Managing the Transitions of Startup

Lawrence P. Straight, Principal

Those of you that have been through a plant startup, or two, know that we're going to be talking about a period in the life of a project that is anything but sleepy. It is a time of high emotion, colliding paradigms, painful realizations, fast negative cash flow and even some equipment startup.

Probably the most fun I've had in my career was the ten, or so, years that I ran around the country starting up power plants. I was in charge of the startup of fifteen of them in that period. In those days, of course, most of them were utility plants, but the fundamentals and relationships during startup... Utility, IPP, Cogen, Paper Mill, Hog Fuel, Culm or Gob, I've been around some of each, and I can tell you that there are more similarities than differences.

Later in my career, among other things, I managed Bechtel's Startup Department. At one time, I was responsible for over 900 people that did plant startups. I could easily entertain you for this hour with nothing but "war stories" and technical lessons learned in those years.

Instead, I'm going to spend the hour discussing the dynamics of managing in the startup period and only give the most cursory attention to the technical aspects.

The startup period is somewhat different than other periods in the life of the project. That several-month period between initially energizing the first motor control center and commercial operation is really where the "rubber meets the road" as they say in country music.

On those jobs where all the contracts are perfectly written, all the incentives are exactly congruent with the objectives, the design is perfect, the construction is flawless and all of the equipment works perfectly and every jobsite character is a selfless altruist, startup is a very simple process. If you delay beginning it until all of the construction is complete, it only will only take a few days. You'll simply flush a few lines, verify a few interlocks, calibrate a few instruments and push the button.

In this world of infinite probabilities, that actually could happen, I suppose, but I'll bet I'm belly up in a box, before it does.

Notwithstanding the personalities and motivations involved, which I'll get into later, reality is much different than the picture I just painted.

The design Engineers, however good they might be, will have missed some deadlines and made some mistakes. Some of the valves and piping will be undersized, some equipment will be misapplied, some electrical drawings will be wrong, some foundations will be harmonic, some thermal expansion will not have been considered.

Since the Engineers weren't perfect, there will have been late drawings and specifications resulting in delays and changes in the startup schedule. Ultimately, every startup is a cliffhanger for meeting at least one critical date.

The Construction people will have mis-terminated some wires, field routed some piping wrong, placed a few valves in inaccessible places, misaligned some shafts, left out some things and put others in backwards. Inevitably, they will have left a lot of debris in critical piping and loaded pipe stress onto most of the rotating machinery.

When the equipment is started for the first time, at least one pump, fan or compressor will seize, or vibrate. Some motors will smoke or, at least, vibrate. Some major piece of equipment will have serial number zero-zero-one and contain a fatal flaw. That's just the technical side of the program.

While this is going on, everyone will be shifting negative attention away from themselves and toward whoever they interface with. The Construction people will be beating up on the Engineering group and the Startup people, The Startup Manager will be grinding on the Engineers, the equipment suppliers and the Construction people. All the while, insisting that the Operators are unqualified and not giving him enough support.

The O&M Plant Manager will observe all of this cacophony and come to the inescapable conclusion that if he doesn't speak up, and loud, this crew of madmen are going to give him an inoperable power plant.

Besides, nobody seems to know, nor care, just how important he is.

Overlaying all of this, the Owner is getting increasingly nervous about his schedule and rapidly losing confidence in the quality of the plant.

He's beginning to understand that there are holes in the elaborate fabric of responsibility that was so carefully negotiated in the contracts. People are insisting that he mediate some conflicts and agree to some extra work orders. All of this, while some obnoxious local official is demonstrating his importance by threatening the whole project with some arcane regulation that no one ever considered.

In short the whole process is rapidly degenerating into a howling mob of contentious personalities, contract disputes and malfunctioning equipment.

If you have only seen one startup, you might be wondering how I know so much about yours.

The reason I can describe it, of course, is that they're all like that. To one degree or another, everything I've described happens on every startup. Before I go on, I'd like to say that Startup Engineering is a discipline of its own.

It has conventions and techniques that need to be managed by the same sort of policies and procedures that I described this morning in my discussions on O&M.

Successful startups are conducted by Startup professionals. These people have different skills than the people that design the plant or construct the plant. Most certainly, even though they have a lot in common, they have a different state of mind and time horizon than do the people that will ultimately operate the plant. I should also tell you that there are a lot less real Startup professionals than there are startups.

My counsel to plant Developers and Owners is to pay as much attention to the quality and depth of the Startup Department as you do to the Engineering, Procurement and Construction groups. If either the Construction Contractor or the O&M Contractor says they are going to manage the startup with the existing site management, it should set off some very loud alarm bells in your mind.

I've often told people that they should think of a project during the startup period as Shakespearian drama. The set changes, some of the actors are better in one production or another, but the plot remains the same.

Somehow, it helps people keep their perspective.

As I begin this part of my discussion, I'd like to tell you that this is the most difficult subject I've ever tried to do a stand up presentation on. I hope you will be patient with me as I take it on. I've tried to treat a serious subject with a little levity. I've learned, more than most, to keep my sense of humor when it comes to plant startups.

This is a subject primarily about people at work and how they react to stress. It's also about companies and their motivations. As I wrote my notes for this, my early attempts sounded a little pedantic, they were dry and I couldn't have gotten through the material in several hours.

Do you know what causes stress? Stress, and its fallout emotion, anger, comes from a collision between reality and preconception.

In other words, stress and anger arise when the way it is, ain't the same as the way you think it oughtta be.

During the Startup, a lot of different visions come together to a single point in time. Inevitably, some of them will collide and individual players will attempt to salvage their own "oughtta be", usually at the expense of someone else's.

The keys to successfully managing during a plant startup lie in understanding and, to some extent, modifying the expectations of the various key participants of the project.

Where expectations cannot be changed, at least they can be understood and their manifestations anticipated and neutralized.

To that end, let's set the stage for the final act of a play. It is now scene one of Act 3 on the eve of the Startup:

Enter, Stage Left. The first character on the scene is, of course The Owner. If you'd seen the whole play, you would know that he was the central player in Act 1 which climaxed in great good will at financial closing.

In this case, as in most of the others, I'm speaking of him in the singular. In reality each may be several people or even a company taking the role in the play.

By this time, the character I'll call the Owner may actually be a Project Manager representing multiple Owners or he may be one of the original Developers, either way, as you will see the role, is pretty much the same.

This Developer/Owner has a discontinuous vision, with a void between financial closing and commercial operation.

He's been very pragmatic about the hard work he had to do in order to move the myriad of obstacles encountered between the seminal feasibility study and financial closing.

By the time he gets to closing, through many conversations and negotiations with attorneys, lenders, investors, regulators and contractors he has formed a very clear vision of what the project is going to be like, and has learned to articulate it very well. Whether or not this vision is realistic is sometimes another matter.

This hard won vision calls for everyone to be calm professionals, do the job they contracted to do, and do it in the same spirit of bonhomie that existed at financial closing.

Soon, if he hasn't already, he'll take out his development fees. The project economics will, of course be at least as good as the proformas and he'll have a steady positive cash flow from the plant for as far as the eye can see.

Sure, by now he's had some inkling that some of the Contractors and equipment vendors may not be as concerned about his financial well being as he is, himself. But he's worked hard, listened to his attorneys and crafted airtight contracts. Any difficulties that can arise now will be minor compared to the working over he's had from the lender, the utilities and the meddling public agencies.

During the first scene of Act 2, the Engineering phase, everything seemed to go pretty well. There were a few more regulatory hurdles, but the Engineering firm was reasonably helpful as he worked his way through them. He was a little dismayed to find that the Field Construction Manager and Project Engineer didn't seem to love each other, but that problem never quite came to a head. And, Wow!, once construction got started.

In Scene 2 of the Second Act, things really started happening. All that hard work, words and negotiations really started to manifest itself into something physical. And fast, too! It seemed like overnight that the place went from bare ground to the point where it really looked like a power plant. Oh sure, there were a few incidents relating to underground conditions and schedule impacts, but they were easily dealt with.

A real bond has been established between the Owner and the Field Construction Manager at this point. He's a powerful personality, a little rough, but he seems to talk straight and clearly knows how to get something done.

The EPC firm's Project Manager is a nice enough man, a little too focused on the Owner's pocketbook, and he writes a lot of annoying letters, but he does seem to get between the Engineering group and the Construction Group pretty effectively and he did some good things with respect to procurement and equipment expediting. On balance, the Owner guesses, the EPC Project Manager is probably OK. He's vaguely disappointed that the Business Development people and the Officers from the major equipment manufacturers and the EPC firm, that he worked so closely with during contract negotiations, now appear so infrequently, but He surmises that he should have expected that.

A light goes on behind a scrim curtain at the left rear of the stage.

There sits the Project Engineer at his desk. He's had the center of the stage in an earlier act but now he's been relegated to the background. He resents that a bit, even after all these years. But he's really not comfortable in the direct limelight anyway.

Nearly all of the drawings and specifications are complete. Most of his team has been disbanded and sent to other projects.

From his perspective, he and his team have done an excellent job. He's proud of some of the technical innovations they've made in the design. Some of his people have given papers at their technical societies expounding on their virtues, as if the advantages had already been demonstrated. There is a lot of equipment and concepts being used for the first time, but they thought through everything, and it's going to be fine. It better, his reputation depends on it.

It would have gone better if he'd had a bigger budget, of course. He's been taking a lot of flak from the Project Manager for spending too many man-hours, the budget is all gone plus some. Oh well, if the startup doesn't result in too many changes, they'll get over it. Besides, the budget was too tight anyway. Someday, just once, he'd like to have big enough budget and a free hand to do what he knows how to do.

Just once, he'd like to do it without the meddling interference of a Project Manager and an Owner's Independent Engineer. Most of all, he'd like to have a project, just once, where Construction didn't start until he was done. He wouldn't have to spend all that time defending himself from attacks by the Field Construction Manager because of late drawings and specifications

Everything is always a crisis, until it passes and is forgotten. The field always seems to be able to work around problems, so why don't they do it, quietly? In the final analysis, he's been able to defend almost every position taken and decision made, with few, if any real changes to the original design. Lately, the Construction assaults have been replaced by those from the Plant Manager and the Startup Manager, both of whom have just started bogging things down with a lot of comments. Most of them are just "gold plate" others are pretty unsettling. Oh well, he thinks, it has ever been thus, first we design a plant then we have to defend our decisions.

Another light comes on and the Plant O&M Manager appears behind a screen on the right side of the stage.

This is the first time he's ever been an initial Plant Manager. He's got a lot of experience with a plant similar to this one and he's acquired a good background in supervision. But, this is the first time he's really been in the driver's seat, especially for a start from ground zero.

This has already been a real challenge for him. He's beginning to understand that there is a lot more to being a Plant Manager than tending the plant in operation. When he took the job they gave him a copy of the contract. He was astonished at all the things they had to do. Between the reports, budgets, spare parts evaluation, training programs, administration programs, correspondence, and procedures they had to write. He doesn't have any idea how he is going to do what is really important.

In his mind, the really important things are his crew and his plant. His duty is clear, he has to get control of the minds and hearts of his crew, and, he has to see to it that these construction people build him a plant that can be operated easily. As long as nobody gets between him and his people, he's pretty sure he can handle the crew. He knows it will be easy after this tiresome startup is over and he can settle down for the long haul.

The plant is a bigger concern to him. As soon as he got an opportunity, he started looking at the drawings. There were a few things that really hit his "hot buttons". He immediately wrote some letters pointing out the folly of the decisions that had been made in the design of the plant. He wasn't exactly rebuffed, but nothing seemed to happen, so he wrote several, even stronger letters. Still no action.

Just recently, he was walking around the project and saw the pipefitters welding on a valve from some scaffolding. It occurred to him that the valve would be totally inaccessible after the scaffolding was gone. He went over to the Construction office, asked about it and was told. "That's the way it's designed. You'll have to get a ladder when you want to operate it." Still more letters, still nobody has agreed to make any of the changes he's asked for.

Worst of all, the construction guys have been running his air compressor for construction air and they didn't even ask him. The Startup Manager came in recently, and said that next week he was going to start up the water treatment plant and wanted his Operators to man it around the clock. He had the audacity to say that he'd tell the Operators what he wanted them to do.

Wait a minute! The Plant Manager said, "My contract calls for us to participate in the startup for training. We want our Operators to observe the startup of the equipment, not do it under your direction. If anyone is going to give direction to the Operators, I want it to be one of my Supervisors." He instinctively resisted the thought that anyone would get between him and his crew. Besides, he had a lot of work to get done, and he needed his crew most of the time if he was to have a prayer of meeting his own schedule for deliverables. The conversation got pretty heated and ended in a standoff.

He took his case directly to the Owner, and did a real "core dump". He told the Owner what he thought of the design, the construction and most of all of the way he thought the startup interfaces were starting to materialize.

Enter the Field Construction Manager, striding purposefully to the exact center front of the stage.

It is, after all, by God, his project, and it will be until every last bit of it is turned over to the Owner and the retention has been paid.

The project is ahead of schedule and under budget and he's not about to let anyone get in the way of the early completion bonus. He's worked around late drawings and slipped delivery schedules, fought to keep the craft people under control, put up with a half-dozen permit and regulatory delays, established a good relationship with the Owner and even put up with the meddling Project Manager that his own company inserted into the soup. He wasn't about to give up any control at this point. He still has a plant to build.

His course, during the upcoming startup is clear. He's done it all before. The Plant O&M Manager is really no problem. Like the others he's seen, this one is well on his way to discrediting himself. When push comes to shove he'll show the Owner just how much those "Gold Plate" changes will cost. The fact of the matter is, he wouldn't mind making the changes, just not on his own nickel.

The Startup Manager takes a little more care. On the last job, there had been a few crises and the Startup guy pulled his chestnuts out of the fire. The answer with him is to get him on a short leash. As long as Construction is in control of the money and the craft labor that shouldn't be too difficult.

Enter the EPC Project Manager.

He walks over and stands by the Owner. He's been in this business for a few years but this is really his first job as Project Manager. He's learned a few things by now. During Scene 1 of Act 2 he took an active role in managing the engineering schedule and rode herd on the procurement process.

After the start of Scene 2, he found himself losing control to the stronger personality of the Field Construction Manager.

At this point, his job is to write a lot of letters and build an airtight case for the whopping big Scope Change settlement he hopes to make with the Owner. After all, this job is just a stepping stone to being a Vice-president. But, nobody really ever gets there by just bringing home the amount of money that's already booked, you've got to get a lot more.

He'd be doing a lot better in that regard if the Engineering phase of the job hadn't run over budget. But, if Construction stays under theirs and, if they get through the startup ahead of schedule and without any equipment problems there'll be an early completion bonus and..... There's always the scope changes.

Enter, to Stage Right, The Project Startup Manager

He's only been assigned full time to this project for a few weeks. Someone in the Home Office sent him the initial startup schedule to review several months ago, at the same time they told him he was going to do this one. He didn't give it much thought at the time, since he was up to his nose in the one he was doing. Besides, he'd learned over and over again that any similarity between the initial startup schedule and the actual sequence of events was purely coincidental.

Every job is pretty much the same at the outset. Within the first few days he identifies the equipment that he needs to learn about and reviews the realities of the schedule. There is always a major schedule revision in order, to reflect late deliveries or to adjust for the liberties that Construction has taken with it.

The job "politics" are pretty much the same whether the company he's working for at the time has the whole EPC contract, just construction, or if he's there working through a "Body Shop". The Project is what's important, which company he works for matters very little.

He begins the laborious process of swallowing his pride and coming to some sort of working truce with the Field Construction Manager. There's always a big hassle over tagging and turnover procedures or budgets or craft support or such things, until the Construction people are satisfied that the Startup Manager is properly humbled and understands clearly that it is still their project. It's old hat, so he goes through the motions.

Then there are meetings with the Owner and the Plant Manager, while they tell him how it's going to be. As usual, they want to do the calibration, witness the alignments, and be there "for training" whenever anything is going on. The Plant Manager makes a big issue of the conditions under which he'll "accept" a system and makes sure it's understood that he's the boss. Yeah, Yeah, so what else is new. Let's get this show on the road, a few months from now I'll be done with this one and on to the next.

A few days ago a brass-balled prima donna tech. rep. showed up from the water treatment skid manufacturer. He made a big show of finding a bunch of things that had to be done before he could start the system up and then left. While he was here, there was a big row with the Plant Manager over whether or not he was going to furnish Operators round the clock for the water treatment plant.

Sheesh, the Field Construction Manager said he didn't want me to have a bunch of pipe fitters and electricians standing around while I started it up. He wanted me to take it on a conditional turnover and start it up with Operators.

"Oh well, I've worked through this before and I'll do it again," he says.

Someday he'd like to come to one of these projects and not have to wait until the first crisis before people begin to give him anything but a stiff arm. Not to worry, though, the first "flap" will come, and the second. Before very long the whole project will be supporting him, dealing with whatever problems he finds.

Over the next several weeks the show will start, in full costume.

He's already started to report the first design deficiencies and the Project

Engineer has gone defensive, first trying to prove there isn't really a problem, then trying to show how it wasn't really an error, but here's a fix anyway.

The Construction guys should be easier to deal with, if he can keep his own ego under control. They're more interested in meeting the early completion date than anything else. Help them work around a few schedule interference's and give them a few things to fix and maybe they'll become allies pretty quickly. If not he'll have to make up with the Plant Manager and work harder on the interfaces with the Owner and the EPC Project Manager. That's not as convenient as an alliance with Construction, but he's made it work before.

At this point, I want to turn out the stage lights.

My name is Larry Straight, not Eugene O'Neill and I really don't know anything about being a playwright. I have often thought, however, that might be a great exercise for a Project Manager to put on this play, using the actual characters in their respective parts. It might make them face who they really are and where they're really coming from.

The point I've been trying to make is that the perspectives and motivations of each of the major players is set substantially by the role they play. At one time or another, I've played several of those roles. In each case, I found myself inexorably pushed to the position established by tradition for the role.

Wait a minute Straight, I thought you were here to give us something positive. So far you've only told us that all startups are the same. Well... That's right, so far, they are all the same. But for a moment, think back over what I've said

I've told you that there will be problems in the startup and I hope I've conveyed the thought that the major players are pretty well locked into their respective roles.

You may also note, that I stopped my little play on the eve of the startup. What happens from here can be stage managed for many different effects.

The most important thing of all, is to keep your sense of humor. This is high drama and should be appreciated as such. If everyone knows what to expect and accepts it as the real "oughtta be" there should be a lot less stress and anger. The worst startups are those where several of the major players are doing it for the first time and get the whole project wound around the axle by trying to rewrite everybody else's role.

It's like teaching a pig to sing, it irritates the pig, and the results are usually unsatisfactory.

The next thing I advocate, is changing two of the characters. Earlier today, I talked about having one person initialize the O&M organization and then replace him with another character type right after commercial operation.

The first guy, should be more of a Project Manager-type and his focus should be on getting the crew hired and trained and upon getting all of the policies and procedures written and in place.

This person should be chosen for being a "method manager", given to schedules and formal meeting and goal setting.

He should not be a territorial "father image" type. The O&M troops won't love him. They may very well hate him, but they should know, from the outset, that they won't have to work for him very long. Only six months or so.

As I said earlier, I've done it that way, and it works very well. It establishes the O&M group with a crisper and more professional organization than can usually be put in place by the long range Plant Manager.

I also learned the value of making a very deliberate step to transfer a substantial part of the day-to-day direction of the Operators and Technicians to the Project Startup Manager. I admit it was somewhat easier for me than most, since both the Startup and O&M departments were under my purview.

The difficulties for people in other circumstances will be emotional and contractual in origin.

The contractual concerns over liability and warranty dilution will take some work, but the results will be worth the effort.

The emotional resistance of the O&M Management to letting anyone get between them and their troops is, of course, much harder to deal with. It may even be too much to deal with, if the Plant Manager is one of the very common types with overdeveloped territorial instincts.

He may do it, but want to send one of his Supervisors with the troops. I'd discourage that, but if it got to be a sticking point, I'd let him do it that way. It will probably only be a few days before he assigns the Supervisor so much other work to do that it really can't do much harm.

You certainly must have a specific scheduled time when individuals are assigned to "Startup Support", as opposed to when they are assigned to other training, procedure writing or similar duties other than for system startup.

The first week you have to take a ball bat to the Startup Engineers to keep them from using the Operators like laborers.

You can, however, expect to see some very positive side effects very quickly.

The natural posture of Startup Engineers is to say, "get out of the way kid, and I'll start up this power house, if you run real fast and watch close you might learn something".

I have been gratified to see this metamorphosis into a real mentor relationship when the Startup Engineers actually have the Operator or Technician working under their direction.

Remember, earlier today, I said that the most important training the Operators will get is from a positive involvement in the plant startup. The best way I've found to get them involved, is to get them really involved, and working directly with the Startup People.

Be careful of half-measures, the very best training benefit comes from the actual hands-on, nose-in the-hole troubleshooting that the Startup people do as they are going through the systems.

One thing not to let happen... Don't let the Startup Engineers start sitting at the DCS during shift operations, as the natural extension of supervising the Operators.

The Startup Engineers will love to do it, and if you're not careful, you'll find that all of the buttons are being pushed by the Startup guys and the Operators are being deprived of some very important "board time" that should be under the direction, but not under the fingers of the Startup Engineers.

Like every other paradigm shift. There'll be a few bugs. Try to work the rules out beforehand. The Plant Manager and the Startup Manager will have to make a few midcourse corrections, but I'm sure you'll like the result. I did.

Wait a minute Straight, you keep talking about giving directions to the Startup Manager and the Plant Manager. Who's supposed to be doing all this directing anyway?

Right after I drew the curtain on the play, I said I'd change two characters. The first is the Plant Manager. The second and even more important character I'd change is to replace the "Owner" character in my little play with another person. I think that every Owner should have a Site Manager. Many do, of course, and some of them are very good.

The problem with the picture that was evolving on my imaginary stage was that a stalemate of personalities was developing. In the real world, it doesn't actually stalemate.

The reason is that the human animal, like most other animals is hierarchical in nature. One dog in the pack, at any time is the big dog. The fundamental challenge is to make sure that each dog has his day, and at the proper time.

In my little skit, I described the transition of dominance from the Project Engineer to the Project Manager and, at about the right time, to the Field Construction Manager. Now, I'm not sure how good a job I did in setting the stage. I hope I left you expecting that there was going to be a dog fight, maybe not one big one, but at least several small ones. If I'd had more time I would have thrown in a couple more equipment vendor people. The turbine-generator supplier usually create some interesting conflicts.

What should happen, of course is that the center stage position should move from character to character in their proper term. It doesn't always work that way, of course.

What I didn't attempt to do, before, is point out that the organizations of this play and of the whole industry have evolved and adapted very well to convert adversity into profit.

Most of us understand that the whole legal system has evolved such that conflict is inevitable and that the attorneys profit from that conflict. You should by now understand that the Construction industry has made that same evolution. I need not say that the ultimate source of any profit thus created, is the Owner.

No matter how carefully the contracts and purchase orders are crafted, every warranty item, schedule impact, cost overrun and modification will be carefully scrutinized. First to prove that the performing party shouldn't have to pay for it, and second to prove that the Owner should. Except for the Owner, each one of the characters I introduced, plus a whole bunch that I didn't are geared up to write the letters and keep the records and document their cases that whatever needs doing should cost the Owner more money.

Let me give you one example of how this works.

Lets say we're starting up a waste coal plant in West Virginia. Up to now the startup has been stormy, the project is pretty well polarized around some strong characters, jobsite civility and teamwork is not much in evidence.

So far, the water treatment plant was undersized, the instrument air compressor is serial number one and seizes weekly. The each of the boiler feed pumps have seized during the velocity flushes of the feedwater system. The job is barely on schedule was bid very competitively.

The EPC contractor and the Boiler manufacturer are both substantially over budget, they still could make some money, but there'll be no scalps hung on the lodge pole for this one.

The plant comes on line and synchronizes on oil and everyone breathes a little easier until waste coal is first fed into the plant.

Immediately, the fuel bunkers bridge, as soon as this is relieved..., by application of sledge hammers to the bunkers, a large rock enters one of the feeders and bends the flights into spaghetti, the other feeder runs for a short while, and the drop chute between it and the boiler bridges over, the fuel backs up and the feeder drag chains jump the sprockets.

Everybody turns to. The plant continues to run at low load on oil, at the Owner's expense, while emergency repairs are effected.

No, I'm not making this up. It really happens this way.

Let's continue. Everybody works, hammer and tongs, 24 hours a day, implementing jury rig fixes and clearing chutes. When fuel is admitted again, everybody is standing there watching, as the chutes plug people beat on hoppers and rod out the chutes and keep it flowing. Periodically, the feeders are damaged some more by large pieces of debris and, other times, jump the sprockets for no apparent reason.

Now I could also tell you what happens to the ash system, and the feed pumps and the DCS, but I'll just continue with the coal feed problem. It's enough, by itself to make my point.

At first, everyone from Startup, Operations, Construction and the Boiler Manufacturer, pitches in with labor and support to keep the plant running.

After a short time, the overtime costs to the Construction group and the O&M Contractor start to become alarming.

Through this concerted effort the plant is brought to full load and held there long enough for the acceptance test to be run.

By now, everybody realizes that something must be done, and soon.

A jobsite meeting is held with the Startup Manager, boiler manufacturer, the feeder manufacturer, the Project Engineer, the Field Construction Manager, the Plant O&M Manager, the Project Engineer and, of course the Owner in attendance.

The Project Engineer's position is that he's clean. If there weren't any rocks in the fuel none of the problems would be his to rectify. What about the bridging in the bunkers? Well, he says, you have to expect some of that, but maybe we could try air cannons so the operators wouldn't have to work so hard. But, that is, of course, an operator convenience item, and he'd have to have a scope change.

The Plant Manager's position is that the whole situation is intolerable. His people have all worked way more overtime than he had in his budget, and more than the individuals wanted. The troops were beginning to refuse to stay after their regular shift. Besides, he'd written several letters decrying the inadequacies of the fuel systems, he'd pointed out that the Grizzly at the fuel delivery hopper would pass large rocks, and made it clear that he didn't like this particular brand of feeder, anyway.

His position was that this was a construction problem and that he wasn't going to accept the system, future rodding and beating was to be done by Construction and he was going to backcharge the Owner for the overtime he'd already spent.

Sure, the plant had met the literal criteria of the Acceptance Test, but surely they didn't think that the plant was really acceptable, did they? As far as he was concerned, he'd planned his budget around a certain number of people, assuming the plant would be built to "prudent utility standards", if the plant took any more than that to run, the Owner would have to pay him for it under a scope change.

The boiler manufacturer and his sub-supplier, the feeder manufacturer, had an altogether different perspective. The fuel that was being fed, was out of specification. The moisture was too high, it was not the right size, the ash content was too high, the heat value was too low and the sodium content was out of the allowable range. If such junk was going to be fed, they wanted paid for everything they did from here on out. Besides, they had reviewed the test data and, the boiler had passed the acceptance test, even with such lousy fuel.

As far as the feeder manufacturer was concerned, all of the physical problems were caused by either the rocks or the jury rig fixes that had been made to them by the Operators and EPC construction crafts. They'd be happy, course, to stay and direct the repairs to the feeders, but they wanted a purchase order for their time and expenses.

Later, of course, it was to be discovered that all of the spec. fuel in the whole state of West Virginia, had been in the two truckloads consumed in the test burns in Czechoslovakia, two years earlier.

The Field Construction Manager pointed out that the fuel was supplied by the Owner and the Acceptance Test criteria had indeed been met, therefore he was declaring Substantial Completion.

From his perspective, he only had to work off his punch list and continue to support the Startup Crew until the last systems were "turned over".

He'd be glad, of course to make any modifications needed to the plant, as long as it didn't interfere with his regular project completion activities. Of course, he needed appropriate scope change orders.

As far as continuing to keep his people up there beating on chutes and repairing feeders, that was O&M work and his guys were coming down today.

The Startup Manager said he didn't design plants, he just made them run. From his perspective, the fuel on the pile was the fuel that he was going to have to get the plant to burn. Deciding who paid for the necessary modifications was outside his sphere of responsibility, or interest for that matter.

He'd continue to work with whoever was responsible, and here was a list of things he'd like to try. The list included the grizzly change, air blasters, the addition of some rod ports. He said he didn't much like this brand of feeder either. In his experience they were temperamental, plugged and tore themselves up regularly. But, he said, "it's just a tradeoff of capital cost to O&M costs, I can get them to run, it just takes a lot of effort.

The Owner, of course was dumbfounded.

He didn't see this coming at all. He'd spent countless hours with attorneys crafting an elaborate network of warranties and risk transfers. He clearly remembered his attorney asking over and over again, "what happens if we turn the key and this thing doesn't work?", they thought they had covered every eventuality. Now, here he was with a whopping fuel oil bill he hadn't anticipated, a plant that didn't run, but had apparently passed the acceptance tests, and all of these guys were asking him for more money. Well, his next meeting would be with his attorney and they'd sort this all out.

This story, didn't happen in West Virginia, and it didn't happen exactly this way. But, there are several people in this room that know where something like it actually took place, pretty much like I described it.

It could have happened, to one degree or another, at any plant. Instead of coal feeders, I could have talked about gas turbine blades, put a little water and sulfur into the fuel, maybe had an interlock get jumpered in the air intake dampers so filter structure gets sucked into a gas turbine. This is just the way it is on most startups.

What the Owner needed in this story is a Site Representative with enough whiskers to play in this game, according to the rules by which it is played.

Altogether too often, the person that fills that role is picked from those available in the Owner's organization.

Often he or she is someone that the Owner expects to keep as an employee long after commercial operation. As a result, they are altogether too concerned about how they will fit into the permanent salary structure.

Even when that's not the case, we often see the wrong characters in this role. They frequently fall into several general categories:

The first, and very common is that the Owner or his Project Manager assumes the role of the Site Representative. There are two problems with this:

First, they usually haven't seen the whole play, and don't really know the plot. Second, They really don't have time to do the job right.

At the same time as the startup is taking place, the utility is reading you all the fine print in the interconnect agreement, the air quality board has just uncorked some sort of nasty surprise, the local fire chief just declared turbine lube oil to be a class 1 hazard requiring triple walled piping. In the meantime the mayor is insisting that you supply the city transit district with new buses for use in case of emergency evacuations caused by an SCR ammonia leak.

In the meantime of course, the EPC Project Manager keeps writing those irritating letters and the Plant Manager keeps saying the plant is going to be a disaster. The Owner may be tempted to throw a little money at some of the problems as they emerge, after all, his job, all along has been removing obstacles to progress.

Another common personality, is one hired by the Owner directly, or seconded from his "Independent Engineer" firm. This is usually a bright young person with a construction engineering, or a "contracts management" background. They usually have a real desire for a harmonious jobsite. By the time the startup rolls around, the Field Construction Manager has him totally surrounded. Even if he's done a good job of managing the scope changes and construction contracts until the startup begins, they've got a lot of personal interest in maintaining their good relations with the people they've worked with for the last year, or so, and are quickly overwhelmed by the strong personalities and immediacies of startup.

The last character-type I'll describe, is the one that I've seen that can do the most damage. He's the guy that was hired to be the Owner's General Manager after Commercial Operation and placed in the role of Owner's Site Representative. If he's an MBA-type that is interested in the commercial aspects, he's just useless in this arena, having the effect of leaving the position uncovered.

But, heaven help the project, if he's a Plant Manager-type. I've seen a lot of these guys. They have a strongly held opinion on everything. They second guess every design decision and see shoddy construction at every turn of a nut. He immobilizes the O&M Contractor by nitpicking every procedure and spare parts recommendation and he's all over the Startup Manager like a wet blanket.

His motivation, of course, is to have the perfect power plant which he intends to continue to overcontrol well into his old age.

Whenever I've seen these guys I've also seen what I call a polarized project. That's when no matter what position is taken by anybody, there is someone else in a polar opposite position, exerting equal force. Often, this character convinces the Owner that he is the savior of the project, protecting the Owner from certain disembowelment by the pack of vicious coyotes that he has surrounded himself with.

Of all the positions on the Project, this one demands the most in maturity, wisdom and experience. They shouldn't be learning about projects, they should already know what they're doing. Their only interest should be to get the plant that was contracted, for as close to the amount it was contracted for as possible.

Conflict is, of course, inevitable. A good Site Manager can keep the conflict from coming to crisis in most cases. He can certainly shift the balance to force the right person to center stage at the right time. If he does it right, he's close enough, early enough so that when the conflicts start to arise, he can protect the owner's interests by knowing the real facts and preventing some of the compounding actions that will happen if he's not there.

I think it's best if he's been there from the start of construction. His relationship with the EPC Construction Manager should be one of professional distance, not a "love in" just wary mutual respect. When the Startup Manager and O&M Manager come on site, he should be in a position to act as "stage manager" for the project, getting between the interfaces, more as a catalyst than participant.

I didn't put any real "bad guys" in my story. Most projects do have one or two incompetent or even malignant personalities along the way. Here again, a good Site Manager can move to get them out of the action before they do too much damage. If you think about it, only the Owner or his representative can be very effective in doing this.

There is, in spite of all I've said, a tremendous respect accorded to "The Client" by all of the companies in the business. If he makes a request for a change in personality, they'll react when the same comment from an internal source or from another contractor would fall on deaf ears.

The first prerequisite for the position is that they must have seen the whole play, from beginning to end, preferably several times. They must also be enough of a grizzled graybeard to have their ego under control, this a business of managing contracts from the high ground, not wallowing around in the little power trips of the day.

Above all, they need to be people that know how to gather as many "chips" as possible, for the Owner to use in what I call the "end of project poker game".

They need to have a steady enough hand to delay making a commitment for as many scope changes and warranty settlements as possible until the game is played. That platform, the additional paving and the extra DCS monitor are going to cost real money if approved when the Plant Manager first asks for it. Often, however, they can be used as a chips in the game, when the whole punch list is settled.

By the end of the acceptance test, all the cards are face up. The Owner's position is a lot stronger when he's holding a big punch list and a lot of notification letters in one hand and the retention check in the other.

At Sterling Energy, we've made a business line out of supplying these people. We don't have a lot of them, but we do have a few. We're not the only place to get them, of course, there are certainly others. But, we think we're a good place to start. Wherever you have to go, find one, they're worth their weight in platinum.

Just in case my message was lost in the cartoons, let me summarize the points I've tried to make.

• Keep Your Sense of Humor
• Know and Accept People in the Roles They're playing
• Expect Some Equipment Problems
• Use a different Plant Manager for the Startup Period
• INVOLVE The Plant Staff in the Startup
• Delay making commitments, if possible. There will be an "End of Project Poker Game"
• Engage a world-class Site Manager