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Operational Readiness is an important topic for discussion since we

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want to have a smooth transition from the project to operations and

set the operating team up for the best chance of success. The
commissioning team isn’t responsible entirely for operational
readiness, but does play a large role in the operational readiness
process given that they’re the last phase of the project, and setting the
operations team up for success. At in-service date, the owner’s
operating team assumes care, custody, and control of the new facilities.
They need to be prepared for continued operation and maintenance of
the new assets. For additional information about setting your projects to
be a success, read this informative article Project Mindset Lifecycle

What is Operational Readiness?

Operational readiness is the process to ensure that the operations
team is prepared for the new responsibility, and is set up for the best
chance of success for continued operation and maintenance of the new
equipment. There are two groups of operations that need to be
considered – the local on-site operators as well as the central
control operators in the central control facility. Both of those
groups need to be prepared and ready for handover of the new
assets and operating of the new assets. Unfortunately, I’ve
worked on projects where the project team at the end of the
project just drops their tools and runs from site, leaving the
poor operators looking at each other wondering what to do
next with this new facility. And I don’t think that’s fair for
anyone. It’s certainly not the best value for the owner, and it’s
not a great way to hand over a project at the end. There does
need to be a soft hand-over, a transition from the project team
to the operating team, and the commissioning team does play
a large role in this handover. The commissioning team can
participate in many of the tasks, and provide information in
order to help facilitate a lot of the operational readiness
processes.
Documentation
Of course on any project, there are mountains and mountains of
documentation. It’s not always everyone’s most favourite aspect of the
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project, but it is definitely an important aspect of the project. And it’s

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important to provide the operating team with the right documents. The
ones that they’re going to need on a daily basis to operate the new
facilities, and to hand them over in an organized manner so that they
can understand the documents, where they are, what they need, and
how to find them when they are troubleshooting the system or
operating the systems. There’s a few components of documentation:
 The facility documentation – This is the documentation that the
operations team will need on a day-to-day basis. This would
include things like the station description document, the O&M
manuals for each of the pieces of equipment, probably most
importantly the red line or as built drawings defining the as built
configuration of the system. Those are an important set of
documents that the operating team will need as well.
 Operating Documentation and Historical Project
Information – Operatirs also need all the operating
documentation. This includes SOPs or the standard operating
procedures. These can largely be based on a lot of the
commissioning procedures. Some of the switching procedures
that the commissioning team created are similar operations that
the operating team will need to do during operation of the
facilities, as well as SWPs or safe work procedures. This would
include all the LOTO and PTW permit to work processes and
procedures that Operators are going to need to operate the
equipment. Documentation will also include a lot of the items that
maybe aren’t required on a day-to-day basis, but the operating
team may need for reference. This would be the historical project
information. They don’t necessarily need to know about that RFI
that was asking a question two years ago, but they do want to
have access to this information during troubleshooting. They
might want to go back and look at some of that historical project
information to get a bit more background on a particular failure
or piece of equipment. These are not necessarily organized in
some sort of manner, but does need to be archived somewhere
so that operations can access this historical information if
needed. All the construction turnover packages are required, all
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the quality control processes, construction quality documents

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would be archived all the commissioning turnover package

information, test procedures, test results, all the recordings and
data that was gathered, operators may or may not need that
information at some point in the future for troubleshooting. They
wouldn’t need it on a day-to-day basis, but they would still need
access to it just in case.
 Data Management System – For all of this information, you
need to establish where this documentation is archived. With the
magnitude of information that’s produced on projects these days,
the best is to do this in an electronic system. It used to be in the
past that binders were printed out, and then delivered to as a
room full of binders to the operating team. Some seem to prefer
that, but with even more and more information, it needs to be an
electronic system so it’s searchable and can be organized in a
logical manner so that people can find the information that
they’re looking for when they need it.
Site Operating Personnel and Site Support
One aspect to consider for operational readiness is the site operating
personnel and site support. The commissioning team can support this.
A staffing plan may exist if there’s already an operating team that’s
assuming responsibility of the new facilities, but you may need to add
additional staff within that operating structure, and you need to
prepare a staffing plan in advance. The reason I say that the
commissioning team can help with this is ideally the commissioning
team and the operating team can collaborate, and it’s worked very well
on some projects I’ve worked on in the past, where individuals that are
on the commissioning team stay at the facility and become the
operating team. All that information that’s gathered or learned during
commissioning is beneficial if that group can stay there, and continue
to be the operational group as well. You can find some synergies
between the two staffing plans of the commissioning team and the
operations team.
If you’re working in a remote location, other staffing plan
considerations may be a staff rotation cycle if individuals are going in
for two weeks at a time and out for one week.
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A common problem at the end of a project is as people start to see the

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end of the project coming, they’re starting to look for their new role.
They don’t want to be left out and left at the end of the project without
a role going forward. You may find that some people are leaving the
project before it’s actually complete, and because of that you may need
to implement some sort of staff retention strategy to pre-determine
where individuals will transition to. That way, if they know that in six
months when the project’s over they’re going to be part of this
organization, then they’re less likely to leave the project at the end to
try and find that next role. That’s a consideration that might need to be
put in place.
Transportation and Accommodation
An aspect to consider also is transportation and accommodation. If it’s
a remote location that the facility is located, where will operating staff
live? Is accommodation required near site and how will they travel to
and from site? Some of these things need to be thought about before
the in-service date to prepare operations for operation of the facilities.
Maintenance Contracts and IT Operational Support
Maintenance contracts are another consideration – if some of the work
will be done in-house or some of the maintenance work may be
contracted out. You may need to have some maintenance contracts in
place at the in-service date to continue with maintenance tasks. That
could be simple things like lubricating equipment, replacing filters and
belts, those types of items.
There might be also more specialized site support required if you’re
managing infrastructure maintenance or regulatory compliance. You
may need some specialized skills like IT operational support or other
types of specialized support on-site for more specialized tasks.
Alarm Grouping
From an operating process and procedures
standpoint, something to consider even during
design is the alarm grouping. Often I see that the
design engineers categorize alarms as either priority
one, priority two, or priority three not necessarily
considering that at in-service date, a priority one alarm is
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going to generate a call out. And if the alarms aren’t grouped correctly
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or are spuriously generating priority one alarms at two o’clock in the

morning, operations team will get pretty frustrated pretty quickly.
If they’re being called out needlessly during the night for unjustified
priority one alarms, that definitely needs some collaboration between
the operations team to make sure that the alarm grouping is correct.
And that the right issues with the system are in fact generating a call
out and waking up people in the middle of the night.
Operating Process and Procedures
You may have an instance where there’s a
performance guarantee period of the contract that
runs in parallel with the warranty phase, and there
may need to be some established processes to
gather information during that performance
guarantee period for final contract closeout. The
engineering team and the commercial team will need
to work closely with the operating team to make sure
that the right information is being gathered, the right
data is available in order to make an assessment of
how the system is performing to determine final
contract close out.
Control Center Operators
Another important aspect is the central control operators. The new
facilities will need to be integrated into their existing operator advisory
tools. If there’s an EMS (emergency management system) or SCADA
systems that the new system is incorporating with at the central
control, that needs to be built up in advance so that the central control
group can monitor the new facilities.
There may be several system operating studies that are required in
order to determine how to operate the new facility with the existing
facilities. Normal operating procedures are developed out of those
system operating studies.
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Communication procedures need to be established in regards to local

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operators versus central control operators, and what is the decision

making process when there’s issues that are encountered or when the
system needs to be adjusted for operation, how do those protocols all
work?
With the immense amount of data that’s generated from the systems
these days, there’s a pile of information that’s coming to the central
control station. Data transfers and backups are a consideration as well.
How is all this data received, how is it managed, how is it backed up,
how is it controlled?
Safety/Environment/Security
Safety is of course an important aspect of operational readiness, please
read Safety During Commissioning for more information, watch the video
discussion and learn from Q&A portion. There would have been
procedures as part of the project related to emergency response plans,
spill response plans, environmental compliance permits, safety
compliance. These would have existed for the project, but they’ll need
to be modified slightly for in-service assets. The project team and the
commissioning team can help with some of this to transition these
project specific plans and procedures to operational plans and
procedures at in-service date.
One item that will definitely change is the access management plan. If
there are several people coming and going from the project (this could
be hundreds of people coming and going from the project), that
definitely changes at the in-service date, where there’s only a handful of
people that are coming and going from the plant. Things like access
management plans will change slightly at in-service date.
Training
A large component of operational readiness is also training. There may
be aspects of training that the contractor or vendor is provided. The
contractor may provide a series of classroom and field training sessions
to train the on-site operators. There may also be aspects of training
that the owner provides – if there’s new safety protocols that need to
be implemented or things such as that, then the owner sets up some of
the training sessions.
The central control operators will need training as well. The new
systems will be integrated into existing systems. There will be different
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operating procedures, and the control desk operators will need to

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know how to manage and control the new facilities.

Please feel free to check out our training here:
Electrical Commissioning Course: Step-by-Step Training Program
Mechanical Commissioning Training Course
Regulatory and Other Compliance
In our last webinar, we spoke about cyber security compliance and the
level of effort that is required in order to achieve NERC compliance.
Ongoing cyber security compliance is also a concern as well and the
operating team needs to be set up for success to continue with ongoing
cyber security compliance, please read the detailed information about
Cyber Security in this article Cyber Security During Commissioning. The
operating team will need to understand what is required to maintain
compliance, or at least establish a dedicated cyber security team to
maintain compliance. As we spoke about last time, the software
management can be a huge task for maintaining compliance, for
monitoring software patches, assessing and implementing all software
patches to keep the system compliant.
Data Systems
Current data systems are a consideration as well. If there’s data that’s
gathered to confirm contract close out, data systems may need to be
put in place to record this information.
Another example might be a TFR (transient fault recorder). On the last
project I worked on, there was a system-wide transient fault recorder
that was monitoring and controlling all the different data points of the
system. The new system we were working on had to be integrated into
the existing TFR in order to monitor the new system and look at all the
changing parameters within the system.
EAM Implementation- Equipment Asset Management
EAM is always a big consideration and a large amount of work is to set
The
up. An EAM system is the equipment asset management system.
operations team will require an electronic system to
store operating data and manage maintenance of the
new facilities.
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The asset management system contains all the

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operational information on the system. This would be

things such as the nameplate data, system hierarchy,
basically anything that requires maintenance within
the system. That could be any anything down to a fire
extinguisher. For example, a fire extinguisher needs
routine inspections to make sure that it hasn’t
expired or rotating the cylinder so chemical inside
isn’t settling at the bottom of the tank. Anything and
everything that requires maintenance or activities to
be done on them is loaded into the asset
management system. This information is used for the
work management system. As work is required or
warranty items or maintenance items are required on
any of the equipment, the work management system
will generate a work order for maintenance tasks or
for warranty requirements. Any routine inspections
that are required for preventative maintenance, if
there’s a six-month overhaul or an annual overhaul
where a machine is completely disassembled, and
there’s a visual inspection that needs to take place, all
those tasks are loaded into the work management
system so that the work orders are generated at the
proper frequency in order to ensure that work is
conducted when it needs to be conducted.
The work management system will also generate all the work orders for
maintaining regulatory compliance. If there’s software patches that
need to be updated or hardware that needs to be replaced because it’s
obsolete, the work management system will generate work orders for
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the work. The EAM system is controlling and managing all the data of
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the new assets and helping the operations team ensure that the right
tasks are being conducted on the equipment at the right time. This will
ensure that warranty requirements are being met and ensure that
operations and the owner receives the best value out of the assets
because the correct preventative maintenance activities are being
conducted.
A critical spares assessment is conducted. Any of the spares that are
determined to be needed on site are loaded into the EAM system. Even
something like a spare sitting on a shelf requires periodic maintenance.
If it needs to be rotated or lubricated, then the work management
system will generate the task orders or work orders in order to
maintain the spares.
The EAM system will contain a lot of data. Data backup is an important
aspect to consider for EAM as well.
You’ll also need to determine an obsolescence strategy. Most of the
systems that are being installed these days are computer-based
systems, and eventually everything becomes obsolete. You can build a
brand new system, a computer-based system, and within five years it’s
obsolete. Something to think about in an obsolescence strategy is how
iare systems going to be maintained. If you can no longer get
replacement parts, if you can no longer get software patches, then you
therefore aren’t NERC compliant. As equipment becomes obsolete, how
is that going to be dealt with?
Equipment or Materials
Equipment, and materials are an important consideration for
operational readiness. There’s certain levels of consumables that the
operations team will need such as lubricants or filters or belts. You
need to determine what consumables are required, the rate of
consumption, and where consumables will be stored. Ss an external
supply contract required? In order to have these consumables on-site
are they stored on-site or is it just in time delivery?
Special Tools and Equipment
Some of the maintenance tasks will also require special tools or special
equipment. If there are certain handling fixtures that are required for
annual maintenance, then these will need to be planned for and
purchased and available at the in-service date. Tools such as a crane or
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a boom lift may be required for certain maintenance activities, and the
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operations team will need to review the required tasks and list the
special tooling that is required. Some of these items can have a long
procurement timeline, and they need to be planned for in advance so
that they’re available at in-service.
And of course, all safety PPE must be available.
Even simple things such as the plant furniture, appliances, fridges,
lunchrooms, and basic equipment needs to be purchased. The
operating desks, operating chairs, office desks, chairs, lunchroom
equipment all these items need to be planned for so operations are
happy and comfortable in the new facilities.
Commissioning
From a commissioning aspect, there’s a few things to consider for
operational readiness. The formal transfer of care, custody, and control
documentation needs to be established. It’s not as simple as just
completing commissioning and handing the owner the keys, more
details about commissioning can be found here What is
Commissioning? There is a process to be able to assume responsibility
and continued operation of the facilities. It should be a formal process,
and this should be defined in advance, so that it’s simply execution of
the formal handover from one group to the other.
There may need to be some service level operating agreements
established between local operators and central control operators.
Type A/B Deficiency Process
The commissioning team can help with definition of Type-A and Type-B
deficiency classification that’ll take place during the project. But where
it becomes critical is a Type-C deficiency, because a Type-C deficiency is
something that’s defined as an item that can be fixed after hand over to
the owner. You definitely want agreement with the owner and the
operating team on what is a Type-C deficiency and having them agree
on what is actually on that list. You don’t want to get to the end of the
project and have a big long list of Type-C deficiencies that the owner
feels aren’t Type-C deficiencies, and should in fact be Type-B
deficiencies. That’s definitely going to delay your handover. You want to
have a close collaboration at the end of the project to establish items
that are going to be fixed during the warranty phase after hand over to
the owner. A lot of these items may be Type-C deficiencies that are
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lingering from construction. They could be minor dents on the wall or

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paint damage. The construction group will manage a lot of those. Some
of them may be commissioning related, but the groups need to work
together to establish the Type C deficiency process.

Operational Readiness
Operational readiness is a structured process of ensuring the operations team acquires the
tools, skills and documentation to operate and maintain a newly completed project.

Therefore, it’s crucial to begin the operational readiness process early in the project planning
and execution phase. Additionally, starting early in the project helps in budgeting for
additional resources needed and mitigates unforeseen circumstances.

(Image source: spe.org)

To ensure an efficient building project that meets the standards required, it's advisable to run
operational readiness procedures throughout the five stages of the building process. The five
phases include:

1. Preliminary studies
2. Design and engineering
3. Procurement
4. Construction
5. Project closeout and hand over

Whereas the pre-commissioning activities and the actual commissioning process can start
during the project closeout phase, the best practice for operational readiness is to run it
throughout the building project. This approach ensures the facility handover is based on
accurate documentation collected throughout the project.
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In terms of role assignment, most readinessnactivities
Only are performed by the client's team,
while an external specialist often does the commissioning. But in essence, combining
operational readiness and commissioning is all about ensuring proper documentation,
implementation, and transition for each building phase to simplify the project handover to the
client and operations team.

The commissioning team ensures all critical documentation is readily available for the
operations readiness team when the time comes to hand over the facility.

Components of an Operational Readiness

Process
A number of factors are involved in operational readiness that ensure a successful transition
from project implementation to operations. They include:

Documentation:
Documentation can be complex and confusing without a structured tool for collating project
documents. Additionally, the operations team will use your project's documentation for
reference during the handover process and subsequent facility management. The critical
documents needed by the operations team include:

1. Historical Project Data and Standard

Operating Information
The operations team will require your project's standard operating procedures, day-to-day
facility management information, historical information for each building phase. This would
include specifics such as Safe Working Procedures (SWPs), Lockout/Tagout (LOTO)
procedures, equipment maintenance procedures, and other information relevant to facility
management. Historical data is also critical for documentation because the operations team
can reference it for clarity on various aspects of the project.

2. Facility Documents
Facility documentation highlights the day-to-day procedures and practices that ensure the
smooth running of facility activities. This data will likely include equipment O&M manuals,
system test procedures, building structure, electrical and plumbing systems.

3. Building Site Operational and Support

Personnel
Another important aspect of your operational readiness process is having sufficient staff to
handle the operations and facility management. Operations and commissioning specialists
can collaborate on staffing since they were involved throughout the building project. In
addition, the commissioning team can choose to be on board with the project as an
operational team since they already have a comprehensive view.
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A common challenge experienced when building
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scouting for opportunities elsewhere, making the project handover process much harder.
Therefore, it’s essential to have a staff retention plan to ensure you don't lose talent.

4. Maintenance and Service Contracts

Planning for how and who will carry out maintenance work is also part of operational
readiness. For example, you need to have all maintenance contracts in place before you start
preparing the team for project handover, so they know who handles maintenance work.

Also, examine the agreements to understand how much work goes to in-house teams and how
much will be done by external service providers so you can assign tasks appropriately.

Planning for how and who will carry out maintenance work is also part of operational
readiness. For example, you need to have all maintenance contracts in place before you start
preparing the team for project handover, so they know who handles maintenance work.

Also, examine the agreements to understand how much work goes to in-house teams and how
much will be done by external service providers so you can assign tasks appropriately.

Central Control Operations

Each facility has a central control system that monitors and integrates the new facility into the
existing system. In most instances, you’ll need to prepare the operations team on the
following tools during the operation readiness process:

 Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) for monitoring and analyzing equipment
performance
 An Emergency Management System (EMS) for managing security and facility access
 Communication tools and procedures for reporting outstanding issues or system configuration
requests
 Data processing and backups for information that flows through the central control system

Safety and Environment Standards

Establish the procedures put in place for implementing and managing environmental and
safety standards. You'll need to train the operations team with these procedures before
handing over the facility from the project team:

 Emergency response procedures

 Environmental compliance standards and permits
 Personal safety standards
 Hazard material handling plan
 Access management procedures

Asset and Equipment Management System

An Equipment Asset Management system contains all operational data for managing the new
facility. This system includes equipment configurations, IT system inventory, security data,
nameplate information, and other necessary information for smooth facility operations.
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Implementing the components above into your
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project’s transition is done within the timelines set and provides smooth management of the
new facility.

Successful commissioning depends on how comprehensive the operational readiness process

is. Download our free guide to learn more about how to improve your operational readiness
and commissioning techniques.