Oscar-worthy performance by Refinery team
A standing ovation goes out to our team at the Burnaby Refinery! After more than 2 years of planning and 8 weeks of execution, the curtains are closing on a successful Turnaround.
“I’ve been part of 35 Turnarounds in 32 years, and this was definitely one of the best,” says Alex Coles, General Manager and Vice President, Burnaby Refinery. “I’d like to extend my deepest thanks to our team for making this possible. Over eight weeks, we executed more than 287,000 hours of work to improve the safety and reliability of our facility.”
We’ve rounded up some of our award-worthy accomplishments from the last eight weeks. If we could give out all components of the treasured EGOTs (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), we would – but you’ll have to settle for our version of categories.
Collaboration Champions: The Refinery team The numbers are impressive: eight weeks of execution, 650 people per shift running day and night, 30,000 tasks executed in 287,000 hours. Our team of superstars showed up every day with a team-first mentality and achieved major wins and time-savings through trophy-worthy collaboration.
Superhero Safety Spotlight: Stop the Drop Our major safety focus this year was to mitigate falling objects. We had more than 930 spot check forms filled out this TA! Every team member brought our culture of care to the forefront of their mind, to help get each other home safely at the end of each day. Biggest lift: Canada’s largest crane We welcomed Canada’s largest mobile crane to site to help us lift an exchanger into place. Tight space is one of the fundamental challenges of our small site, but up and over the GHT we went!
Best supporting inspection tool: Inspection Drones We use many innovative technologies at site, but one of the most fun we used onsite this event was an inspection drone. It was an exciting first for the site – our team is always searching for better, safer, newer and more reliable ways of doing things.
Best in Prevention: Rheni Chloride Absorbers Our final tie-ins for the Rheniformer chloride absorbers are now complete – a project 10 years in the making! newly installed vessels will absorb the chlorides coming off the Rheni before they can move through the rest of the refinery hydrogen system, corroding as they go. This project is a culmination of almost 10 years of work, and represents a potential savings of ~$100M by preventing future asset degradation.
Biggest Power Up: New transformers Say watt?! New transformers were installed to provide more capacity for future needs and increase the reliability of our power supply.
Most risk managed: Safety Instrument System (SIS) installations on furnaces Our furnaces got a major safety upgrade this Turnaround – this is a major win for process safety management! These new systems will help monitor for loss of containment in our furnaces in the Crude Distillation, Naptha Hydrotreater, and Distillate Hydrotreater units.
Returning Directors: Compressor overhaul Four of our compressors had a reliability refresh, allowing them to return at full force to the stage. Like many of our favourite directors, our compressors work hard to move hydrogen around the plant, making sure our molecules are at their mark for showtime, (or rather, reaction time!).
Best in show: Crude Unit Column overlay One of our major reliability accomplishments was using robotic welders to install a structural and corrosion resistant overlay inside the column. Using robots allowed for more simultaneous work to be done with a more seamless approach, while reducing the amount of time and people exposed to welding fumes. This deep-rooted makeover has extended the operating life of the crude column and will serve our Refinery for many decades to come.