OCT - DEC 20228 CHEMICAL INDUSTRY REVIEWEighteen months ago, I faced a daunting task. As Vice President of Shell Pennsylvania Chemicals, I was responsible for building the nation's largest new manufacturing complex in Western Pennsylvania.We were at our planned construction peak when COVID-19 hit. We wondered how a pandemic would affect our workers, their training, and our schedule.At the same time, we were well aware of the benefits we had been gaining from the digital tools, and the data insights they were providing. Beginning March 20, 2020, we shut down the site, telling our 8,000-plus construction workers to stop working. Subsequently, our digital technology proved to be even more vital than we could have imagined, later helping us to return workers back to site, with new safety protocols. The value we gained from digital technology boils down to Three Ps: Planning, Precision, and Performance. Each of these components is critical to building and operating a major manufacturing complex in the current age.In 2017, we established a drone survey program to aid our project planning and monitoring. We took a progress snapshot every week, and published it in a cloud portal called iHawk, from Cyberhawk Innovations, as a benchmark between Shell and contractors.At the point of the shutdown, we had taken more than one million aerial photos during 4,000 drone flights across the 400-acre site; this documented the course of construction with a new, modern level of precision. This allowed us to compare the progress we had made versus what we needed to accomplish. We could obtain detailed information in a matter of seconds, rather than sending surveyors in to the field.But that is only one of the complications with interrupting the construction of a complex of this scale. For example, we know that roughly 20 percent of emission leaks are associated with improperly torqued flange joints. There are approximately 110,000 flanged connections in the Plant, requiring more than a million bolts. Each must be torqued properly, or else it becomes a potential leak source.In weeks prior to the shutdown, approximately 7,000 bolted connections were being progressed by more than 100 crews, working concurrently across the site. Fortunately - two years before, we had deployed a digital flange management system called SmartTorque, which affords a real-time visibility into critical bolting activities. It enables the project team to know whether each bolt was done to appropriate specifications. Since SmartTorque is fully digital, the information was fully available after the temporary shutdown as we remobilized workers to site. In this case, planning upfront ensured we had precision digital technology when it was needed the most, guaranteeing best-in-class performance. We relied on Planning, Precision and Performance, all made possible through digital tech.Worker training presented yet another challenge in a time of COVID. At Pennsylvania Chemicals, we had more than 100 operator positions to fill ­ and we wanted to prioritize By Hilary Mercer, SVP Pennsylvania Chemicals, ShellLEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE WORKER'S PERFORMANCEHilary MercerIN MY OPINION
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