing if they are not compared to something else.
This substantiates active participation in developing a strategic methodology and framework to support the Planning, Scheduling initiative generating consistent value. By sanctioning realistic expectations, comparing apples to apples and avoiding traps like industry standard and scientific hype productivity can be tailored to meet what is important to all key stakeholders within the organization.
First, we must be truly, motivated, to enable change, then allow it to evolve to maturity.

Planner Role - Time and Scope Managment

Time and priority management is essential to maintaining the maintenance backlog and ultimately increasing confidence that "Approved" Work Orders are prioritized and queued for execution. In order to begin to achieve a level of competency it is important to first understand the current condition and compare to the plan. To clarify, the plan was to develop a backlog where all Work Orders were prioritized, planned and estimated with target dates.

Below are a few steps to discuss with stakeholders in order to have a clear discussion about the role "Planner". Because lack of stakeholder support is a leading cause for the breakdown of Maintenance success, stakeholder alignment is the lynch pin for establishing a cohesive environment.

Scope Management

   1. Typical list of tasks you are responsible for and currently perform as a Planner

1. Scope jobs in field
2. Create job plans on CMMS
3. Scope jobs in field
4. Identify & Order Material
5. Create reusable job plans & maintain data base
6. Create WO’s and schedule 3^{rd party contractors}
7. Produce detailed cost estimates as required
8. Manage Backlog and Target CMMS
9. Produce high-level weekly contractor schedule outline
10. Run adhoc Reports to determine Backlog health

  2. Typical list of tasks you currently perform as a Planner that you are not responsible for

1. Sort and manage work orders directly from Operations
2. Create Work Orders for client
3. Provide emergency coverage for Priority Urgent and Emergency Work orders
4. Manage & delegate FCR’s
5. Scope/manage priority Urgent and Emergency Work Orders
6. Manage poor Work Order reporting practices ( Poor WO prioritization, verbal WO, unnecessary break in WO)
7. Assisting with management of daily work activities
8. Identify the 4 or 5 major time consumers that consumes your day
9. Managing Priority Urgent and Emergency Work Orders
10. Managing daily work activities due to lack of understanding of Planner roles and responsibilities
11. Managing & delegating FCR’s
12. Managing & delegating Break in work   

Time Management

1. Identify the 4 or 5 major time consumers that negatively impact productivity and work towards developing a balance between being at the desk, meeting with stakeholders and being on site.
2. Set a routine based on Work Order Priority, Target Start Date and magnitude of scope.

Planning Survey

A few years ago working with the Maintenance Group there was some controversy regarding the overall effectiveness of practices, process development and continuous improvement. To gain a good idea of the health of the system as it was we developed and distributed a Planning Survey to key stakeholders for input. The desired outputs were twofold in that one part of the agenda was to encourage the craftsmen and leadership to have a mechanism to express the realities through participation and secondly introduce the scope of the path forward.

Each question was weighted and represented a meaningful challenge to manage. The results allowed us to establish our areas of focus and work on cultural and process priorities.

Planning Survey

The intent of this survey is to help identify the current shortfalls and strengths of Maintenance Planning & Scheduling as we know it today.

Work Order Initiation (Waiting Approval Status)

1. Are all work orders filled out correctly?    
2. Is the justification for work orders and particularly the lead-time allowed questioned regularly?  
3. Are work orders properly coded as to type of work and correct authorization obtained?  

Work Order Planning (Waiting Estimate Status)

1. Is the backlog of corrective work orders under control?   
2. Is work order scope reviewed in the field?   
3. Are sketches and specifications provided when required?  
4. Are estimates being steadily refined?
5.  Are estimates realistic? Is feedback from frontline supervisors provided on a regular basis?  

Preventative Maintenance (PM’s)

1. Are preventive maintenance inspection sheets checked and the necessary work orders scheduled? 
2. Are all PM work orders properly scheduled according to the frequencies?  

Material Procurement (Waiting Material Status)

1. Are the predetermined materials needs specified for all work orders? 
2. Is the delivery of predetermined material arranged for in advance?   
3. Is effort made to improve material specifications and insure its availability on the job hen needed?  
4. Is follow-up maintained on all work orders for materials?  

Urgent and Emergency Work Orders 

1. Do Priority Work Order meet guidelines of a Prioritization matrix?  

Work Order Scope Execution (In Progress)

1. Are contract jobs properly charged to work orders?  
2. Are completed work orders promptly returned to the originator to close?  

Shutdown Planning (Waiting Plant Conditions Status)

1. Is shutdown information obtained sufficiently far enough in advance to plan effectively?  
2. Are approaching shutdowns given attention soon enough to plan adequately?  

CMMS Management

1. Is the planning of work orders up-to-date (i.e., no backlog of unplanned work orders)?  
2. Are work orders “In Progress and “Waiting Material” regularly checked as to status?  
3. Is the backlog reviewed regularly to identify overdue work orders and actions approver?

Level 1 (Re-usable Job Plans)

1. Are recurring jobs analyzed for the purpose of establishing model work order plans?   
2. Is the effectiveness of the estimates and plans checked after job completion?  

Scheduling

1. Is operations notified in advance when to have equipment shutdown or prepared so hat it can be worked on without delay?  
2. Are work orders scheduled according to the priority established by the originator?   
3. If job can not be scheduled within the desired interval, is the originator notified? 
4. Is a full day’s work scheduled every day for every maintenance person?  
5. Is the necessary manpower scheduled for minor repairs?  
6. Are the required number of resources assigned to jobs whenever possible?  
7. Do work schedules account for every resource including absences?

Planners Toolkit: Reusable Job Plan Data Base

The transition from a reactive environment to a proactive approach to asset management requires, in most cases, a substantial transformation. The process of how work is communicated, documented, approved and prioritized is essential to ensuring effort is managed effectively providing the results in key areas.

During a functional communication session at the latest EAM/CMMS conference I attended there was some good conversation regarding job plans and safety plans. The overall consensus was... in order to understand the health of a backlog each approved work order must be planned with in an reasonable level of accuracy. The topic of backlog management quickly attracted more support and evolved to an after-hours discussion.  The topic of discussion, and debate, moved to the use of reusable job plans to help manage the work order backlog. It seemed to be clear, gauging the interest, many sites struggle with qualifying resource needs and the management of process assets to ensure a healthy consistent environment.  However many recognized resulting actions of  insufficient maintenance practices, impacting performance leading to reduced reliability of resource groups as well as operational assets. They were struggling with ideas on how to better understand their backlogs and the ability to make decisions based on priority, effort and duration. One stream focused on the creation of a reusable job plan database were the Planner could review the initial scope as described, select an accurate job plan from a database, insert and update upon site review. The premise being more time spent in the Unit than on the computer typing. The small efficiencies gained result in consistent planning language, format and required field population for reporting. Planner KPI's can track variances and help manage resource allocation and numbers. With all Work Orders "Planned" to a reasonable +15/-10% accuracy rate it is quite easy to determine base crew numbers, identify specific Work Orders that can impact the backlog and trend backlog utilizing resource hours. The caveat is that all scope still needs to be reviewed and a site visit is required. The reusable job plan is to be used as an efficiency tool with the intent of balancing desk time with time on-site validating scope, time, labor/nonlabor resources, materials and support requirements.  

Balancing the O&M Triple Constraint

Have you ever felt a feeling of disconnect between the wants and needs of the three major stakeholder groups within your plant?

The stakeholder groups I am referring to are the Management, Operations and Maintenance disciplines which could be thought of the O&M triple constraint. Similar to the universal project triple constraint of time/scope & budget, the O&M triple constraint is intended to gauge and manage the health of the business objective. The aim of the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) institution, as I understand, is to manage the efficiency, reliability and sustainability of process assets. For without reliable assets and ancillary systems, production would be limited or nonexistent. This directly impacts product deliverables and contractual agreements.
In order to maintain healthy relationships a certain balancing act is required to manage all stakeholder group initiatives and deliver value driven performance. The lynch pin to maintaining cohesion and communication between disciplines is the alignment of Planning and Scheduling.
The maintenance department is responsible for developing and management of an integrated system that, ultimately, reduces reactivity and short notice outage work. Desired outputs include increased productivity and base crew size scaled to meet long term objectives. A valid Planning & Scheduling program coupled with configuration and continuous improvement frameworks will enable craft personnel to work more effectively. In order for this to be realized it is essential work be validated, scoped, planned, prioritized and scheduled in accordance to an O&M structure. The evolution of this framework or structure will be the development of value added PM and PDM methodologies. The foremost outputs include increased reliability resulting in lower risk of asset downtime.
From an operations perspective, communication of work to be performed is essential to timely repairs. For the most part it is the operations group that will identify work and initiate a service request based on their expert judgment. It is important that clearly defined CMMS protocols are established and communicated to qualify consistent results.
Proportionately important is the management group which supports each element and component of the framework endorsing the value of all disciplines to provide unambiguous results. This support resonates with discipline craft persons as compensation should be within industry standards, hopefully better, work assignments and training allow people to grow and a flexible schedule is promoted.

The end result is a group of people who are transparent and understand the opportunities and constraints of each individual discipline well enough to leverage opportunities for performance driven results.

O&G Industry Acronyms

The Oil and Gas industry, like others has seemed to adopt a few interesting acronyms that are often used in conversation, meetings, operating practises and reports to summarize context. I thought I would share some of the more clever compositions I am familiar with.


SNOW: Short Notice Outage Work

STOP: Scheduled Turnaround Operations Planning

WORM: Work Order Review Meeting

BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything

Planners struggle... closing the gap

It seems that we all have expectations of what we envision Maintenance and Turnaround Planners are required to deliver. The skillset and abilities of the Planning discipline is dubious at best. With that said the expectations and reality of matching qualifications, experience, tenure and performance quite often is a moving target. To reconcile needs and expectations we need to have clear understanding of the complexity and magnitude of scope, synchronized with a detailed roles & responsibilities model . Once the resource has been secured we need to train the Planner to utilize required software's, tools, templates and basis on which the required outputs are managed and reported. The unfortunate reality is we have not addressed the need, as an industry, to formulate a set of competencies and experience to achieve even our basic expectations.

Tenure + Training = Competency

CMMS Upgrade - Lessons Learned

This post will progressively elaborate as the lessons are learned unfold. Focus will be on CMMS planning, scheduling, deliverable management and living with the sins realized throughtout the process of delivering and managing a new CMMS system.


> Perform a feasibility study
> Develop scope and manage as a project - treat like you would treat a capital mechanical project
> Identify and document the intended outputs of the system upgrade
> Identify your true needs and forecasted requirements
> Develop a list of attributes that work well on your current system
> Develop a list of attributes that you would like to change
> Establish an internal project team
> Develop a checklist of items to prove during sandbox phase
> Confirm system reliability and communication pror to going live
> Establish an internal training course based on security level
> Develop a realistic training schedule
> Establish follow-up process to provide support for issues
> More to come...

CMMS and Maintenance Management Success

What does Success look like in your organization ?

Maintenance is about preserving, protecting and looking after the equipment and assets that make business equitable. With this said the Maintenance organizations focus would be on how to prevent failures as opposed to seeing how fast you can perform the repair. Repairs quite often can lead to equipment and asset unplanned outages which can impact production. Operations is bestowed with the responsibility to ensure the process is in control and Maintenance is committed to provide expertise regarding reliability and efficient repairs. Finally the main objective is to reduce unplanned breakdowns and optimize use of labor resources.

In order to become a mature Maintenance organization we need to adopt a continuous improvement/ best practices philosophy and framework that is tracked and measured to provide quantitative measurements of success. The CMMS is a major tool in managing and acheiving maturity. However it is not a silver bullet.The CMMS system does not guarantee you will achieve return on investment or enhance efficiency. You have to follow-through by setting goals which help you identify recurring problems, improve asset reliability and enhance work force efficiency, hence manage your facility.

- It is important to first have a clear picture of what your maintenance needs are.
- Gather and develop the Planning and Scheduling Team
- Become a problem solving organization.
- Interview stakeholders, identify problems – ask for suggestions.
- Establish roles and responsibilities
- Focus on recurring breakdowns and improve work force efficiency.
- Focus on equipment reliability and maintenance productivity to improve plant operating efficiencies
- Develop a realistic PM system
- Develop a weekly resource levelled Maintenance Schedule
- Schedule for minimum 90% available resource time
- Set up to maintain 80-85% Schedule Compliance
- Create reports that help you understand areas of concern
- Develop Procedure Manual with Standard Operating Practices and guidelines
- Develop a Work Order Prioritization Matrix with buy-in from Operations
- Ensure all work performed must have a Work Order assigned
- Trend and manage Backlogs
- Record work delays
- Waiting on LockOut-Tagout or other Permitting
- Waiting for the equipment to be shut down.
- Waiting on Operator action
- Chasing parts", ie Looking in warehouse; processing req. for stock matls etc...
- Waiting on Information, drawings, FCR or other technical information
- Waiting on equipment
- Waiting on other crafts, ie isolate power
- Emergency, break-in Work
- Record Failure Codes for trending and analysis
- Review your Maintenance Backlog
- Manage "In Progress" Work Orders - only work that is currently scheduled should be In Progress
- Maintain Maintenance Management Processes, Plans and Goals

Maintenance Planning Checklist

Below is a simple yet, under utilized tool for ensuring consistent results when creating and developing job plans based on Work Orders within your CMMS.


Maintenance Planning Checklist Work Request/ Order Documentation
- Is the correct equipment number assigned?
- Is there enough information to understand the scope of work required?
- Are key words used such as Inspect, Replace, Rebuild, Calibrate, etc.?
- Does this Work Order duplicate another already in the system?
- Is the location of the work clearly identified?
- Is the Work Order coding such as Priority and Work Type appropriate?

Job Research
- Has this work been done before? If so, does a reusable job plan already exist?
- If no job plan exists, can parts of other job plans be applied to create a new one if needed?
- Is this job so frequent that a reusable job plan is warranted?
- Is a trip to the job site required to accurately plan materials, task steps and safety requirements?
- Will a picture or sketch help move the work execution along?

Job Planning
Basic (utilizes a continuous improvement feedback loop to capture and improve job plan)

- If a comprehensive job plan is not required or timing prohibits development, have the crafts, parts and consumables, and estimated times been determined for a minimum job plan?
- If multiple crafts are required, have child Work Orders been established?
- If the parts are staged and kitted, is that location identified in the plan?

Intermediate (Thorough planning or use of a continuous improvement feedback loop on repetitive jobs to capture and improve task steps/ materials on each execution)

- Is a separate child Work Order in place as needed to clean/ empty the equipment, purge, blind, isolate, remove insulation, etc. prior to commencing work activities?
- Are the work tasks/ steps clearly described in the job plan?
- Are specifications defined?
- Are all environmental issues and permits properly addressed in the job plan?
- Are any special tools/fixtures/ equipment required to execute the job?
- Have the safety procedures and permits been noted on the plan?
- Is any special technical documentation such as manuals, pictures, or drawings required? If so, have they been noted on the job plan?
- Is Engineering assistance required?
- Is housekeeping/ cleanup identified in the plan as a task step?
- Do any special contact personnel require notification before or on job completion?
- Have other craft planners, as required; been notified of upcoming work to leverage downtime?
- Are there any special disposal requirements for removed equipment components?
- Are any special activities to be done on work completion prior to releasing the equipment to ensure safe operation (NDT, Hydrotesting etc.)?

Job Package
- Job Plan
- Safety and Environmental Forms (Completed if prior approval required)
- Complete Bill of Materials listing
- Pick list of necessary materials and consumables required for this work
- Technical specifications, manuals, pictures, and drawings as required