Plant Walkdown Methodology

The plant walk down is a process of verifying the accuracy of plant, equipment, and spare parts data, by doing a physical walk down of the plant and collecting data to validate and update information that is available in the ERP or CMMS systems

A well-managed Plant Walk down addresses a variety of data issues such as:

• Asset Hierarchy Disorganization
• Missing and outdated Equipment data
• Inaccurate asset locations
• Missing or Inconsistent spare parts information
• Incorrect or missing data classification

The Plant walk down process typically has 5 phases:

• Familiarization: Review the Plant P&ID, and General Arrangement drawings to understand the plant layout, so that the planning can be done efficiently, as well as HSE requirements are met.
• Planning: A predefined plan is made for the walk down, prioritizing segments as needed and sequencing activities for higher efficiency and allocating the right resources to the appropriate tasks and equipment.
• Walk down Documentation Preparation: Appropriate screening, evaluation forms and check sheets are developed to guide the team and provide documentary evidence of assets. The documentation can also be done digitally utilizing mobile devices or tablets to improve speed, efficiency and accuracy.
• Post Walk down Assessment: All the information collected from the plant walk down is processed, which includes checks for completeness, drawing and analytical reviews as necessary, and identifies all items which require further research or documentation.
• System updates: Based on the information collected after walkdown, ERP, EAM / CMMS systems will be updated, to ensure that any changes to P&IDs, asset information or MRO spares are reflecting correctly in the system for reference.

Benefits of a Plant Walkdown

• Plant Walkdowns match Virtual to Reality: With the plant walk down methodology, Enventure ensure that the physical plant data accurately matches the digital plant data. This ensures folks managing maintenance, inventory and supply chain have access to accurate information.
• Enables MRO cataloging: With many organizations, the MRO part information available in ERP or EAM systems are inadequate to even identify the part. With a walkdown, once the part is identified, it becomes easy to create a clean and enriched MRO catalog for that part.
• Accurate Asset Register: During plant walkdown the asset technical details like manufacturer name, Model number, Serial number and physical locations are verified and updated in the asset register. If any of the assets are moved or decommissioned also will be captured. This will help to have an accurate up to date asset register.
• Create Equipment BOMs: In many cases, the available documentation is inadequate to create an equipment BOM or associate spares to an asset. By doing a walkdown, the process of Equipment BOM creation becomes much more viable.