Is Your Project Really Ready for Startup?

Planning for startup can be an arduous task for a project team and often must occur during the middle of execution when the necessary personnel may have limited time. To guide teams in developing an efficient and effective startup plan for a particular project, IPA has developed its Startup Readiness Review tool.

The Startup Readiness Review can be used at any point in the project life cycle prior to the startup of commissioning and equipment turnover. However, it provides the most value when the project team has at least an outline of the startup plans or if the company has a standard startup procedure for the scope of the project. It should be noted that the review should be done early enough to allow the analysis to be completed and the team to implement any modifications if gaps are identified. Therefore, it is recommended that the Startup Readiness Review take place in early to mid-execution.

Scope

The Startup Readiness Review analyses the startup plan for a particular project as well as the typical project startup practices utilized by a company for projects with similar scopes. These plans are compared against industry startup Best Practices to identify gaps. The startup practices are discussed in an interactive session with key team members, including operations and maintenance representatives.

Benefits

There are many benefits of a Startup Readiness Review, including:

• An understanding of the gaps from Best Practice that may be causing teams to perform poorly in the startup phase
• A set of Best Practices that can be used to mitigate common startup issues
• A set of recommendations to close gaps in the project’s plans or the company’s startup practices

Process

IPA will gather the information necessary to perform a Startup Readiness Review via a face-to-face interview that usually lasts 1 day with key project and site personnel that will be involved in the startup process. Prior to the interview, the project team will provide any documentation related to startup that has been developed up to the point of the interview. This typically includes commissioning plans from other similar projects, draft commissioning plans for the specific project, and/or startup management plans from the project execution plan.

Deliverables

IPA will issue a detailed report that includes a list of industry startup Best Practices for similar projects, a comparison of the project’s planned startup practices and the company’s startup practices against industry Best Practices, and recommendations to close any gaps from Best Practice.