Out of jokes, supervisors are there to deal with emergencies since them are not planned. More precisely the supervisor will direct his crew to apply first aid to patch up the emergency, then will enter (or tell one of his crew to enter) a notification for a corrective maintenance that will be planned by the Maintenance Planner. In addition handle supervising tasks such as attendance, training, performamce review, discipline, etc.

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supervisors are there to deal with emergencies since them are not planned

And if there are no emergencies?

Emergency for me means: eminent danger, explosion, uncontrolled plant shutdown, loss of production.
Aside of tornados tsunamis and other acts of god, almost everything can be "forecasted"

Then their action is reduced to HR paperwork, monthly (weekly?) report to the manager, chat with the new receptionist( ), and hopefully walk around to see if his crew is doing what they are supposed to do with the plans the Maintenance Planner did for them; check if they need any help.
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Maintenace Planner area of action is the future: plan what maintenance will do during next weeks, next months, next plant shutdown.
The supervisor's is the present: which orders are due for today, for this week.

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and hopefully walk around to see if his crew is doing what they are supposed to do

Do you have that problem also?

As we have concluded before: maintenance phylosophies, techniques, equipment failures, problems, oportunities arise across industries... the only change is the environment.

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

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Maintenace Planner area of action is the future

You summed it up quite nice ..

The only times the Maintenance Planners should look at the past is when working on KPI reports or looking for a plan he/she remembers done a few months before that fits a job he/she is planning now.
What I see rather wrong is seeing a Planner handling work permits for a job that is ready to start, that's a job for the supervisor or crew leader.

Planner handling work permit?

A work permit is an agreement between owner and maintainer, that the equipment is safe to work on.
Before the permit is issued, LoTo procedures must have been applied, equipment is isolated / denergized gasfree etc.
Since the one who are going to die when things screw up, are the crew leader and operations supervisor together with craft and expectating operators, I would not leave that responsibility to a planner far away from the "battlefield" if I was part of the craft.

Good point about permits being handled by the planner. What I should have indicated is that the planner fills out the header information on the fire, vessel entry or other required permits and attaches to the work order. Then when the craftsman takes the work order/permits to the control room/or repair location for operations coordination, the permit is ready, saving time to find the correct form and fillout header. I plan to change my 5M's of planning to reflect your comments....thanks..!!

Who has used CMMS to apply work permits? All scheduled work orders will be displayed to Operations for permit issuance.

For small cold work jobs, to speed up the permission to work, no need full blown work permits but use job cards issued by operations after they record the jobs in their job card record book. The job card can also be used for walkaround by planners in the plant for safety purposes.

I have reduced the number of Permit To Work in time based PMs after negotiating with Safety the inclusion as Operations / SubOperations at the PM Order the checks leading to issue the permits. I mean:
* If every time we issue a Permit to work for this particular PM job it results that X, Y, and Z personal protective equipment must be used, and lockout/tagouts must be placed on A, and B points then I add as first task list instruction "Put on X, Y, and Z PPE", and then as second instruction: "Install lockout devices at point A and b following LOTO procedure 12-345."

Eugene, I don't understand your post above? Pls explain before and after on how you reduce the number of work permits?

We have included 2 operations for Apply/close work permits and isolate/deisolate equipment plus Close work order as well in our PM and apply one permit per PM work order with list of equipment to be worked on.

We sit down with Safety and analyzed the following:
* We have this PM task list which is executed on this equipment at this area, n times every year.
* Each time we have executed it our technician and the area supervisor filled a Permit to Work (PTW) which results in the same safety precautions to be taken prior to start the job: for example wear certain PPE, and apply LOTO.
Then, we proposed to Safety:
* if we edit the PM task list by adding operations/ suboperations that instructs the technician to put on the same PPE required at all these PTW forms for this job, and to apply the LOTO devices to the equipment following established procedure;
* if we do that, will still be necesary to document a PTW form each time we repeat this job?
Safety said: "No, with the edited PM task list you have accomplished what the PTW intends."
Then, we edited the PM task lists and also added a statement indicating that this PM was analyzed by Maintenance & Safety and it was concluded that a PTW is not necessary for this job.
With that agreement we initiated a PM task lists revision project with Safety and reduced by 60 to 70% the number of PTW forms required. The ones that remained are for situations where they could be additional risks that maybe not present every time that PM is executed, so the PTW analysis remains necessary.
At those task lists that the analysis recommended that the PTW must remain were edited to add a statement to instruct the technician to complete the PTW.

Do you mean for some PM works, no need to apply work permits because you already have instruction to wear PPE & apply LOTO in the PM work orders? If yes, it looks like preauthorized work permits.

In this case, how do the Central Control Room (CCR) knows that there are some personnel doing some PM works on certain equipment in the plant? Do the PM personnel inform CCR before starting the work and going to the equipment ie verbally or recorded in job card record book) ?

Please give examples of works which are allowed without applying work permits and which still need applying work permits.

What is LOTO btw?

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

Josh, LoTo is Lock-out Tag-Out procedure.

Eugene in our case, the PTW can not be issued by Safety, because we do not have dedicated safety technicians "wandering" around because they have nothing else to do


Remember I work in an oil refinery

The trade off we made for accountability:

• There are "Authorized Safety Certified Officers" ASCO's
  
• The ASCO are "mainly" operations supervisors, allthough maintenance has some ASCO they cannot authorize a PTW for their own purpose (conflict of interest)
  
• ASCO is responsible for signing hotwork, LOTO and confined space certificate, he has been trained to do the measurements
  
• Hotwork certificate is Authorized by Big Shot at Operations (Only with signature of ASCO)--> he has measured/verified and everything is safe.
  
• If all certificates are authorized, the PTW can be issued by Equipment Owner, In this case the Operations Supervisor (who coincidentally is also ASCO)
  
• when things screw-up, look for ASCO and Operations Supervisor who authorized the work
  

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* if we edit the PM task list by adding operations/ suboperations that instructs the technician to put on the same PPE required at all these PTW forms for this job, and to apply the LOTO devices to the equipment following established procedure;
* if we do that, will still be necesary to document a PTW form each time we repeat this job?

In my opinion a written rule does not guarantee that some #@% will obey it. The jails are full of innocent "civilized law obeyers" victims of the system
With the PTW you "load" the accountability on someones shoulder and he has to verify that it is safe to work