Operational Readiness is an important topic for discussion since we want to have a smooth transition from the project to operations and set the operating team up for the best chance of success. The commissioning team isn’t responsible entirely for operational readiness, but does play a large role in the operational readiness process given that they’re the last phase of the project, and setting the operations team up for success. At in-service date, the owner’s operating team assumes care, custody, and control of the new facilities. They need to be prepared for continued operation and maintenance of the new assets. For additional information about setting your projects to be a success, read this informative article Project Mindset Lifecycle

What is Operational Readiness?

Operational readiness is the process to ensure that the operations team is prepared for the new responsibility, and is set up for the best chance of success for continued operation and maintenance of the new equipment. There are two groups of operations that need to be considered – the local on-site operators as well as the central control operators in the central control facility. Both of those groups need to be prepared and ready for handover of the new assets and operating of the new assets. Unfortunately, I’ve worked on projects where the project team at the end of the project just drops their tools and runs from site, leaving the poor operators looking at each other wondering what to do next with this new facility. And I don’t think that’s fair for anyone. It’s certainly not the best value for the owner, and it’s not a great way to hand over a project at the end. There does need to be a soft hand-over, a transition from the project team to the operating team, and the commissioning team does play a large role in this handover. The commissioning team can participate in many of the tasks, and provide information in order to help facilitate a lot of the operational readiness processes.

Documentation

Of course on any project, there are mountains and mountains of documentation. It’s not always everyone’s most favourite aspect of the project, but it is definitely an important aspect of the project. And it’s important to provide the operating team with the right documents. The ones that they’re going to need on a daily basis to operate the new facilities, and to hand them over in an organized manner so that they can understand the documents, where they are, what they need, and how to find them when they are troubleshooting the system or operating the systems. There’s a few components of documentation:

• The facility documentation – This is the documentation that the operations team will need on a day-to-day basis. This would include things like the station description document, the O&M manuals for each of the pieces of equipment, probably most importantly the red line or as built drawings defining the as built configuration of the system. Those are an important set of documents that the operating team will need as well.
• Operating Documentation and Historical Project Information – Operatirs also need all the operating documentation. This includes SOPs or the standard operating procedures. These can largely be based on a lot of the commissioning procedures. Some of the switching procedures that the commissioning team created are similar operations that the operating team will need to do during operation of the facilities, as well as SWPs or safe work procedures. This would include all the LOTO and PTW permit to work processes and procedures that Operators are going to need to operate the equipment. Documentation will also include a lot of the items that maybe aren’t required on a day-to-day basis, but the operating team may need for reference. This would be the historical project information. They don’t necessarily need to know about that RFI that was asking a question two years ago, but they do want to have access to this information during troubleshooting. They might want to go back and look at some of that historical project information to get a bit more background on a particular failure or piece of equipment. These are not necessarily organized in some sort of manner, but does need to be archived somewhere so that operations can access this historical information if needed. All the construction turnover packages are required, all the quality control processes, construction quality documents would be archived all the commissioning turnover package information, test procedures, test results, all the recordings and data that was gathered, operators may or may not need that information at some point in the future for troubleshooting. They wouldn’t need it on a day-to-day basis, but they would still need access to it just in case.
• Data Management System – For all of this information, you need to establish where this documentation is archived. With the magnitude of information that’s produced on projects these days, the best is to do this in an electronic system. It used to be in the past that binders were printed out, and then delivered to as a room full of binders to the operating team. Some seem to prefer that, but with even more and more information, it needs to be an electronic system so it’s searchable and can be organized in a logical manner so that people can find the information that they’re looking for when they need it.

Site Operating Personnel and Site Support

One aspect to consider for operational readiness is the site operating personnel and site support. The commissioning team can support this. A staffing plan may exist if there’s already an operating team that’s assuming responsibility of the new facilities, but you may need to add additional staff within that operating structure, and you need to prepare a staffing plan in advance. The reason I say that the commissioning team can help with this is ideally the commissioning team and the operating team can collaborate, and it’s worked very well on some projects I’ve worked on in the past, where individuals that are on the commissioning team stay at the facility and become the operating team.  All that information that’s gathered or learned during commissioning is beneficial if that group can stay there, and continue to be the operational group as well. You can find some synergies between the two staffing plans of the commissioning team and the operations team.

If you’re working in a remote location, other staffing plan considerations may be a staff rotation cycle if individuals are going in for two weeks at a time and out for one week.

A common problem at the end of a project is as people start to see the end of the project coming, they’re starting to look for their new role. They don’t want to be left out and left at the end of the project without a role going forward. You may find that some people are leaving the project before it’s actually complete, and because of that you may need to implement some sort of staff retention strategy to pre-determine where individuals will transition to. That way, if they know that in six months when the project’s over they’re going to be part of this organization, then they’re less likely to leave the project at the end to try and find that next role. That’s a consideration that might need to be put in place.

Transportation and Accommodation

An aspect to consider also is transportation and accommodation. If it’s a remote location that the facility is located, where will operating staff live? Is accommodation required near site and how will they travel to and from site? Some of these things need to be thought about before the in-service date to prepare operations for operation of the facilities.

Maintenance Contracts and IT Operational Support

Maintenance contracts are another consideration – if some of the work will be done in-house or some of the maintenance work may be contracted out. You may need to have some maintenance contracts in place at the in-service date to continue with maintenance tasks. That could be simple things like lubricating equipment, replacing filters and belts, those types of items.

There might be also more specialized site support required if you’re managing infrastructure maintenance or regulatory compliance. You may need some specialized skills like IT operational support or other types of specialized support on-site for more specialized tasks.

Alarm Grouping

From an operating process and procedures standpoint, something to consider even during design is the alarm grouping. Often I see that the design engineers categorize alarms as either priority one, priority two, or priority three not necessarily considering that at in-service date, a priority one alarm is going to generate a call out. And if the alarms aren’t grouped correctly or are spuriously generating priority one alarms at two o’clock in the morning, operations team will get pretty frustrated pretty quickly.

If they’re being called out needlessly during the night for unjustified priority one alarms, that definitely needs some collaboration between the operations team to make sure that the alarm grouping is correct. And that the right issues with the system are in fact generating a call out and waking up people in the middle of the night.

Operating Process and Procedures

You may have an instance where there’s a performance guarantee period of the contract that runs in parallel with the warranty phase, and there may need to be some established processes to gather information during that performance guarantee period for final contract closeout. The engineering team and the commercial team will need to work closely with the operating team to make sure that the right information is being gathered, the right data is available in order to make an assessment of how the system is performing to determine final contract close out.

Control Center Operators

Another important aspect is the central control operators. The new facilities will need to be integrated into their existing operator advisory tools. If there’s an EMS (emergency management system) or SCADA systems that the new system is incorporating with at the central control, that needs to be built up in advance so that the central control group can monitor the new facilities.

There may be several system operating studies that are required in order to determine how to operate the new facility with the existing facilities. Normal operating procedures are developed out of those system operating studies.

Communication procedures need to be established in regards to local operators versus central control operators, and what is the decision making process when there’s issues that are encountered or when the system needs to be adjusted for operation, how do those protocols all work?

With the immense amount of data that’s generated from the systems these days, there’s a pile of information that’s coming to the central control station. Data transfers and backups are a consideration as well. How is all this data received, how is it managed, how is it backed up, how is it controlled?

Safety/Environment/Security

Safety is of course an important aspect of operational readiness, please read Safety During Commissioning for more information, watch the video discussion and learn from Q&A portion. There would have been procedures as part of the project related to emergency response plans, spill response plans, environmental compliance permits, safety compliance. These would have existed for the project, but they’ll need to be modified slightly for in-service assets. The project team and the commissioning team can help with some of this to transition these project specific plans and procedures to operational plans and procedures at in-service date.

One item that will definitely change is the access management plan. If there are several people coming and going from the project (this could be hundreds of people coming and going from the project), that definitely changes at the in-service date, where there’s only a handful of people that are coming and going from the plant. Things like access management plans will change slightly at in-service date.

Training

A large component of operational readiness is also training. There may be aspects of training that the contractor or vendor is provided. The contractor may provide a series of classroom and field training sessions to train the on-site operators. There may also be aspects of training that the owner provides – if there’s new safety protocols that need to be implemented or things such as that, then the owner sets up some of the training sessions.

The central control operators will need training as well. The new systems will be integrated into existing systems. There will be different operating procedures, and the control desk operators will need to know how to manage and control the new facilities.

Please feel free to check out our training here: 

Electrical Commissioning Course: Step-by-Step Training Program

Mechanical Commissioning Training Course

Regulatory and Other Compliance

In our last webinar, we spoke about cyber security compliance and the level of effort that is required in order to achieve NERC compliance. Ongoing cyber security compliance is also a concern as well and the operating team needs to be set up for success to continue with ongoing cyber security compliance, please read the detailed information about Cyber Security in this article Cyber Security During Commissioning. The operating team will need to understand what is required to maintain compliance, or at least establish a dedicated cyber security team to maintain compliance. As we spoke about last time, the software management can be a huge task for maintaining compliance, for monitoring software patches, assessing and implementing all software patches to keep the system compliant.

Data Systems

Current data systems are a consideration as well. If there’s data that’s gathered to confirm contract close out, data systems may need to be put in place to record this information.

Another example might be a TFR (transient fault recorder). On the last project I worked on, there was a system-wide transient fault recorder that was monitoring and controlling all the different data points of the system. The new system we were working on had to be integrated into the existing TFR in order to monitor the new system and look at all the changing parameters within the system.

EAM Implementation- Equipment Asset Management

EAM is always a big consideration and a large amount of work is to set up. An EAM system is the equipment asset management system. The operations team will require an electronic system to store operating data and manage maintenance of the new facilities.

The asset management system contains all the operational information on the system. This would be things such as the nameplate data, system hierarchy, basically anything that requires maintenance within the system. That could be any anything down to a fire extinguisher. For example, a fire extinguisher needs routine inspections to make sure that it hasn’t expired or rotating the cylinder so chemical inside isn’t settling at the bottom of the tank. Anything and everything that requires maintenance or activities to be done on them is loaded into the asset management system. This information is used for the work management system. As work is required or warranty items or maintenance items are required on any of the equipment, the work management system will generate a work order for maintenance tasks or for warranty requirements. Any routine inspections that are required for preventative maintenance, if there’s a six-month overhaul or an annual overhaul where a machine is completely disassembled, and there’s a visual inspection that needs to take place, all those tasks are loaded into the work management system so that the work orders are generated at the proper frequency in order to ensure that work is conducted when it needs to be conducted.

The work management system will also generate all the work orders for maintaining regulatory compliance. If there’s software patches that need to be updated or hardware that needs to be replaced because it’s obsolete, the work management system will generate work orders for the work. The EAM system is controlling and managing all the data of the new assets and helping the operations team ensure that the right tasks are being conducted on the equipment at the right time. This will ensure that warranty requirements are being met and ensure that operations and the owner receives the best value out of the assets because the correct preventative maintenance activities are being conducted.

A critical spares assessment is conducted. Any of the spares that are determined to be needed on site are loaded into the EAM system.  Even something like a spare sitting on a shelf requires periodic maintenance. If it needs to be rotated or lubricated, then the work management system will generate the task orders or work orders in order to maintain the spares.

The EAM system will contain a lot of data. Data backup is an important aspect to consider for EAM as well.

You’ll also need to determine an obsolescence strategy. Most of the systems that are being installed these days are computer-based systems, and eventually everything becomes obsolete. You can build a brand new system, a computer-based system, and within five years it’s obsolete. Something to think about in an obsolescence strategy is how iare systems going to be maintained. If you can no longer get replacement parts, if you can no longer get software patches, then you therefore aren’t NERC compliant. As equipment becomes obsolete, how is that going to be dealt with?

Equipment or Materials

Equipment, and materials are an important consideration for operational readiness. There’s certain levels of consumables that the operations team will need such as lubricants or filters or belts. You need to determine what consumables are required, the rate of consumption, and where consumables will be stored. Ss an external supply contract required? In order to have these consumables on-site are they stored on-site or is it just in time delivery?

Special Tools and Equipment

Some of the maintenance tasks will also require special tools or special equipment. If there are certain handling fixtures that are required for annual maintenance, then these will need to be planned for and purchased and available at the in-service date. Tools such as a crane or a boom lift may be required for certain maintenance activities, and the operations team will need to review the required tasks and list the special tooling that is required. Some of these items can have a long procurement timeline, and they need to be planned for in advance so that they’re available at in-service.

And of course, all safety PPE must be available.

Even simple things such as the plant furniture, appliances, fridges, lunchrooms, and basic equipment needs to be purchased. The operating desks, operating chairs, office desks, chairs, lunchroom equipment all these items need to be planned for so operations are happy and comfortable in the new facilities.

Commissioning

From a commissioning aspect, there’s a few things to consider for operational readiness. The formal transfer of care, custody, and control documentation needs to be established. It’s not as simple as just completing commissioning and handing the owner the keys, more details about commissioning can be found here What is Commissioning? There is a process to be able to assume responsibility and continued operation of the facilities. It should be a formal process, and this should be defined in advance, so that it’s simply execution of the formal handover from one group to the other.

There may need to be some service level operating agreements established between local operators and central control operators.

Type A/B Deficiency Process

The commissioning team can help with definition of Type-A and Type-B deficiency classification that’ll take place during the project. But where it becomes critical is a Type-C deficiency, because a Type-C deficiency is something that’s defined as an item that can be fixed after hand over to the owner. You definitely want agreement with the owner and the operating team on what is a Type-C deficiency and having them agree on what is actually on that list. You don’t want to get to the end of the project and have a big long list of Type-C deficiencies that the owner feels aren’t Type-C deficiencies, and should in fact be Type-B deficiencies. That’s definitely going to delay your handover. You want to have a close collaboration at the end of the project to establish items that are going to be fixed during the warranty phase after hand over to the owner. A lot of these items may be Type-C deficiencies that are lingering from construction. They could be minor dents on the wall or paint damage. The construction group will manage a lot of those. Some of them may be commissioning related, but the groups need to work together to establish the Type C deficiency process.

Trial Period

The commissioning team plays a large role in the trial period at the end of the project. Once everything is fully commissioned, there may be a trial period of a day, a week, or a month, where the system needs to operate uninterrupted for a period of time. You need to have agreement with the owner and the contractor on what constitutes a restart of the trial period.

This will be a point that has lots of discussion, because everybody will want to know up front exactly what’s going to happen. If there is a restart required the contractor will of course say, no that wasn’t a restart and the owner will of course say, yes, that does constitute a restart. And you can’t be having that debate during the actual trial period. Those discussions need to happen in advance so that everybody’s on the same page going into trial operation.

If you’d like to learn more about the commissioning and startup process, please join Commissioning and Startup Free 3-day Mini-Course. The course is free and flexible to take any time online. It gives you a good start so that you can understand or have an early understanding of the commissioning and startup process. 

Question and Answer Session

How does the project manager control quality?

There are two aspects of quality to consider – quality control and quality assurance. Quality control is the contractor’s responsibility. The contractor is required to have a quality management system implemented internally that confirm the work meets contract requirements. They should be doing all the point-to-point checks to confirm that what they’ve installed meets contract requirements, meets the drawing requirements, meets all the technical requirements, and is going to function as intended in the contract.

The second aspect of that is quality assurance. This would be done by a group on the owner’s side, either a consultant or maybe the owner themselves – a specialized group that verifies that the contractor is doing their quality control responsibilities. It’s not necessarily that the QA is doing 100% inspections to confirm or redo point to point checks. But they’re confirming by witness in the field or by paperwork that the contractor has in fact done their quality control processes.

From a project manager’s perspective, the project manager really needs to ensure that these two groups are properly implementing their quality control and quality assurance functions. There’s a few ways to do this. The project manager can periodically, say every six months, or annually, or depending on how things are going more frequently, can institute a quality audit where they verify the contractor’s internal quality control programs, look through their processes, understand their QMS, audit some of their documents, confirm that the quality plan that they’re implementing actually makes sense, and to confirm that the contractor is actually following their plan. Then, the project manager can also do the same on the QA to audit the QA processes and make sure that the QA plan makes sense, and that it is in fact being implemented as defined in the QA plan. Out of this audit, there can be recommendations or things that need to change or be updated.

The project manager can ensure that these recommendations are issued to all the groups and make sure that they’re followed through, to correct any gaps or deficiencies that are identified in the quality management process.

But from a commissioning perspective, I can say that this is critically important. If the quality processes prior to commissioning during the construction phase aren’t being implemented or don’t exist whatsoever, then the commissioning team is not being set up for success. We’re going to receive a pile of junk that isn’t going to work or isn’t going to be installed correctly, and it can lead to nothing but nightmares. Then, the poor commissioning team is being looked at to finish the project and being asked “Why isn’t this stuff working?” Well, a couple years of inadequate quality control processes and quality assurance processes before commissioning certainly hasn’t helped at that point in time. The project manager is still putting pressure on commissioning and saying to get it done.

How can I get access to commissioning procedures and commissioning checklist templates? 

This is something we’ve actually put together in our mechanical commissioning course and in our electrical commissioning course. There are several suites of commissioning procedures and commissioning checklists. In the Mechanical Commissioning Training Course, there are over 80 checklists and procedures that you can get access to. The Electrical Commissioning Training Course is similar; There are several documents that are great templates to use on your projects. When I’ve looked online for a lot of the examples, I haven’t found anything that’s really good which is one of the reasons I wanted to put together this resource, so that people can draw on these examples and hopefully apply them to their project. So, definitely please check those out at the training link at the top of this page.

What type of documents needs to be checked to make sure everything is complete prior to commissioning and start-up, and who exactly approves these documents to start the operation?

A critical document to consider in the handover from the construction team to the commissioning team is defined as a mechanical completion. Prior to the mechanical completion, the construction group as part of their quality control processes would hopefully be implementing and following inspection test plans. The ITPs define the various checks that the construction team needs to perform leading up to mechanical completion. It could be checks such as checking torques on bolts, or witness striping bolts, some simple vibration tests, or maybe flushing or leak testing, pressure testing of piping. The ITPs define these tasks that the construction team needs to complete to confirm that quality is correct.

The next set of documents are the mechanical completion checklists themselves. The MC is a joint walk through between the construction team and the commissioning team to witness the equipment in the field – this is typically called a P&ID walk through. You take the P&ID drawing out in the field, or if it’s an electrical system you’re reviewing, you take the cable lists and wiring diagrams out in the field with a highlighter, and confirm that everything is installed per contract drawings. Assuming everything is correct in the mechanical completion, the document is signed off.

Following that is when you get into pre-commissioning and commissioning. That’s when your commissioning checklists and your commissioning procedures are executed that are prepared many months in advance leading up to commissioning. These are some of the documents that are required.

Who exactly approves these documents? If the construction group has a proper quality management system implemented, then the quality manager overseeing this process would be reviewing and approving the ITP documents for the construction group. Not everybody can be an equipment expert on every piece of equipment, so there’s a few people that are involved in reviewing commissioning documents. If you have a consultant involved, and they’re the subject matter expert on that particular piece of equipment, it’s very likely that someone on the consulting group is preparing that document. Then it’s being reviewed by the individual with many years of experience to approve that the right things are being verified in that document. Ultimately, it would be the commissioning manager that would be responsible to approve those documents. But since the commissioning manager isn’t necessarily an equipment expert in every aspect of the project, they may rely on the subject matter experts to review and approve these documents.

When do we need to start implementing EAM? Is it when commissioning starts or after commissioning is completed?

EAM can be a large task to implement. I’ve seen it rushed at the end of the project. To set it up properly, it really needs to be set up during the commissioning phase. Not necessarily implemented then, but would need to be implemented at the in-service date, because the project processes would be slightly different than the operating processes. If there’s maintenance that’s required on a piece of equipment that’s still under the contractor’s care, custody, and control, the contractor is responsible to perform that maintenance. Only at the in-service date and it becomes the owner’s equipment, does the owner have to actually perform maintenance. And at that point is when the EAM system would be generating the work orders required for operations. To do that maintenance, it’s best to start building the system and populating with all the required data (all the nameplate information) and loading it – particularly the operating procedures and maintenance tasks, so that at the in-service date, it’s ready to start being used by the operating team and generating the proper work orders. If it’s not, then there could be a period of time where the operations group is scrambling a little bit, and they don’t necessarily have the direction on what to do and when to do it. Maintenance tasks can get missed that can void warranty of your system. You want to have your EAM system up and running just prior to the in-service date so that you can fully implement it,and start using it at the in-service date.

 

For I/O checking, sequence checking, and loop checking, do you think there is a more efficient way to conduct these tests and diagnosed problems quickly? 

It’s will depend on the system. A lot of it is custom wired cables between communication cubicles that it’s brute force – you will have to get out there and do all the point-to-point checks and check the cables of the system. There may be systems that exist where they’re more standard off the shelf and wired the same every time, and maybe you can generate some sort of electronic automatic process to test those systems where you can plug in your test equipment and it just flicks through each of the point to points and verifies everything. But if everything’s custom made and custom designed for the project, it may be tough to come up with some sort of generic test equipment or test sequence to test those items.

If you’re doing loop checking, and every loop is different with different end devices, then it’s kind of a custom test for each loop, learn more about loop checks here Pre-commissioning of Electrical Systems . Now, that’s not to say you could find a better way if it’s a process where you’re installing the same five loops on every project, you certainly could have a device that plugs in at the end and automatically checks through all devices. I can think of an example that might be related on one of my aerospace projects when we were testing satellite hardware to go into space. We had a test suite that had to be repeated multiple times on low voltage, high voltage, high temperature, low temperature, nominal temperature, and the same set of tests. The suite of tests would take about three days to complete, and we had to do that about a dozen times. So in that case, we did develop an automatic test set to go through and verify that three days of test at each minimum voltage, or maximum voltage, or temperature.

So if you get into that scenario where things were getting repetitive, you certainly could have your test set go through an automatic suite of tests to speed things up. If we hadn’t done that for the satellite hardware that we were testing, I’m sure that I would still be testing that system. But we knew that it was going to be repeated a dozen times. So, we did build a custom test set to go through testing a lot more rapidly.

 

What are the standards you usually use or base from when doing commissioning? Do you get something from let us say ASHRAE Guideline? 

Yes, there are some typical standards that come up during commissioning. ASHRAE is one of them, ANSI is another. IEEE, NFPA are typical standards that we see come along during commissioning. Those ones are often referred to in the technical specification, and then the technical spec of your contract would provide additional details, maybe more specific to the project. If it’s something generic that’s covered in ASHRAE, then it’ll be definitely be referred to in your technical specification. The tech spec will provide the more specific requirements that the project needs to meet to meet the owner’s requirements.

 

As a Comm. Engineer at site, what needs to be done or checked before commencing the job at site? 

As part of the commissioning team mobilizing to site, they’d probably be mobilizing in advance of when mechanical completions are going to be signed off. The checks that need to be done would be defined in the contractor’s quality control plan, the ITPs need to be completed. It’s very valuable for the commissioning team to review ITPs and confirm that the right things are being checked before mechanical completion. If checks aren’t being done, or even worse there’s no quality management system whatsoever, that’s going to be a problem for commissioning.

Let’s maybe go through some examples of what needs to be checked in an ITP. How about a large oil filled transformer. An ITP for installation of the transformer would include; placing the large item on the concrete pad, bolting it down, connecting, all the peripheral equipment, filling it with oil, and getting it prepared for commissioning. Some of the items identified in ITP would be performing an oil sample before and after energization. The ITP will define what needs to be checked, and verified between the two oil samples.

Another example would be testing of the dielectrics – what needs to be tested before it arrives at site during factory acceptance testing, or in a third party facility at a high voltage test facility, to confirm that dielectrics are correct before the transformer arrives at site. These are some specific examples, but you want to make sure that the construction quality program is capturing all items that you would expect to see in an ITP. And feedback from the commissioning team into the ITP process is definitely valuable so that the right things are being checked, and that the commissioning team knows what’s being received at mechanical completion, for additional information about mechanical completion, you can check this article Mechanical Completion, Substantial Completion, Final Completion

What is the best way of handling defects and concerns that will occur after turn-over to the operation team within the warranty period? 

This is an important aspect of operational readiness, to make sure that the warranty processes are in place with the contractor. Typically, operations would be operating the facility, and if they see something that’s not correct, the commissioning team may in fact be available after the project. It may be that one of the commissioning team members is assigned to the operating team for a period of time just to help with any issues. Anything that’s noticed is then flagged from the operations team to the commissioning engineer to troubleshoot and determine what’s wrong with that particular item and to suggest a solution based on the investigation. It may be submitted to the contractor as a warranty item where a piece of equipment has failed, or it no longer meets the technical requirements.

Contractors are then required to come to site and remedy the item for large systems. It may be that the contractor has an individual, or a few individuals, that remain on site to monitor the warranty period and address any of these issues that come up. Now that’s not always the case, the contractor may fully demob from site, and then they’re brought back into site for any issues that need to be addressed. If there’s critical issues that are time sensitive, the contractor may have to mobilize very quickly. Maybe a lot of the items are minor in nature, they’re submitted, and the contractor would come back to site and address the issues in a single trip to rectify any of the issues that are encountered.

 

May I ask if it is possible for subcontractors to unfollow daily inspection based on ITP ? And is it okay if ITP is revised even after being approved by a client at the first time ?

 Subcontractors should not be disregarding ITPs.  These are typically reviewed docuemtns that are agreed to between the contractor and the owner.  Any changes to the ITP need to be submitted for review and agreed to in advance.

However, ITPs can change as the project progresses.  If the document is changed, submitted for review, and agreed to by the owner, then this is how changes can be implemented. This process can take time, so make sure your documents are submitted early.

During trial period or start-up period, an equipment was damaged during operation, whose liable for the damage just in-case? 

During trial period, the equipment is still under care, custody, and control of the contractor.  The project owner does not formally own the equipment yet.  So a failure or damage (depending on who caused the damage) during the trial period is still the responsibility of the contractor.  Only after successful completion of trial and handover to the owner is the equipment owned by the owner.  Having said this, the warranty period becomes in effect, and the contractor may still be liable for the damage, depending on who caused the damage.

 

Please, watch the full video of our live webinar. The presentation and Q&A portion provide knowledgeable information about Operational Readiness.