A plant's safety net extends beyond its staff to all contractors and site visitors. Any injury is a black eye. This means contractors must have their safety programs approved by plant management before they can do any work. Violations will stop jobs for a sit down and review of the offenses. Serious violations will get a contractor kicked offsite. This doesn't happen often but it does happen. So, it was not surprising that the first presentation by Siemens at the 501D5-D5A Users' 2014 annual conference, would review the field-service organization's enviable service record and stress its continual improvement in critical areas such as JHA, proactive safety stand-downs, and PPE. more 

Wendel Zolyomi of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems had a great deal to tell W501D5-D5A users at their organization's winter meeting in early February. For newcomers, it seemed like a lot to assimilate in one sitting. O&M personnel with fleet experience were familiar with at least some of what the speaker had to say; however, the review of the company's parts, reliability enhancements, and operational solutions was timely with spring overhauls not far off. The improvements Zolyomi discussed were products of the large investment made by the company in gas-turbine development. more

Sometimes you have to dig deeper into the detective work to identify not-so-obvious issues with your HRSGs, HRST Inc's Sam Shaw told the editors. Occasionally, captured DCS data are limited and more information is required to properly diagnose a nagging reliability issue. It's easy to blame failures on an obvious root cause, but with additional data review, issues initially unsuspected sometimes reveal themselves. Examples of additional data collection techniques may include the installation of temporary thermocouples (T/Cs) in strategic locations to identify any thermal abnormalities. more