A new report is critical of maintenance practices at Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Valdez Marine Terminal.
The report’s authors say maintenance processes are “overly complex,” and Alyeska is too reliant on “a very few key individuals” to keep its maintenance systems working.
“It is the opinion of the Consultants that the real work to maintain and operate the VMT is being done by dedicated workers, not through efficient or effective processes, but in spite of burdensome systems, processes, and procedures,” the report says.
These and many other findings are noted in the report prepared for the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council. The council is a congressionally sanctioned nonprofit organization that keeps watch over the Valdez terminal and associated tanker activity.
Two former Alyeska managers, Dan Hisey and Darryl Hammond, prepared the report as consultants hired by the citizens’ council.
Critical Alaska asset
The Valdez Marine Terminal is one of Alaska’s most critical assets. After an 800-mile journey down the trans-Alaska pipeline, North Slope crude arrives at the terminal for storage and loading aboard tankers that carry the oil to West Coast refineries.
The VMT is a sprawling, complex campus of tanks, pipes, docks, power sources, pollution control systems and other equipment vital for continuous North Slope oil production.
Alyeska is the Anchorage-based consortium that runs the terminal on behalf of owners BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Koch Industries.
In September 2010, the citizens’ council decided to conduct a maintenance “audit” at the terminal, and committed $102,800 for the work. It cited oil spills along the pipeline as part of the impetus.
The council awarded the contract to Hisey and Associates, of Bellingham, Wash. Dan Hisey was chief operating officer for Alyeska, leaving the company in 2005. Hammond, who worked with Hisey on the audit, was a maintenance specialist on the pipeline before retiring from Alyeska in December 2010.
Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan told Petroleum News on Sept. 8 the company had just received the report and was reviewing the findings.
“We welcome input to validate and improve our processes,” she said.
Reliability-centered maintenance
The Hisey report focuses on the use of reliability-centered maintenance, or RCM, at the terminal.
Hisey, quoting a leading author on the subject, notes that RCM is a “process used to determine what must be done to ensure that any physical asset continues to do what its users want it to do in its present operating context.”
RCM is more than a fancy toolbox for keeping equipment running right. Alyeska is obliged to use RCM under agreements it signed with federal and state regulators prior to securing a renewed pipeline right of way in 2003.
As part of the audit, Hisey and Hammond made three site visits to the Valdez Marine Terminal, interviewed or met with 29 Alyeska employees, reviewed documents and inspected some physical assets.
The Alyeska employees were “open, candid, and professional,” the report says. The audit was conducted between January and August.
No ‘imminent threat,’ but ...
The audit, judging from the report, was not a comprehensive investigation of maintenance at the terminal. Rather, Hisey and Hammond evaluated a few systems such as “back flow preventer” and “main line relief valves.” They also looked at “crude distribution piping corrosion control.”
While the audit turned up no maintenance issue rising to the level of “imminent threat,” the authors found that “Alyeska is struggling with overly complex processes and poorly integrated IT systems which are adversely impacting their ability to effectively apply Reliability Centered Maintenance.”
The report continues: “It is the Consultants’ opinion that Alyeska is not effectively implementing RCM at the Valdez Marine Terminal to develop consistent, efficient and appropriate maintenance strategies. In addition, their management systems do not provide adequate monitoring of overall maintenance performance to insure they are meeting their stated goals, objectives and commitments to RCM.”
Most interviewees demonstrated some frustration with Alyeska’s “complex and unwieldy” maintenance processes and procedures, saw “someone else as accountable” for them, and didn’t understand “significant elements” of RCM, the report says.
Workarounds
“Evidence suggests that in the case of managing and monitoring maintenance at the VMT, with the exception of a few key individuals ... employees either do not know the processes and procedures, or the processes and procedures are simply too disjointed for them to support the work,” the report says. “This complexity results in increased likelihood of errors and inefficient use of employees’ time.”
The auditors found that, while knowledgeable of what it takes to operate and maintain the terminal’s assets, “Alyeska workers are forced to rely on their personal knowledge of the assets and their casual network of co-workers to find information they need to do their job.”
The report adds: “When processes and procedures become too complex or overly prescriptive, employees simply create ‘workarounds’ to manage the work that they know needs to get done.”
One big problem is how hard it is for workers to access data from Alyeska IT systems, the audit found.
“This makes it extremely difficult for workers or management to have a clear understanding of the results or status of their maintenance programs and the condition of the equipment,” the report says.
Often, the auditors found that people they interviewed would name someone else as responsible for entering data, or knowing how to access it.
“In numerous cases, the Consultants followed a ‘name trail’ given by several people of someone else to talk to, only to find that at the end of the trail, that person did not have the answer or know how to retrieve the data.”
Lack of leadership
The Hisey report cites lack of leadership as a maintenance issue.
Alyeska’s Maintenance Strategy Board, a companywide cross section of managers, hasn’t met since December 2008, the report notes.
The report also cites a huge maintenance backlog at the terminal.
“This audit reflects a number of failed processes and management systems which increase Alyeska’s operational risk,” the report says. “Although the audit did not uncover any specific maintenance issue which could be characterized as an ‘imminent threat,’ in the RCM systems reviewed, the complexity of the processes and number of procedural disconnects, significantly increases Alyeska’s risk and hampers their ability to manage it. Further contributing to this risk is the finding that only a very few key individuals understand the RCM and Maintenance Strategy processes.”
The citizens’ council plans to review the maintenance audit at its Sept. 15-16 board meeting in Kenai.
