TINC America 2015 – Day One Recap

AP-Networks Managing Director George DeBakey welcomed attendees from more than 30 companies and 70 locations to the 13^th annual TINC America conference. He reflected on the growth of TINC, from 18 attendees at the first conference to the more than 140 attendees present today. And he looked at the evolution of turnaround management that has gone hand in hand with this growth, highlighting the maturation of turnaround management into a true discipline, with best practices and performance benchmarks that have become standard throughout Industry. To finish off his introduction, George reiterated the commitments that unite all “TINCers:” To achieve safe, event-free, predictable, competitive turnaround outcomes, and to push the boundary of turnaround management knowledge forward.

Guy Young, Senior Vice President of Process Safety, Reliability, & Industrial Gases at Valero, took the stage next to deliver the Keynote Address. Guy’s presentation, titled “Journey Toward Excellence” walked the audience through Valero’s own performance improvement journey. Before he began, Guy elaborated on why he chose the title of his presentation, and reminded us all of something very important: Any type of improvement effort is a journey, a learning process that happens over time. If there was one thing you could do, you’d have done it. And while the rest of the day was spent looking at different performance metrics, Guy laid out his own criteria for success: Turnaround performance gets better.

AP-Networks Consultant Joel Godfrey took to the stage next to give the TINC America 2015 audience their first look inside the AP-Networks Turnaround Database. He painted a sobering picture: turnarounds are getting larger and more complex, and Industry is struggling to adjust, with more than 40 percent of turnarounds classified as “train wrecks” that miss cost or schedule targets by more than 30 percent. In looking at the differences between Industry leaders and laggards, Joel emphasized the importance of an engaged and active leadership and steering team, a robust and formalized work process, and a recognition of the incredible business value of turnarounds. He also cautioned everyone on the dangers of unrealistic target setting, which leads many turnaround organizations to take on more than they can handle.

Nathan Centofanti, Manager of Benchmarking and Data Services for AP-Networks, followed Joel and took us deeper into the metrics of the AP-Networks Turnaround Database. As Nathan took us through charts and graphs mapping cost competitiveness and predictability, schedule competitiveness and predictability, and a host of other benchmarks, one point became abundantly clear: there is a large gap between top quartile performers and those at the bottom of the pack, and that gap is widening. Nathan pointed out that as dire as the data may seem, it should give hope to those at the beginning of their turnaround improvement journey: despite the challenges ahead, those top quartile performers prove that success is achievable.

William Wilson, HSE Turnaround Focal Point at Motiva Enterprises, gave an inspiring presentation about Motiva’s commitment to safety and their “Goal Zero” journey. As William explained, “Goal Zero” represents a commitment not just to avoiding recordable incidents, but any safety, environmental, or loss of primary containment incidents whatsoever. In pursuit of this goal, William stressed the vital importance of winning hearts and minds. Safety isn’t just about pointing out hazards, but creating a culture where the workforce—both internal and “contractor partners”—understands not to take risks, even if they think they can handle them, and where leaders throughout the organization are empowered to intervene in the case of unsafe behavior.

AP-Networks Managing Director Brett Schroeder closed out the day by giving TINC America attendees a first look inside the upcoming Turnaround Network 4.0, the most significant update to our online network portal since it first debuted. He let attendees know that not only the Turnaround Network, but the Upstream Network and Capital Project Network as well, would all be adopting a new look and feel and streamlined functionality in November. First and foremost among the coming updates was a focus on moving away from a “tool-centric” interface to a “turnaround-centric” or “user-centric” interface, where subscribers log in and instantly see a snapshot of their upcoming work across tools and turnarounds. While Brett stressed that the new interface is intuitive, he encouraged subscribers to sign up for webinar training next month to take advantage of all that the new upgrades have to offer.

With that, Day One came to a close and the attendees headed back to their rooms to get ready for our Topgolf outing and prepare for another day of insight and discussion.