Efforts make the Iron Spirit, a report of the turbine team of SA Ras Al Khair O&M Project

Mr. Ostrovsky explained the meaning of efforts in How the Steel Was Tempered: “Life is the most important thing to a person. We only have one life. A person should not be regret to waste his years or be shame of accomplish nothing.”
In 2020, the COVID-19 broke out and spread to the earth. In the face of the sudden global epidemic and complex tasks, the turbine team of SA Ras Al Khair O&M Project closely focused on the company and the project’s epidemic prevention and business goals, in accordance with the annual work schedule of the project, completed the annual maintenance tasks with the care and trust of the leaders as well as the joint efforts of all team members, made positive contributions to the completion of the power generation tasks 70 days in advance, and interpreted the spirit of the Iron Army with the practical action.
Throughout the year, the team completed 2057 spare parts clarifications with the owners, urged the owners to release more than 8,600 sets of spare parts for various main and auxiliary equipment, cooperated with SIEMENS to complete the minor repair tasks of 6 sub-units on the gas turbine side, 2 sub-units on the turbine side, treated 13 defect eliminations and 68 temporarily eliminations, deal with 15 emergencies, and 1,444 PTWs were completed.
Behind the data is the work attitude of striving for excellence and the fight against the epidemic to ensure production. Faced with the impact of the epidemic, in order to ensure the safe and stable operation, the team came to the site to know the situation of the unit every day, discussed issues with the owner with epidemic prevention materials, organize professional and technical personnel to overcome the difficult problems. With the joint efforts of all team members, the team solved 6 technical problems in 2020. 
Value comes from the original intention and starts with action. During the operation of the unit, multiple waste heat boilers had experienced multiple flue gas leakage incidents at the superheater expansion joints, which directly affected the safe and economic operation of the unit. The large amount of heat released by the leaked flue gas threatened the continuous safe use of surrounding data measuring points and power cables. The long-term flue gas leakage also increased the serious safety hazards of secondary fires. In order to completely solve this problem, the team negotiated with technical support, and completed the design of the reconstruction plan for the expansion joint of the waste heat boiler to prevent flue gas leakage. In April 2020, the materials needed for the renovation of the waste heat boiler were moved to the site. In the process of shutting down the BLOCK20 HRSG side, the team found that if the single-sided flange fixing in the original plan is replaced with a double-sided flange for fixing, it can not only effectively balance the thermal stress of the pipeline, but also extend the service cycle. The project originally planned to contact the supplier for distribution and supply, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the supplier’s factory was forced to suspend work and could not supply. The team found usable materials from the warehouse waste and borrow the owner's Plasma cutting machines and other equipment, successfully completed the processing tasks of 80 flanges required for the transformation on the site. This alone saved the project nearly 60,000 China yuan in production and technical transformation costs.
The purpose of power plant maintenance is to ensure the safe and stable operation of the entire power plant, and to ensure that all hot standby equipment is 100% safe and available. Relying on the owner's INFOR system, the team actively implemented the concept of preventive maintenance, that is, in order to reduce the probability of equipment failure or functional degradation, carried out the maintenance process at intervals or standards specified by the manufacturer, eliminate the symptoms of equipment failure mainly through systematic maintenance. In accordance with this concept, the team cooperated with the operating personnel and summarize the experience:
While determining the overhaul date of the steam turbine unit, make the SA Ras Al Khair Project STXX Intermediate Repair Task Plan and the Outage Schedule to guide the maintenance of auxiliary equipment on site. Its contents include collecting operating data, main and auxiliary equipment defect statistics, advance preparation and clarification of spare parts required during maintenance, implementation, supervision and review of safety assurance measures for maintenance, optimized allocation of load, and trial operation plan and logic verification of maintenance equipment.
As to safety management, in view of the cross-operations between the site and Siemens and the difficult safety management, the safety education of participants was strengthened, the Morning Class Meeting was enhanced and the work arrangements were detailed, and safety briefings and risk analysis was carefully implemented; require all the majors to have specialized personnel to supervise and communicate with Siemens on site to implement safety responsibilities; require strict safety qualification review discipline, and clarify the importance of safety assurance; refine safety measures, strengthen safety inspections, and strictly implement the PTW system.
In terms of quality assurance, the team based on the operational reference provided by the operators, formulated several technical measures before the intermediate repair to optimize the control of the intermediate repair process and improve the quality of the repair. For any unexpected problems encountered during mid-repair, the maintenance staff actively contacted other professionals for intensive consultation, and cooperated with the operation department to make the pre-start test and the pre-start maintenance equipment trial operation.
One of the biggest difficulties in overseas O&M projects is spare parts. The procurement schedule of spare parts directly determines the implementation schedule of on-site preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance. The defects that occurred in 2020 due to insufficient spare parts was accounted for 28.57%. While the team still actively seeks countermeasures. Mr. Zhou Mingfeng, the assistant manager of the Maintenance Dept, and Mr. Zhong Miaoqi, the person in charge of the turbine team, took turns on duty to the office every day before and during the overhaul of the unit, communicated with the engineers to speed up the procurement of spare parts, and ensure the safe and stable operation of the unit.
The safe and stable operation of the power plant is the result of tears and sweat of the turbine team. The ups and downs along the way have all turned into the inexhaustible driving force to pursue excellence. In the new year, the new journey, all Huafeng people will continue to carry forward the spirit of the Iron Army, overcome all difficulties and challenges, and make more contribution to the company’s high-quality development with confidence and strength.
There is such a team overseas that inherit the excellent spirit of the Iron Army, worked hard in the hot Middle East, blew the horn of effort with works, and wrote the value of effort with achievements, that is the turbine team of Saudi Arabia Ras Al Khair O&M Project.