- Have you ever had a state or insurance inspector come to audit your facility, but you couldn’t find your valve records?
- Do you have valves that have never been operated and you aren’t sure when they were last tested?
- Are your technicians frequently required to don personal protective equipment (PPE) and climb on top of a boiler to retrieve valve nameplate information?
These are common problems in many facilities. Things change and time passes, and suddenly you realize that you don’t have accurate records on hand, or that you aren’t sure what valves you have installed where, and when they were last tested. This isn’t just a compliance problem — it can pose a safety problem as well.
This post describes what a plant survey is, how it can help you solve these and other common problems, and when you know it’s time for one.
What are the benefits of a plant survey?
The purpose of a plant survey is to gather data about all of the valves in your facility. This data includes:
- The location of the valve
- The nameplate information
- The application that it is being used for
- Historical records, including service history
Once you have gathered this data, you can enter it into a valve management system. At Allied, we use GE’s ValvKeep. This software can store highly detailed valve records, which allow us to support OSHA 1910.119 Process Safety Management requirements for the tracking of preventative maintenance schedules for all pressure relief valves (PRVs) in a customer’s location.
By performing a plant survey and entering the data into a valve management system such as ValvKeep, you can maintain detailed records of every valve in your facility, and even across multiple locations. There are many, many benefits of having this data available:
- You will always have records on hand to comply with local jurisdictional requirements.
- You can develop an appropriate preventative maintenance schedule for each valve, which will help prevent forced shutdowns.
- You can keep track of spare valves spread across multiple locations, which will save you money if a valve needs to be replaced.
- You can accurately estimate your yearly maintenance costs.
When should you perform a plant survey?
The goal of a plant survey is to ensure that your records are accurate and up-to-date. Here are several common situations that indicate it’s time to perform a plant survey:
- You have been using a spreadsheet to keep track of your valves, but the spreadsheet hasn’t been maintained and is now outdated.
- You use a database software, but it doesn’t keep accurate historical records. For example, some common database technologies store only partial nameplate data.
- You don’t have the records necessary to comply with company, insurance, or state inspectors.
- You have a valve that has never been operated on a preventative maintenance schedule and you are concerned about its safety and reliability.
- You need to service a valve, but you don’t know exactly what type of valve is installed.
What is the process of a plant survey?
Every facility is different and has different requirements. At Allied, we offer three options for plant surveys:
- If you have a spreadsheet or a database that is accurate and up-to-date, we can upload the data into ValvKeep and help you develop preventative maintenance schedules.
- If you don’t have a spreadsheet or database, but do have trained technicians on site, we can provide a survey sheet for you to fill out the location information, tag information, notes on prior service, and so on for each valve in your facility.
- If you have neither the data nor the expertise to perform the survey yourself, we will send a technician to your facility to work with your personnel to gather the information. An additional benefit of this option is that our technicians can look for any immediate safety or reliability concerns, such as broken seals or plugged discharge lines. They can also note if any rigging points or scaffolding will be necessary to service the valves so that this can be taken care of in advance. Our technicians can also help you create a budget for your maintenance costs for the upcoming year so that you know what to expect.
While the plant survey itself is important, it’s just the first step in identifying your maintenance needs and developing a preventative maintenance schedule. The next article provides a more in-depth look at how ValvKeep helps you maintain your valves so they operate at peak performance.