TAPS v11 - New Release

Whenever we have a client that is interested in TAPS, we always get the question about how an activity is updated to reflect that it has been cancelled. So, how does TAPS cancel activities?

Cancelled work is work that you have decided not to perform. Typically the turnaround (TA) team doesn’t want to delete the activity because that would change the baseline hours. On the other hand, they also don’t want to progress the activity which would earn hours.

When planning a turnaround project you want to make sure you include all the tasks that will happen and even those that might happen. This is a great strategy in the planning phase because during the actual turnaround, you don't have time to add all of the “potential” activities that become necessary.

Now the dilemma becomes, how to cancel the tasks that your team doesn't need after all.

You could process the updates for cancelled activities using manual data entry, dealing with logic, manhours, and baselines, but if you handle a lot of these it becomes time consuming, tedious and frustrating. Lets face it, during a Turnaround that is just not a good idea. You might think that dissolving is good enough, but is it?

On a previous assignment I worked on a 6 week turnaround project with 500,000 man-hours. After each shift update we needed to get Earned Value reports to management. It was hard enough completing updates within a 2 hour time period along with getting the next shift's reports out, but having to do full earned value was even harder.

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy” - Helmuth von Moltke

When you are a scheduler on a Turnaround project you cannot expect everything to go as planned. Often at the end of your shift, when entering progress, you’ll find out something unexpected has happened in the schedule. For example, activities have been marked as completed while their predecessors are not yet started.

Working in the field is such an amazing and rewarding experience. I recently returned from a large turnaround project that was implemented by one of Emerald’s largest customers in Fort McMurray.