The 2007 Turnaround Industry Network Conference (TINC) was held on June 18th, 19th, and 20th, 2007 at South Shore Harbour Conference Center in League City, Texas. TINC is the industry's premier conference for turnaround professionals. In addition to the traditional owner presentations and case studies, the conference provided participants with the opportunity to engage in extensive and detailed breakout session discussions with other industry peers. This year's breakout sessions focused on topics such as: Safety Management, Operations Practices, System Acceptance and Turnover, Scope Development, Planning Practices, Scheduling Best Practices, Materials Management, Turnarounds as Plant Events, Capital Integration, Contracting Practices, and AP-Networks Tools. As in previous years, TINC 2007 also included a special attendee survey that allowed organizations to benchmark themselves against industry-wide best practices.
The theme for TINC 2007 was “The Continuum of Turnaround Excellence”. The keynote speaker was George DeBakey, Managing Director and Co-Founder of AP-Networks. George spoke about the tightening gap between capacity and demand for oil. This thinning spread is the result of population increases and an overall accelerated consumption of energy throughout the world. As demand for energy continues to increase, George challenged the conference attendees to make their turnarounds more efficient through continuous planning, accurate scope definition and operational integration. Other presentations included the following:
- Shell provided an overview of their safety management approach to a particular turnaround during the 3rd quarter of 2006. The presentation focused on a pro-active and methodical approach to managing safety with emphasis on awareness and communications by all groups involved in the turnaround process.
- Tesoro shared their views on “system turnover”, emphasizing the complexity and responsibility that is required to ensure that operations is able to get a turnaround unit up and running in the most reasonable time possible.
- ConocoPhillips spoke about the importance of having an effective and resource loaded schedule to promote decisions based on actual data. The presentation focused on how the schedule is utilized to tie key control activities together and ensure key internal resources are dedicated to the turnaround.
- Lyondell outlined the importance of a continuous planning process. The major takeaways of the presentation were: formalize a continuous planning process, obtain management support for this process, train the organization to abide by this process, and audit the progress of the continuous planning process to ensure it is providing measurable results.
- Air Liquide presented on the critical nature of integrating capital project and turnaround teams. Through the use of a case study, Air Liquide demonstrated the importance of transparency, teamwork, and common goals, between capital project and turnaround teams, that make for an overall stronger and more efficient company.
- Valero spoke about the benefits of making a turnaround a refinery event. The presentation challenged the conference participants to get everyone involved from both a refinery management level to a turnaround group level. Several examples were given on how to ensure the entire refinery is involved and on the same page.
- AP-Networks had several senior consultants give presentations on topics that included: turnaround best practices and emerging trends, the right workscope, and turnaround contracting. Additionally, AP-Networks demonstrated new risk assessment and turnaround planning tools that lead to more effective management and improved turnaround outcomes.
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