Habitats for Petrotrin

Scope

The refinery underwent major upgrades, designed to significantly reduce the amount of fuel oil produced at the plant in favor of higher valued products for markets in the Caribbean and the US.

All the upgrades had to be conducted while the refinery was in full production. Due to the cost involved, it was of the utmost importance that no delays occured and that normal operations could proceed.

Solution

We worked closely together in the project planning with both Petronin and the main contractor, CB&I and TOSL Engineering, to find the most viable solution for executing the hot work in a timely manner without any delays between the multiple welding points.

We used 15 systems and 30 complete habitats, with all the habitats being built in ample time before the hot work in the previous habitats were done. The systems were then switched over to the newly built habitats, ensuring maximum workflow and no delays in-between the welds.

This all took extensive planning, since the entire scope of the hot work had to be taken into consideration, and the order of the welds and therefore the habitats had to be carefully planned.

The entire project included more than 2 500 welds in over 1 800 habitats of various sizes.

Result

StS trained local personnel in addition to the four highly experienced field supervisors from Norway and the UK. The field supervisors worked closely with the site managers and supervisors from the contractor CB&I and the project managers from Petrotrin, ensuring that all went according to plan and without any incidents or delays.

The feedback from the contractor and end-user were excellent, with an emphasis on the proactive project planning, quality of the equipment and proficient management by the field supervisors.