Major utilities, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities occasionally have to completely stop production in order to perform major maintenance tasks, system upgrades, or retro-fitting of significant sub-systems. Large facilities are taken off-line sometimes for weeks or months at a time. These are called plant turn arounds. It is of course crucial that work is done as quickly as possible, to reduce down-time, because each day off-line is extremely costly. As a result, these organizations spend months planning the work schedule before shut-down occurs.
Because of the nature of this work, there is always extreme sensitivity given to the EHS (Environmental, Health and Safety) aspects of the project. Any individual involved must have fulfilled a wide range of training courses to ensure that they can perform their tasks safely, without endangering others.
One crucial element of the project plan is of course lining up all the numerous sub-contractors in advance, ready to intervene when their job is on the critical path. Each worker sent in must be pre-authorized, and not delayed by the need to manually verify their training records and qualifications. This is where the InstantCard CVS system can save precious hours. As an on-line real-time system for reviewing an individual’s certifications, delays caused by the need to check back with the office are drastically reduced. If a foreman, or an auditor, needs to validate someone’s qualifications, all they need to do is scan their badge with a smartphone or tablet. This provides immediate confirmation, whereas previous methods required numerous phone calls and faxes to gain the same level of confidence in the suitability of a given worker for a given task.
Major plant re-fits are also subject to intense scrutiny and oversight by government regulators, such as DoL and OSHA. The CVS service provides an extremely efficient method of meeting the information requests of these inspectors, quickly and efficiently. Avoiding just one fine due to inadequate paperwork can more than pay for the CVS service.