What is the difference between project planning and maintenance work planning? Are these two different subjects?

Maintenance work planning are some times projects when it takes a lot of time and money and the results are extremely important – reason why you take the time and the effort to plan action in detail. It happens often in overhauling, refurbishment, new constructions or installation of new machinery with a need for complex foundations and fluids. It happens when you have to allocate special tools, auxiliary equipment and different numbers of people and skills (or contractors) to tasks and you have to predict what task durations and costs are likely to be as well as set milestones and the end date. If you have the adequate tools you can also estimate the probability of falling behind the schedule or spending over the budget and take some precautions in time.

Regards,

Rui

Josh,
I consider planning as the process of executing the work in our minds, thinking throiugh the various steps, identifying potential problems, resource and material requirements, sequence and documentation.
In principle therefore, project planning and maintenance planning are identical. However, projects are one-off jobs, with well defined scope, duration and costs. Maintenance work scope is less well defined, especially when it comes to corrective and breakdown work. Shutdown maintenance work is(or should be) fairly well defined, so it is a project. Routine maintenance is often repetitive, so it has some elements of production planning. When we assemble maintenance work packages, we are treating them as small projects.
As you can see, the lines get fuzzy. Now my question to you is: how do you intend to apply this information to improve your company performance?

Ok, how about comparing project planning to maintenance planning?

I would like to see how to fit maintenance planning into the project phase so that maintenance program is set up by first production.

Wouldn't RCM analysis in project stage look after this.
Surely what you are talking about Josh is a system whereby PM's are set up during commissioning stage (with participation of production) and also any MP information from similar machines/processes.

Mike.

The general term we use is maintenance planning or development or set up rather than specific terms like RCM, PMO etc which are the methodologies of different approach to the same subject matter.

Another reason is that some organizations still cannot distinguish maintenance planning & scheduling from project planning & scheduling. So the planning & scheduling course is included only in project management courses but not in maintenance management courses.

But there is at least one organization which has course on maintenance planning & scheduling.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

Josh,
Mike is absolutely right. We have to separate the process of planning from the tools we use for planning. Planning of maintenance work should really be done at the end of the project detailed design stage. We can use tools such as RCM. RBI, IPF to identify the work volume and put the PMs into a CMMS before commissioning the project. That is the ideal, and I know of several projects where it has been done. But most projects fall way behind this best practice.
Maintenance engineers must acquire project management skills. After all these are the skills required to do shutdown planning, and many maintainers end up doing plant changes.

Perhap I should clarify what I said above ie Maintenance program should be set up by first production (under the simultanous or concurrent engineering approach), not before commissioning. I did say the subject is maintenance planning, not rcm, pmo etc.

I posted this question because maybe there are some plants enter their production phase without any maintenance program ready and to hear the views of others about it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

Something like maintenance is an after thought?
The show is alreay running and suddenly they realize that they need a welder/electrician a structure?

I know it happens all the time because:
1) The bosses don't have not enough technical knowledge (beanies)
2) The advisors of the bosses say only what the bosses like to hear
3) These things cost money (and the plant ain't constructed yet..)

We insert the PM development in the Project Planning of expansions or new equipment installation. Our Project Engineering department do not have field personnel to do the inspections and commisioning of faclities and equipment, we do. Maintenance lend them our technicians with two missions:
* perform field inspections and commisioning
* ensure maintenance needs are taken in consideration during construction and installation.
During the commisioning phase we assign to our maintenance personnel working at the project to develop the PM task lists, spare parts lists, and secure our copy of the equipment manuals and related technical information for our files. In this way we ensure have at our CMMS the PM ready to execute first PM Order by the shortest defined PM frequency.
That is if there are a monthly PM task defined it shall be executed during the first month the equipment is started up.

Darth,
That is an excellent approach. It must hurt to release your techs to the project team, but it is a small price to pay for avoiding a life time of troubles.

Thanks Vee.
As a somewhat payoff we require to Project Engineering to pay from the project budget the temporary technicians we hire to cover for our experienced and regular technicians we send to the project. But yes, the big payoff are the early information and the problems avoided due to installation.
Eugene

One of the benefits of sending our technicians to the commisioning is the detection and fixings of design problems before start up. For example, our technicians when inspectiong for commisioning a piping system will identify if valves are located at the right places, and several times require a new valve to be installed at a convenient location for maintenance or to shutdown / LOTO faster for a maintenance job.