Publications

Corrosion management and mitigation is critical for an industrial facility to function adequately, especially where assets are exposed to harsh operating conditions. Protective coatings have proven to be a versatile and cost effective solution for corrosion protection. Over several decades, the evolution of safer and more effective protective coating solutions have reduced operating costs significantly and helped to ensure assets run in a safe and efficient manner. Deterioration and breakdown of a protective coating or lining system is in general due to operating conditions the asset is subjected to and the microclimates they create. This creates a need to maintain and repair these coatings. Standard practice for industrial facilities has been to assign a fixed annual maintenance budget. Often, this budget is in proportion to the amount the plant depreciates in that year. This has a profound consequence in that new plants depreciate in value significantly in early life and are assigned substantial maintenance budgets in comparison to older plants have already undergone the majority of their depreciation and therefore are assigned smaller maintenance budgets. This is a fundamental disconnect from reality caused mainly due to lack of knowledge about corrosion costs. This paper reviews a maintenance management system that links a tablet based coating and corrosion survey tool with a cloud based maintenance planning tool to provide the maintenance engineer with a legitimate, documented multi-year planning schedule. The tool enables real time prioritization of coating maintenance that enables effective and efficient use of maintenance budgets. The tool also provides the documented evidence that accountants and executives need in-order to correctly align maintenance budgets with reality. In summary, this survey and planning system provides the maintenance engineer with all the necessary information to carryout cost effective maintenance – “When to Paint the Right Thing at the Right Time” Keywords: Maintenance, Coating Repair, Corrosion Audit, Risk Based Inspection, Protective Coating