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Maintainance Planning PDF
Maintainance Planning PDF
MAINTENANCE
PLANNING
2 Maintenance 13
3 Preventive Maintenance 23
4 Predictive Maintenance 35
7 Overhauling Philosophy 55
INTRODUCTION
Maintenance work raises the level of equipment performance and availability but at the
same time it adds to more running costs. Hence, the maintenance management
objective will be to achieve the optimum balance between these effects, i.e. the balance
which maximize the department’s contribution to profitability.
The planning provides the guidelines within which maintenance actions can be carried
out. Before considering the procedure for determaining the ‘best’ maintenance plan, we
see the “policies” which lays the foundation for it.
© PMI, NTPC 1
Fixed time Replacement or Repair
This is only effective where the failure machanism of the item is clearly time dependent,
the item being expected to wear out within the life of the unit. The total costs of such
replacement are substantially less than those of failure replacement-repair i.e. replacing
just before failure.
An attractive concept is that the proper time for performing corrective maintenance ought
to be determinable by monitoring condition or/and performance, provided, of course, that
a readily monitorable parameter of deterioration can be found. The probabilistic element
in failure prediction is, therefore, reduced or eliminated and the item life is maximized
and the effect of failure is minimized.
At the extreme complex replacement items, the sophisticated condition monitoring, e.g.
vibration, shock pulse oil analysis, thermography can be used to great advantage. The
cost of instrumentation may be justified by high repair and unavailability costs.
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Operate-to-Failure Maintenance and Corrective Action
Opportunity Maintenance
This term is used for maintenance actions, taken after failure or during fixed time, or
condition based repair, but directed at items other than those that are the primary cause
of the repair. The policy is most appropriate for complex replaceable or continuously
operating items of high shut-down or unavailability costs and typically, might take the
form of operation to failure and specification of critical items to be dealt with that time.
By contrast with the preceding policies which aim to minimize the effect of failure, design
out maintenance aims to eliminate the cause of maintenance (failure). Clearly this
requires engineering action rather than maintenance action, but is is often part of
maintenance department’s responsibility. This is usually a policy for areas of high
maintenance costs which exist either because of poor design or the equipment is being
used outside its specifications thus designed condition monitoring helps and the choice
is then between the cost of re-design or the cost of recurring maintenance.
The maintenance plan for a plant should be built by selecting for each unit, the best
combination of the policies outlined earlier and then by coordinating these policies in
order to make the best use of resources and time. Many factors affect selection of policy
appropriate for each item, and this, together with the large number of items usually
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involved, gives rise to the need for some systematic procedure for determining the ‘best
plant’ for a particular period of time.
This is important but usually tedious and difficult because of complexity and size. It is
suggested that the classification into units and items should be based on replace ability
and function. Identification is usually in some form of numerical coding.
COLLECTION OF INFORMATION
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2. MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT
Define Quality
Jobs Control
OBJECTIVE
Effective Utilisation
Of Resources
Schedule Work
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SPECIAL ASPECTS OF MAINTENANCE OF THERMAL PLANTS
The main objects of a Thermal Power Plant Maintenance Organisation is to ensure the
greatest availability and reliability of the operating units at an optimum cost. Reliability is
defined as the probability of the system or a machine unit performing its purpose
adequately for the period of time intended, under the operating conditions encountered.
A fairly high degree of reliability can be achieved by several means such as a mature
design, which takes care of all possible operating variables and abnormal transients; (b)
redundancy techniques which use dual elements in series such as dual valves in certain
steam and water lines. (c) redundancy, by switchover by means of stand by equipment;
(d) periodic marginal testing of certain types of equipment; (e) reliability specifications
specify the requirements of spare parts to meet the most adverse operating conditions.
The means by which a maintenance manager can improve the reliability and availability
of the equipment are :
(a) By ensuring that the quality of maintenance work carried out is the best possible.
(b) By ensuring that regular periodic inspections are carried out on the most
vulnerable equipment and failure of which can result in partial or total shutdown
of the operating units.
(c) By specifying the correct quality of spare parts to meet the operating conditions.
Maintenance work carried out on the different equipments must ensure that the design
criteria like turbine wheel clearances, bearing and clearance sizes, expansion
allowances etc. are restored to the original specified values. Any repairs carried out
should take note of the cause of the wear and whether any means can be developed to
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abate the wear in order to prolong its life. It may be by a change in material, change in
construction, or fabrication, change in design, change in operating practices or a
combination of these. Welding technology has in the recent yeas advanced to such
extent that there is no machine item which cannot be satisfactorily fabricated to give a
long life.
Periodic Inspection
There are many predictive maintenance instruments available in the market today – in
our country as well as abroad – like vibration analysers, monitoring equipment, ultrasonic
flaw detectors, leakage detectors, corrometers (thickness detectors for monitoring wear)
ultrasonic flowmeters, shock tubemeter, gas chromotograph for transformer gas analysis
etc. With the aid of these, the maintenance requirement and the time can be fairly
accurately predicted.
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Maintenance Spares
The specification of the maintenance spares items which have worn out or had
premature failure must be studied in detail so that a better one aimed at giving a longer
availability consistent with costs may be specified subsequently.
It is not merely enough to specify the item unless care is taken to check those
specification when the material is received. Facilities are needed for this purpose by
means of a testing laboratory attached to the plant or at least nearby.
Due to the import restrictions for the import of sometimes even critical spares, a greater
need has arisen for the development of these items indigenously. But this process is not
so easy and requires a great initiative and capability on the part of local manufacturer
and co-operation from the buyer. It takes sometimes years to establish the usefulness of
the indigenous substitute. The main bottlenecks in the indigenous development are :-
Some technically less competent but enterprising manufacturers come forward to supply
certain items at a lower cost compared to that of established manufacturer’s, who are not
very keen on developing certain items for which there is not a large annual demand. The
use of these spares manufactured by such parties invariably lead to premature failures
which sometimes prove very costly.
A properly maintained inventory control system should ensure against stock run out
position at all times.
Lubrication Aspects
Most of the operating and maintenance troubles with the rotating equipments can be
overcome if the correct lubrication aspect is taken note of. Every component of the
machine that needs lubrication, must have a lubrication schedule and that schedule must
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be adhered to and strictly implemented. The correct lubricant must be chosen for every
type of application. The lubricant must be periodically examined and tested for decay
sludge and oxidation etc. all of which will indicate the type of abnormally existing in that
component. Also the tests will indicate whether the lubricant has completed its useful life
and needs replenishment.
With the nature of maintenance work known, the actual job should be well planned
break-up of the job contents should be made, resources analysed and then schedules
made. In a complete unit overhaul the percentage survey should be made from the data
available by performance checks, operating conditions and physical evaluation. This
survey will reveal the quantum of work involved and will give a reasonable estimate of
the job to be carried out based on this survey, the materials required for repair and
replacements should be listed out and ordered for timely procurement. A detailed Gantt
(Bar) Chart should be made identifying each major activity and the likely duration of the
work, taking into account the resource available. A thorough inspection should be carried
out immediately after the shutdown of the machine to ascertain the abnormalities and
find out whether the scope of the work is more or less the same as what has been made
in the earlier survey. Sometimes the work may be more also. This inspection will indicate
the vital critical areas where the resources need to be mobilized and optimized. After
complete mobilization of resources, a detailed PERT programme should be made to
ascertain the critical activity and slack activities. This will enable to control the progress
of the outage work and optimization of resources as the job progresses. A constant
review should be made to ensure that the job progresses as per schedule. Network can
be made for large turbo-generator overhauls in order to optimize the resources and
complete the overhaul in time.
In a thermal plant, the main areas of maintenance on boiler are the fuel burning
equipment, ash handling equipments, soot-blowing system and the auxiliaries which
handle corrosive gas and erosive dust particles. Turbo-generator maintenance is again
based on predictive methods and performance checks during operation. The major
repairs and maintenance is normally in the boiler.
The fuel burning equipment consists of the coal silos, feeders, pulverisers, exhauster of
primary airfan (as the case may be), P.F. Pipes, burners, air registers need to be
thoroughly overhauled during the boiler overhaul which is governed by statutes. The
pulverisers, exhausters and feeders should be periodically inspected according to the
statistically predicted lives so that the parts are replaced just in time. Light load periods
© PMI, NTPC 9
and weekend outages should be made use of, as far possible, for this purpose and also
for carrying out preventive maintenance.
Ash handling equipments need maintenance because of the highly erosive nature of ash.
Items like ash conveyance mains, branch and hopper gates, ash pumps need to be
inspected periodically to ascertain their performance.
A thorough check of all pressure parts during a boiler overhaul will reveal all
abnormalities like internal corrosion external corrosion and erosion. Steam impingement
due to soot blowing steam should be guarded against.
Air heaters, especially of the lyingstorn type, need thorough overhaul during unit
outages; the corroded elements must be replaced, the seals must be adjusted properly
and the caring should be made free from leaks.
The drafts fan must be thoroughly inspected periodically to check any corrosion or
erosion and necessary precautionary measures should be taken. Weekend outages can
be utilized for the inspection of ID Fans, Dust collectors and Air preheaters in a planned
manner.
(a) All high pressure parts like turbine blades, nozzle blocks shrouds, flange bolts,
stop vale and control valve bolting, control valve stems, rotor etc. must be
subjected to ultrasonic test to detect any flaw. Casings must be subjected to dye
penetration checks at every change in cross section to reveal any cracks.
(b) Wheel clearances, bearings – sleeve and thrust – their condition and clearance,
alignment etc. must be checked properly and must be restored to manufacturers
specification.
(c) All the control mechanisms, governing system and protective devices must be
thoroughly overhauled and set to the recommended values.
(d) The turbine oil system must be checked and oil analysed to ensure that is good
for resume.
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(e) The insulation specifications must be strictly adhered to in order to avoid any
undue differential expansion and the consequence thereof.
In all the jobs listed above, continuous research and development is possible to improve
the life of the components. After all, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Even if
one component in an equipment has a very poor life, the availability of that equipment
becomes limited to that extent. The cause of every failure should be studied whether it is
because of corrosion, erosion, vibration, overheating, poor workmanship, improper
material etc. With certain improvements in materials, the life can be definitely improved
and a good workmanship can ensure the reliability. Continuous research will enable to
improve the design. This is where the ‘TEROTECHNOLOGY’ comes into the picture.
This is defined as “Insulation, Commissioning maintenance and replacement of plant
machinery and equipment and of feed back to operation and design thereof and to
related subjects and practices”. This comprises of systems approach of multi-disciplinary
engineering and management facets and includes the designing out of maintenance.
Modern plant of recent times is engineered to automatic operation of several
components and is designed in such a manner that a large regiment of competent
engineers and techniques are required to maintain it to give optimum results.
One of the causes of poor design is traced out to lack of practical knowledge and poor
orientation of the plant designers. Emphasis is always laid on the performance design of
the equipment but the dewings for easy maintenance (known as maintainability of the
plant) have been absent. The only way of eliminating the trouble is to study the failures
and to redesign the plant and incorporate modifications to eliminate or minimize the
frequently occurring breakdowns due to faulty design. Theses changes must be
communicated to the manufacturer/designer so that he can take care of the same
through such feedbacks and incorporate them in the subsequent designs.
Core organization carrying out such feedback is GETSCO who is always in touch with
the uses of their equipment and periodically advise them about the expected troubles
which might have been encountered by one of their clients. This enables the other users
to incorporate the precautionary measures to overcome that trouble. It is hoped that
similar feedback systems are being developed by our Indian Manufacturers like BHEL
and HE(I)L which will enable the units to operate at a high availability.
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AIMS & OBJECTIVES OF MAINTENANCE
(b) To safe guard investment by minimizing rate of deteriorating and achieving this at
optimum cost through budgeting and control.
For achieving these we need to examine our requirements. In a thermal power station
the maintenance ranges from a pattern of breakdown maintenance coupled with annual
overhauls to meet statutory and other requirements to more elaborate schemes of
preventive maintenance and detailed planning of major overhauls.
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2. Maintenance
INTRODUCTION
TYPES
b. Breakdown Maintenance.
i. Preventive maintenance
ii. Scheduled maintenance
Preventive Maintenance
It is carried out on each of the sub-assemblies of the unit in turn and comprises of
repetitive jobs like lubrication, changing of fast wearing parts etc. Preventive
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maintenance is a process of eliminating emergency repairs. It involves thorough
inspection of plant items, which may or may not directly affect plant output. The time of
such inspection is judged by analyzing the plant history records.
The advantages of such analysis are:-
Scheduled Maintenance
It is carried out at predetermined fixed periods with the works planned in advance and is
scheduled with due regard to maintenance and availability of other stations in the grid. It
also covers the statutory inspection and maintenance of equipment under the Boiler Act
and Factory Act.
Breakdown Maintenance
The timing of the individual job can not be foreseen in this case. Restoring the equipment
back into operation speedily is the over riding consideration here and procedures are
designed to expedite rendering of such services.
Major overhauls, inspection etc. which are done when indicated by monitoring of plant
performance. This is called capital maintenance and is carried out at periodical intervals
of two or three years depending upon the type of the equipment and its usage.
Let’s face it, machine break down – Production management must provide for this
eventuality in a way that maintains the reliability of the production system at reasonable
levels without “going broke” just keeping machines running. We are faced with another
problem of attempting to strike a balance between cost factors. When machines break
down, these kinds of costs occur, machine down time and possible loss of potential
sales, idle direct and indirect labour delays in other processes that may depend for
© PMI, NTPC 14
material, supply on the machine that is down, increased scrap, customer dissatisfaction
from possible delays in deliveries, and the actual cost of repairing the machine.
We can view the problem as one of maintaining the reliability of the entire production
system. In general this reliability can be maintained and improved by:-
a. Increasing the size of repair facilities and crews so that average machine down
time is reduced because maintenance crews are less likely to be busy when a
breakdown occurs.
b. Utilising preventive maintenance where practical parts are replaced before they
fail. It is often possible to do this on second and third shifts and, thereby, not
interface with normal production schedules. Whether preventive maintenance is
worthwhile or not depends on the distribution of breakdowns and the relation of
preventive maintenance time to repair time, as we shall see.
c. Providing for slack in the system at critical stages so that we have parallel paths
available. This means excess capacity so some machines can be down without
affecting the delay costs to any great degree.
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BREAKDOWN THE DISTRIBUTIONS
Breakdown time distribution data are basic if we hope to be able to formulate any
general policies concerning maintenance. Break down time distributions show the
frequency with which machines have maintenance free performance for a given number
of operating hours, and are ordinarily shown as distributions of the fraction of
breakdowns that exceed a given run time. Breakdown time distributions are developed
from distributions of run time free of breakdowns, such as Figure 2, Figure-3 shows three
breakdown time distributions. These distributions take different shapes, depending on
the nature of the equipment with which we are dealing. For example, a simple machine
with few moving parts would tend to break down at nearly constant intervals following the
last repair. That is, exhibits minimum variability in breakdown item distributions. Curve of
Figure-2 would be fairly typical of such a situation. A large percent of the breakdowns
occur at the extremes. If a machine were more complex, having many parts, each part
would have a failure distribution., When all of those were grouped together in a single
distribution of the breakdown time of the machine for any cause, we would expect to find
greater variability because the machine breakdowns could occur shortly after the last
repair or any time. Therefore, for the same average breakdown time Ta, we would find
much wider variability of breakdown time as in curve ‘b’ of Figure 2.
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To complete the picture of representative breakdown time distributions, curve ‘C is
representative of distributions with the same average breakdown time ‘T’, we would find
much wider variability. A large proportion of the other hand, a large number of machines
have a long running life after repair. Curve ‘C’ may be typical of machines that require
‘ticklish’ adjustments. If the adjustments are made just right, the machinery may run for a
long time; but it is not, readjustments and repair may be necessary almost immediately.
FIGURE – 3
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obtain curve a in Figure 3, we simply subtract successively the percentages that occur at
different free run times. We can see by examinations of Figure 3 that almost 60 percent
of the breakdowns exceeded the average breakdown time ‘Ta’ and that very few of the
breakdowns occurred after 2 Ta.
Let us assume a preventive maintenance policy which provides for an inspection and
perhaps replacement of certain critical parts after the machine has been running for a
fixed time. ‘Tm’ to accomplish the preventive maintenance cycle. A certain proportion of
the breakdowns will occur before the fixed cycle has been completed. For these cases
the maintenance crew will repair the machine, taking an average time ‘Ts’ for the repair.
This is the repair cycle. These two patterns of maintenance are diagrammatically shown
in Figure 4. The probability of occurrence of the two different cycles depends on the
specific breakdown time distribution of the machine and the length of the standard
preventive maintenance period. If the distribution has low variability and the standard
period is perhaps 80 percent of the average run time without breakdowns. ‘T a’ actual
breakdown would occur rather infrequently and most cycles would be preventive
maintenance cycles. If the distribution were more variable, for the same standard
preventive maintenance period, more actual breakdowns would occur before the end of
the standard period. Obviously, shortening the standard period would result in fewer
actual breakdowns and lengthening it would have the opposite effect for any distribution.
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BREAK DOWN
FIGURE - 5
Assuming that either a preventive maintenance or a repair put the machine in shape for
a running time of equal probable length. More (6) has shown that the percent of machine
running time depends on the ratio of the standard maintenance period and the average
run time. ‘T a’ for the breakdown time distribution. Figure-5 shows the relations of the
percent of time that the machine is working and the ratio of the standard period to
average run time ‘T a’ for the three distributions of breakdown times shown in Figure-3.
Note that, in general when the standard period is short, say less than 50% of ‘Ta’ the
machine is working only a small fraction of time. This is because the machine is down so
often owing to preventive maintenance. As the standard period is lengthened more
actual breakdowns occur which require repair. For curves ‘b’ and ‘c’ this improves the
fraction of time the machine is running because the combination of preventive
maintenance time and repair time produces a smaller total down time.
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Curve ‘a’ however, has a peak in it, or an optimum preventive maintenance period which
maximize the percent of machine working time. What is different above curve ‘a’ / it is
based on the low variability breakdown time distribution from Figure 3. For curve ‘a’
lengthening the maintenance period beyond about 70 percent of ‘T a’ reduces the fraction
of machine working time because actual machine breakdowns are more likely. For the
more variable distributions of curves ‘b’ and ‘c’ this is not true because breakdowns are
more likely throughout their distributions than they are in curve ‘a’. Comparable curves
can be constructed showing the percent of time that the machine is in a state of
preventive maintenance and the percent of time machine is being repaired because of
breakdown (6).
Some generalizations about preventive maintenance policy can be made through the
concepts we have developed. First, preventive maintenance is generally applicable to
machines with breakdown time distributions that have low variability then the
exponential, curve ‘b’ are in this category. The reasons is that low variability means that
we can predict with fair precision when the majority of breakdowns will occur. A standard
preventive maintenance period can then be set which anticipates breakdowns fairly well.
Equally important, however, is the relation of preventive maintenance time to repair time.
If it takes just as long to perform a preventive maintenance as it does to repair the
machine, there is no advantage in preventive maintenance, which has the effect of
reducing the amount of time that the machine can work. In this situation, the machine
spends a minimum amount of time being down for maintenance if we compare the
percent of the time a machine is working when repair time is greater than preventive
maintenance time and when the two times are equal. Both curves are based on the low-
variability distribution curve of Figure 3. Note that curve ‘d’ exhibits on optimum, but
curve ‘a’ does not. For curve ‘e’, the percent of time that the machine works continues to
increase as the standard maintenance period is lengthened which result in more repairs
and fewer preventive maintenance cycles. Clearly, there is no advantage in preventive
maintenance when ‘T m’ = ‘T s’ from the views point of maximum machine working time.
To sum up at this point, preventive maintenance is useful when breakdown time
distributions exhibit low variability and when the average time for preventive
maintenance is less than the average time for repair after breakdown.
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The Effect of Down time Costs:
Can modify the conclusions just stated, however, suppose that we are dealing with a
machine in a production line. If the machine breaks down, the entire line may be shut
down, with very high idle labour costs resulting in this situation, preventive maintenance
is more desirable than repair if the preventive maintenance can take place during second
or third shifts, vacations, or lunch hours when the line is normally down any way. This is
true even when T m = T s. The determination of the standard preventive maintenance
period would require a different, but similar analysis in which the percent of machine
working time is expressed as a function of repair time only, since preventive
maintenance takes place outside of normal work time. An optimal solution would be one
that minimised the total of down time costs, preventive maintenance costs, plus
standard preventive maintenance periods and to justify making repairs more quickly (at
higher cost) when they do occur, job would not speed it up.
FIGURE - 6
In such cases, total down time might be shortened by overtime on multiple shifts and
weekends, with attendant higher costs. Optimal solutions would specify the standard
preventive maintenance period, the machine idle time, and the repair crew idle time,
striking a balance between down time cost and maintenance costs.
A special case exists when sales are such that the plant must operate at full capacity to
meet demand. Under circumstances, reduced machine working time due to repair and
preventive maintenance reduces the number of units that can be sold and, therefore,
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affects income. Optimal maintenance policy is then even more heavily weighed in favour
of shortening standard preventive maintenance periods and pouring in more effort to
repair machines quickly when break-downs occur. Morse has developed basis models
which fit this special case in which an income less maintenance cost function is
maximised.
© PMI, NTPC 22
3. Preventive Maintenance
INTRODUCTION
Total maintenance planning embraces all activities to plan, control and record all work
done in connection with keeping an installation to the acceptable standard. This includes
Preventive Maintenance and Corrective Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, Periodic
Overhaul, Planned Replacement, Spares Provisioning, Workshop functions, Repair
Policies, Plant History Compilation, Plant Modification to facilitate maintenance of spare
parts etc. In a fully controlled situation only, the time spent on emergency work is
‘unplanned’ and this could well be less than 10% of available man hours in the
Maintenance Department. The three basic requirements of a Planned Maintenance
System are :
b. Systematic and timely manpower and material planning thereby curtailing the
overall Maintenance cost. In addition, the analysis of the systematic documented
performance data of the plant will enable to have an idea of works requiring
modifications and special attentions.
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Forms and Methodology
In order to have systematic compilation of the performance data of the Power Station
equipments and systematic preventive maintenance scheduling, certain forms have been
designed. In all there will be 9 forms, all listed below, to start with the system individual
forms are described and represented in the following pages :
h. Default Report
Each equipment has its separate card. Similar equipments, say six I.D. Fans in the
Power Station have only one card. The card will contain Information about equipment
specifications, manufacturer and its catalogue No. & purchase order reference etc. The
reverse side of the Card has information regarding Equipment Assembly, Drawing
Number, Lubricant details and Spare Parts specification details etc.
Individual Equipment have its separate Card for logging its Running Hours. This Card
contains information about Monthwise Running Hours, Cumulative Running Hours since
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last maintenance, Cumulative, Total Running Hours, Idle Hours, Breakdown Hours and
Type of Maintenance Due and Done. The Card is printed on both sides. Each Card has 2
years Running Hours Record for the equipment.
a. Nature of Breakdown
b. How rectified
c. Assembly wise Hours spent for breakdown on the equipment. In the reverse of
the Card, it contains information about Reporting Time, complete Repair Time,
Down Time, Main-hours and Cost Details etc. Each breakdown has a separate
card.
This Card contains information regarding Number of Breakdown and the time spent on
breakdowns on a particular equipment during a month and also year wise. Each card
has information for 8 years. On the reverse of it, it has yearwise record of assembly wise
breakdowns and total maintenance cost details etc. Each equipment has separate card.
This Form contains yearly information about monthwise breakdown numbers and time
spent on breakdowns, type of maintenance when due and done, and cumulative
Running Hours after Maintenance. Space has been provided for six equipments in one
sheet. Information of identical equipments irrespective of the Unit is recorded for analysis
in this sheet.
This card has information about the points to bee checked, periodically to the Preventive
Maintenance and Advance Intimation Ticket. On the reverse of the card it has
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information about the man and Material and Period spent details. Each Equipment has a
separate Card for individual periodically.
OBJECTIVES
Provides at a glance :
e. The importance of each composite part of the item based on the above factors.
h. The importance of each composite part of the item based on the above factors.
From the above data, priorities, nature and frequency of PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE
JOBS for each assembly of every item can be determined on a very objective basis, as
also Cost Data of each Breakdown.
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ANNUAL PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE
a. Provides an Annual Programme for the Maintenance Division for the job to be
carried out at every week for the whole year.
c. Gives at one glance not only the Maintenance Plan for the year but also the work
done at any given time during the year, like jobs, not done, jobs pending to be
done, number of breakdowns and the Man and Machine Hours lost.
d. A basis for revising and Maintenance Schedules for the coming years, re-
scheduling of the programme etc.
a. To ensure that the Maintenance Staff’s time is not lost in planning and the
Machines are made available by providing an Advance Intimation to the operation
Department to spare the Equipment.
b. To provide specific type written instructions for all the Maintenance Jobs to be
done.
d. To work out the cost of the Maintenance Spares etc. for each Maintenance Job
done.
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Preventive Maintenance Progress Schedule
Default Report
a. To help the Department to keep a watch on those equipment that are not
serviced so that at the time of next servicing more attention is paid.
b. To analyses the reasons for the programme NOT being carried out.
e. To enable the Management to take timely corrective action, when programme are
not followed either by re-scheduling the plan or endorsing stricter control.
This contains information about the nature of breakdown, reporting and completion time
of the breakdown on a particular equipment. All slips are in triplicate serially numbered
and bound.
© PMI, NTPC 28
BADARPUR THERMAL POWER STATION BREAK DOWN JOB CARD
Equipment Ref. :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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1. Rotor 6. Frame & Foundation
2. Stator 7. Cable & Cable Box
3. End Shields 8. Power Circuit
4. Fan 9. Control Circuit
5. Bearings
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Hours spent for breakdown Total Hrs.
MTCE on equipment
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Equipment No. Location Date 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Man M/C
© PMI, NTPC 29
PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE INSPECTION BOARD
BADARPUR THERMAL POWER STATION
(To be Returned By Control Room to Maintenance In charge)
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Week No. Week Commencing
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Badarpur Thermal Power Station
Following Equipment is required for Maintenance as per Schedule shown S.E. (O) S.C.E
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The above Equipment: From Day / Date …………. Hrs……………
Will be available for
Maintenance To Day / Date ……………. Hrs. ……………
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Week No. Week Commencing
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Maintenance Job Card
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Check ( ) it OK – Mark (X) if further Repair needed
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INSPECTION LIST
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Names / TKT Nos./Grades STARTED COMPLETED Man Hrs. M/C Down Remarks
--------------------------- --------------------------- Spent Time spent
Date Time Date Time
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Additional Notes
© PMI, NTPC 31
BADARPUR THERMAL POWER STATION
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Code Cat. Trade Type Freq- Running ESTD Week Man M/C Remarks
No. of uency Hrs. Hrs. work Done Date Hrs. Down
MTCE -------------------------------------- Spent Time
1 2 3 4 Start Finish
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© PMI, NTPC 32
BADAR THERMAL POWER STATION
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© PMI, NTPC 33
BADARPUR THERMAL POWER STATION
DEFAULT REPORT
Code No. Description Cat. Trade Type of Freq- Running Eat. Over due Remarks
Maint. Uency Hours Hrs. Since
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© PMI, NTPC 34
4. Predictive Maintenance
INTRODUCTION
Quite a deal a work has been put in this area particularly in U.S.A. and material
published. Unless recorded extensive data is available about malfunctioning of a
machine or a plant operating under varied conditions, it will not be possible to pin point
the source of trouble. Since it may be a costly affair to try-out such tests on costlier
machines and plants, it would be better they are done on models through simulation
techniques. In the succeeding prographs this and other observational technique
including signature analysis are briefly discussed with regard to their application, utility
and limitations.
Simulation Techniques
Model study has been a major tool in design. An intensive Model-study is required for
studying or preparing models in order to apply the results obtained on them to the
prototypes of the actual systems. Models are broadly classified under iconic, analog and
symbolic.
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SIGNATURE ANALYSIS
Introduction
With the increasing cost of power plants and their idle time, the observational techniques
available to ensure their continued serviceability is being greatly expanded. Some of
these techniques require basic provisions to be built into the unit for observation such as
tapings for parameter measurement or boroscope holes to view internal component
conditions. Others have been developed on the basis of data already available. One
such later technique is Signature Analysis.
Signature Analysis is truly an age old technique. Our primitive fore fathers made use of
foot prints to track down animals while hunting in the forest. In aircraft maintenance, we
use this technique to track down sick or potentially sick engines on the basis of their
parameter plottings.
The main task in this type of analysis consists in transducing machinery vibration and
noise and converting them on to a frequency, domain graph, thus showing important
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frequencies attributable to particular events. No doubt this technique requires
sophisticated instrumentation and it may be generations before, we adopt this to every
plant in this country. Maintenance, preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance
are the three stages, every engineer has to understand well to know the limitations and
scopes. Signature analysis is on the horizon as a significant tool of potential. In the near
future it may well develop the capability of pinpointing early internal abnormalities before
damage results, thus permitting optimum repair scheduling. A data bank cataloging all
vibration and noise changes w.r.t. all the variables will help the future signature analysis
work, since much of the effort depends upon relating subtle vibration-pattern changes to
previously identified vibration causes. The figure below shows a schematic diagram of
the implementation.
A. Caution Signal
B. Experts Attention
The diagram helps in detecting a fault before a defined limit of severity has reached with
the help of secondary effects viz. Signatures, generated in the system in running
conditions. Observations relevant to signature analysis may lead to detection of
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malfunctions of various components, such as windings of a transformer or turbo
generators, rotors, bearings gears and foundations. Signature, as already said are varied
in nature like vibe rational, acoustical, thermal and/or chemical. Charts providing limits
and tolerance are available for different type of machinery for different capacities. All
these will help to a greater extent, but one should regard the technique ‘signature
analysis’ as intuitive and derived from experience.
In recent times the technique of signature analysis is effectively used for predicting both
machine component failures as well as overall machine or plant malfunctioning. As
already pointed out many of the troubles result in excessive vibration and noise. These,
therefore form powerful signatures in the diagnosis. A brief account of the technique
applied for various machines are illustrated below:
Machine Components
a. Bearings
Rolling element bearings, which are inherently more noisy than slider bearing
have tendency to fail by fatigue rather than wear out. This is due to the contact
load being very high between balls/rollers and the race. The local defects,
generate impacts periodically when ball or roller rolls over it. These are more or
less shock pulses and contain not only the low frequency components but also
high frequency ones. By detecting the latter, through special instruments like
shock pulse meters (developed by SKF), one can assess the magnitude of
damage. By mounting the sensors close to the bearing, right from the beginning
of operation will help to trace the history. There are also different techniques to
detect bearing malfunctions in operating machinery like spectroscope or
radiographic analysis of the oil contamination, measurement of oil temperature
and overall noise level. However these techniques do not fore-warn the occurring
danger. Impulse signatures are more effective and reliable in such cases. One
advantage of vibration analysis is mathematical modeling and analysis is possible
incorporating various malfunctions.
Slider bearings operating under different lubrication principles and lubricant, are
known to produce different forms of vibration like oil Whirl or whip, half frequency
whirl, sub-harmonic, resources etc. For many of these, stability analysis is
possible and the working range can be monitored to prevent such oscillations,
which will result in machine failure.
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b. Gears
A pair of properly operating gears running at constant speed and load can be
expected to generate a signal which is periodic with the meshing frequency. The
signal can be sound, vibration, stress and strain or something else and all the
machine events are similar when there are no mechanical imperfections in gears.
Characteristic wave form depends on gear-profile, load speed, sensor and many
other parameters. It is very difficult to calculate. However, certain predictions can
be made about the perturbations resulting from both local (cracked or deformed
teeth, securing etc.) and distributed (non-uniform load distribution) defects. These
distributed defects may be symmetrical or non-symmetrical. A gear condition
monitor which has been built as a jet engine diagnostic system, pre-processes
the signal by band-pass filtering and wave form averaging to isolate one gear
signature from the total signal sensed extremely on the gear box housing. The
extracted wave form may then be analysed automatically for the local or
distributed defects.
c. Rotors
Generally rotors form a major contributor for troubles in machinery due to their
inherent unbalance, their behaviour to certain self excited and parametric excited
type oscillations. Etc. All these have studied intensively and norms established to
identify the causes. Sensors can detect the limits of vibration and indicate
immediate attention. As a result of all this balancing techniques both in field and
in plant have been developed to prevent unexpected shutdowns.
Machines
a. Pump Systems:
Both reciprocating and rotary pumps generate repetitive signatures which can be
extracted from background noise with signal averaging, performed so that speed
vibrations are tracked by the processing system.
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It is, therefore, necessary for any machine or plant to establish about a
knowledge of failures of various mechanism and components. As one can see
the pump failures are essentially due to bearings and one should incorporate
predictive sensors for this purpose.
A packaged electronic unit reads out sonic vibrations from and instrumented
machine tool work piece cutting tool system to determine degree of cutting edge
wear during a turning out. At a predetermined comparative sonic ratio, the
electronic unit commands stoppage of the machine tool feed, retraction of the tool
and automatic index of the cemented carbide inser to the next good cutting edge.
The latter function is usually performed by a proto-type mechanical device.
Sensors may be suitably mounted to record both high and low frequency
components.
The low frequency band either for a sharp or a worn cutting edge may be more or
less the same. However, the high frequency band for a worn one is considerably
higher than for a sharp one. These high frequency vibrations are indicative of
magnitude of wear. An adaptive control is therefore possible to detect wornout
tool by making energy to the low frequency one.
The sonic signals from a given cutting tool machining a work piece, at given
cutting conditions may change distinctly from machine to machine. There may be
some correlation between these sounds and cutting tool performance, which
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would imply that a basis exists for the development of improvements in machine
tool design.
c. Transformers
Transformers (oil cooled) and Turbo-generators (hydrogen cooled) are both
considered. Discharges or local overheating inside the transformer often lead to
decomposition of the insulating oil, generating hydrogen, light hydrocarbons and
carbon oxide, as insulation comprises mineral oil and cellulose materials.
Buchholz-gas collector relay, based on this fact, cannot respond to all forms of
breakdown at an early stage. All gases generated by insulating decomposition
are soluble in transformer oil. Hence oil is analysed. The magnitude of normal
concentrations depends largely on the age and loading and so limiting values are
determined by experimentation. The various gases that are observed are
hydrogen, methane, ethane, ethylene, acetylene, carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide. If two different gases exceed the concentration limits, a potential hazard
is suspected. If the gas separated in the Buchholz relay is in equilibrium with the
dissolved gases in oil, it indicates a gradual fault over a long period. So after
rectifying it, oil is to be degassed eliminating false alarms due to oil saturated with
air, fluctuating operating temperature, aging of insulating oil etc. On similar lines
hydrogen used for cooling turbo-generators can be analysed periodically to get
the chemical signatures of internal failures.
c. Plants
Signature analysis applied to plants like power plants (thermal, hydro or nuclear),
steel or rolling mill plants, refineries etc. is really complex and needs elaborate
instrumentation and trained manpower for effective control. As already
mentioned, the signatures may be vibratory, acoustic, thermal or chemical or of
various combinations. A central monitoring system to control the entire network is
absolutely essential for quicker diagnosis. One of the estimates made by a large
company in States under the programme MACE (Measurement Analysis
Corporation Engineering) showed an investment of about 85,000 dollars on
instrumentation alone. This investment proved to be economical in the long on
compared to the annual maintenance and breakdown costs. Most of the
problems connected with turbo-machines are understood today and the remedies
known. Vibration sound, temperature or pressure sensors could be installed
permanently and using a telemetry system, signals can be used to indicate the
operating conditions of the plants. Proper use of signatures analysis techniques
on large machinery is certainly not an easy task, since there are may variables
that may change through the normal operation. For a programme to work, it is
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necessary that the controlling element to able to act on critical signals and
disregard extraneous data that will be accumulated. Figure below shows a
signature analysis system for controlling turbo-machinery operation.
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5. Design Features And Maintenance
INTRODUCTION
EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT
The close relationship between system design, system operation and system
maintenance is amply highlighted in the basic concept of the equipment management
function. This function, as any other function, is best defined in terms of its objectives.
These are basically : -
i. To preserve the system against any impairment to its potential in terms of its
design capability and optimum service life.
ii. To keep the system continuously available to perform up to its design capability
with the degree of reliability for which it is designed.
The management function must attain these objectives within the constraint of total cost
which includes plant investment cost, operating costs and rehabilitation costs. These
costs can be categories into : -
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a. Direct costs or actual financial expenditure on the initial plant and on repairs and
rehabilitation.
The basic and interdependent factors that govern total maintenance cost optimization
are therefore the initial system specification, quality of plant design and construction and
equipment downtime, whether for preventive or breakdown servicing.
The behaviour of machine systems is governed by fairly well defined cause effect
relationships. To this extent their physical state and capability are largely predictable. It
is, therefore, possible to slow down equipment deterioration that takes place with time, if
sufficient cognizance is taken at the system design, stage, of the process that lead to
such deterioration and to ultimate failure.
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provisions of cathodic protection and design of environmental control have to be
decided at the engineering stage of an installation.
b. Fatigue
Metal properties change with time under cyclic conditions of service, resulting in
deterioration of system components. Frequency of component failures and the
need for replacement can be minimized if duty conditions are realistically
assessed appropriate materials of construction are selected for each component
and its application. For this exercise, the designer takes resource to established
material test data, statistical information on failure modes and history of service
experience.
The system engineer supplements the design optimization by providing monitoring and
protective systems through instrumentation and safety controls, to protect components
from being stressed beyond their capability limits.
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example of the influence of component reliability on system design is the engineering of
the boiler plant. Up to the early 50’s the then prevailing boiler reliability and its
uninterrupted service capability dictated use of a bank of similar sized boiler units to
serve a single turbine-generator. With the advances in boiler plant technology, such an
arrangement is now no longer considered either economical or essential for system
maintainability.
The above philosophy extends to each of the sub systems of the plant and their
respective components, for ensuring overall a system security. Its primary objective is to
permit timely rehabilitation of deteriorating components with minimum disturbances to
system performance. It must however, be recognized that system and component
reliability is a cost factor, impinging on the equipment purchase philosophy of high first
cost versus low first cost purchase. Hence the need for optimization of the maintenance
function on a total cost basis.
A system no matter how well designed for availability, reliability and maintainability,
needs to be protected from abnormal deterioration that may result from misuse or
maloperation due to operator ignorance or negligence. In addition to providing monitoring
and alarm devices at strategic points in the system, the designer incorporates automatic
controls and safety interlock to obviate operator actions that can lead to serious
component damage or extended breakdown of the total system. The effort is towards
localizing faults without jeopardizing the main system.
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CONCLUSION
In a developing country with severely restricted resources, its machine wealth represents
an invaluable national asset which has to be diligently guarded against misuse and
neglect. Machine systems should be designed to permit continuous monitoring of
machine health, facilitate timely implementation of diagnostic and corrective measures
and contribute thereby to higher system availability and reliability. This is essential if
equipment management is to prove effective in securing both immediate and long term
economic returns from the country’s limited machine wealth.
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6. Maintenance Management System In NTPC
INTRODUCTION
Power being a basic infrastructure for economic growth. India’s Five Year Plans have
given high emphasis for its developments at a very rapid pace. The installed power
capacity in India in 1947 was in the region of 1100 MW which has now reached to about
42000 MW. This capacity is planned to be increased to 11000MW by the 2000 AD. To
meet thee challenge of power shortage NTPC was formed in the year 1976 with an
objective to plan, design, construct and operate coal pit head Super Thermal Power
Stations with an aggregate capacity of about 13000 MW which is planned to be
increased to 56000 MW by the year 2017 AD. This will be approx. 25% of country’s total
power production at that time.
The power plants being set up by NTPC would comprise large power generating units of
200 & 500 MW of capacity. To keep pace with the recent developments in technology,
NTPC is using sophisticated equipment and instrumentation for effective operation of the
Units. Investments on high technology high value equipments are to be justified by an
effective maintenance which is yet to emerge as a vital management function in Indian
Power Industry. The average availability of thermal power units in the country presently
is as low as 65% which allows a capacity utilization of only about 50% in thermal units.
The down time of 200 MW unit in the form of revenue loss to the utility is as high as Rs.
20 lakhs per day and consequential loss in industrial, agricultural production is 12 to 15
times of this loss. Equipment availability of 85 to 90% and capacity utilization of around
70% in thermal units is considered well within the realm of feasibility, provided effective
and scientific maintenance management systems are developed and rigidly followed.
Keeping high availability as the basic objective NTPC has tried to develop and
implement an effective maintenance management system in all NTPC thermal power
stations. The broad features of this system are highlighted in this article.
NTPC, since its inception had recognized the need of acquiring professionalism in the
© PMI, NTPC 48
management of power industry for reliable service to customers and has made all
possible efforts to standardize certain systems in Engineering, Construction,
Commissioning, Project Management, Finance Management, Personnel Management,
Materials Management, etc. Implementations of these systems have paid rich dividends
in the form of early completion of projects and commissioning of 200 MW units within
record time. The units have also achieved full load operation in shortest possible time
with appreciable economy in fuel oil and other inputs.
A similar approach has been conceived to manage the operation and maintenance of
running power stations of NTPC and achieve a sustained capacity utilization. In the ares
of maintenance, an effective system known as ‘Maintenance Management System’ for
NTPC has been developed. The system has been received in consultation with experts
from British Electricity International (UK) and finalized as suitable for Indian conditions.
Objective
The Maintenance System for NTPC has been developed and introduced with following
objectives :
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
The departure from a crisis dominent maintenance culture to the acceptance of data
based computerized maintenance was no easy task. From perception of concept to
development and its actual implementation, a considerable degree of commitment and
input of human resources was needed.
Accordingly 270 mandays training was imparted to NTPC engineers at UK and about
1500 man days of British experts were invested at Singrauli Super Thermal Power
Station. Besides this, about 25,000 man days were utilized by the Station and formal
work orders, daily planning meetings and present work procedures have been introduced
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to improve the commitment of every individual to achieve reduction in unproductive
supervision.
The estimation of mean failure rates, mean repair time and utilization factor of
maintenance work force also have a built in feature of accountability at the craftman level
which in turn provides sufficient opportunity for maintenance executives to concentrate
on engineering problems and development of expertise in the relevant discipline.
SYSTEM
The Maintenance Management System has been development based on work control
and feed back concept in which all maintenance activities are predetermined with its
standard inputs like work instructions, manpower, tools, spare and estimated completion
time. For the purpose of effective work control system, ‘Equipment’ forms the basic
maintenance unit. The power station is classified into various systems, sub-systems and
equipments. Data regarding man and material are identified for maintenance of each
equipment and on job specification cards.
The system has been designed to regulate the total quantum of work in a manner that
maintenance work load remains uniform throughout the cycle of year and utilization of
available resources of optimum.
WORK CONTROL
The concept of work control envelopes all the maintenance activities accrued in the
power plants. Normally the maintenance jobs are originated by preventive maintenance
of routine nature, defects leading to break downs, major overhauls and statutory
inspection, modifications to overcome manufacturing or design defects. All such jobs are
reported on Work Order Cards and sent to a centralized place known as Work Control
Office where these are scheduled in accordance with the priorities. The priority of the
work is defined by the operation engineers who have to play an ownership role. The role
of priority is also defined as emergency (E), second priority (A), third priority (B), and the
last priority (C). The manning of maintenance of round the clock which undertakes
maintenance in accordance with 2,500 mandays by Corporate Core Group in the
development, standardization, training and extension of system to various other Super
Thermal Power Stations of NTPC.
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About 200 executive were given in short term training at Korba / Ramagundam / Delhi by
British experts and their NTPC counter parts for the appreciation of the maintenance
management philosophy and actual system. The process of training has become a
regular feature at the intake level and as well as at the middle management level. Sr
Executives are appraised of the implementation status of the systems during Operation
and Maintenance conferences periodically at the Corporate Centre and Projects. Such
conferences are attended by the Members of Board, Regional Directors along with
senior level Managers responsible for operation and maintenance of NTPC power
stations.
One of the major problems encountered during the initial stage of system implementation
was to identify the various functional elements of maintenance and define the role of
planning vis-à-vis engineering. The following functions were identified :
• Identification of equipments.
• Actual Supervision.
The engineering function like trouble shooting, methods and resource identifications
have been entrusted to area engineers where as planning, resource mobilization and
documentation functions are entrusted to maintenance planning engineerings.
A long term working philosophy has been imbibed to groom the sense of responsibility at
grass root level. The stipulated defects reporting system through the pre-scheduled
commitment made by the respective area engineers, planning and operation engineers
in daily planning meetings at least 24 hours in advance. Under the accepted system, an
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arrangement of permits for work, spares and resources are organized in advance which
are listed in the work specification already designed to attend any kind of maintenance
work.
The jobs of emergency nature are immediately attended by the maintenance crew,
however, jobs which are deferred, waiting for the unit shut down or major overhauls are
separately stored. The day to day jobs of routine and breakdowns are planned by the
short term planning group and major overhauls and unit outage details are planned by
the long term planning group. The long term planning group is also responsible for the
development of systems in accordance to the Corporate Policy in association with Core
group stationed at the Corporate Centre. A small maintenance contract, condition
monitoring and spare part planning group is also associated with the long term planning
cell.
For 1000 MW plants, 11 executives and 5 non-executives are engaged to develop and
operate the system
For work specifications, the area engineers are drawn from respective department for a
fixed duration to prepare the work specifications and their indexing.
WORK SPECIFICATIONS
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PLANT HISTORY SYSTEM
Initially a manual system for equipment maintenance history has been developed as an
interim arrangement. However, a computerization programme is in hand to store the data
for easy entry and retrieval. Under the existing system different cards have been
designed to register, plant inventory, details of spares and history. These cards are
presently stored in the bin cardex.
All the major items of equipment in the plant have been listed out during codification
work and the PLANT INVENTORY CARD prepared for each equipment contains
engineering details, specifications and name of supplier of the equipment. The Plant
Inventory Card is kept in Maintenance Planning Cell.
The equipment contain number of spares. These spares are entered in SPARES LIST
CARDS for each equipment which includes the specifications and the relevant drawing
number. This card also contains population and inventory level to be maintained in
Central Store. Purchase action is initiated by stores department as soon as the minimum
stock is reached. However, for slow moving items, the purchase indent is raised by
concerned maintenance department, depending upon the requirement.
A history card is maintained for each equipment, which contains data of commissioning,
initial alignment and vibration reading of the equipment. Subsequently up dating is done
by recording major breakdown and any modification carried out on the equipment.
In the long run, equipment card helps in technical audit and analysis of the failure pattern
of an equipment and initiation of corrective action.
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a. Monitoring the plant items i.e. wear and tear of parts.
b. Preventing its untimely failure e.g. by ensuring that the plant item is properly
adjusted and that its lubrication is satisfactory.
The work orders for preventive maintenance and lubrications are to be raised by
planning which are including in the daily work schedule known as “Committed Work
Plant”. Since this is recurring activity at a fixed interval, the scheduling of preventive
maintenance is done with the help of computers. Computerisation of these schedules
has helped in eliminating slippages and reducing the time and energy needed from
planning efforts. The print out of preventive maintenance schedules are sent to thermal
power stations every fortnightly and station’s planning cell return them after entering the
actual work done. The data are reprocessed in accordance with the actual work done
and schedule for future work is generated in a regular basis.
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7. Over Hauling Philosophy
INTRODUCTION
The average availability of thermal power units in the country is presently of the order of
655% and plant load factor around 50%. However, an availability of 80-85% and plant
load factor around 75% has been considered to be well within the realm of feasibility,
provided scientific maintenance management systems are developed and implemented
effectively.
FIGURE - 7
Investment in high technology and high cost equipments is justified only with optimum
utilization of power generating units, which can be ensured by the efficient operation and
maximum availability. The objective of maximum availability of power generating units
inturn means low down time. The increased equipment reliability and low down time can
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be achieved by an effective maintenance management system, which has to emerge as
a vital function in a prime power industry like NTPC.
PERT net work and bar charts are in vogue in most of the power stations in the country
and the planning process of unit outages starts a month or two prior to shut downs. Due
to lack of systems support often the planning becomes in isolation and individual
approach of outage execution prevails. The success of planning shall be, in its being of
continuous in nature supplemented by scientific techniques available to budget the
outages with optimum resource level.
NTPC, with the objectives of ensuring maximum plant availability and minimum
maintenance cost through optimum resources utilization and safe work conditions, has
already, accepted a system approach to maintenance management.
The auxiliaries which have redundancy, shall have to be periodically attended under a
routine or preventive maintenance programme. However, main equipments e.g. steam
generators, turbo generators, transformers, and their auxiliaries will be overhauled and
maintained depending upon the duty conditions, statutory requirements, availability of
resource level and governed by the maintenance philosophy of NTPC.
The objective is to introduce a uniform approach for all the power stations of NTPC in
evolving their long term maintenance projections and standardize a system to conduct
unit overhauls and long outages for major repairs in a planned manner. The daily
generation loss to the station due to outage of a 200 MW unit shall be in order of Rs. 18
lakhs (@ Rs. 0.50 per unit and 75% PLF) whereas outage of a 500 MW unit shall cost
about Rs. 45 lakhs per day. Therefore it is essential that unit overhauls are meticulously
planned to control the outage duration.
Stress has been laid to detail out the entire planning process of unit overhauls and long
outages for major repairs. It is envisaged that entire outage planning has to start about
18-24 months before unit goes off load.
a. To project plans for major replacements during the life cycle of units.
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d. To standardize the detailed planning of unit overhauls.
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MAINTENANCE PHILOSOPHY OF NTPC
The maintenance management system, based on the concept of total work control and
feed back incorporates judicious planning of all maintenance activities to achieve uniform
work load over the year with optimization of resource inputs.
The overall objective of the maintenance philosophy is to revive the efficiency and
reliability of the units as also to meet the statutory requirement.
During the three O&M conferences, a working philosophy was evolved to provide policy
guide line for the system development of maintenance management.
The guideline also aims to stipulate an optimum duration and frequency of unit overhauls
and is modeled to achieve the following objectives:
The operation department of the power stations shall have an ownership role where as
maintenance shall be a service function with advisory capacity. The maintenance plans
shall commensurate to generation plans of the station.
The planning of work and resources, their availability and coordination, work scheduling
and documentation shall be the responsibility of planning engineer.
All the maintenance jobs shall be executed and documented through work order card.
The stations planning group shall develop preventive maintenance and lubrication
schedules, of all the mechanical, electrical and C&I Equipments. It is envisaged that
equipments having redundancy will be covered under the preventive maintenance
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whereas equipments which do not have standby will be clubbed with the minor and
major overhaul.
The definition of emergency maintenancy jobs (E) shall limit its implication for situations
leading to hazard to human life or equipment or loss of generation. The maintenance
jobs of other category shall be priority rated A, B & C as defined below and planned in
advance of taking up the work.
E. The defects which immediately involve danger to life of the people, safety of the
equipment, immediate loss of generation beyond 20 MW for 200 MW unit and 50
MW for 500 MW unit.
A. The defects which if not attended within 72 hours may result loss of generation.
B. The defects which if not attended within 72 hours to one week will result loss of
generation.
C. The defect which does not have any significant effect on generation, availability
or thermal performance.
The concept of unit replacement can be progressively extended to turbine cylinders. The
servicing or replacement of each module of turbine (HP, IP and LP cylinder) is under
taken, one at a time so that outage duration of account of turbine overhaul is evenly
distributed over the successive years and matched with the frequency and duration of
boiler overhaul. This concept more popularly known as MODULAR CONCEPT although
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involves a high inventory level at initial stage is favorable for increased plant reliability
and availability.
A five year rolling plan, projecting the generation plans, unit outages and requirement of
resources e.g. spares, material and finances, etc. shall be prepared by maintenance
planning. The plan shall be updated every year for the duration of next five years.
A station annual plan shall be prepared projecting generation targets, unit outages for
maintenance, efficiency revival and to meet statutory inspections. The unit outages
budgeted under the station, annual plan shall only be termed as “Planned Maintenance”.
Maintenance planning group shall prepare a Life Cycle Plan with anticipated projections
of major replacements of components/assemblies over the entire life cycle of the unit.
Minor Overhauls
15 days outage at an interval of six months for inspection and maintenance on critical
equipments and to meet statutory requirement.
Medium Overhaul
45 days outage for 200 MW unit at an interval of two years for overhauling of boiler and
its aux, revival of unit efficiency and to meet statutory requirements. The proposed
duration for 500 MW unit is 60 days.
Major Overhaul
60 days outage for 200 MW unit at an interval of four years for overhauling of boiler,
turbo generator and auxiliaries and revival of unit efficiency. The proposed duration for
500 MW unit is 75 days.
An engineering declaration for the Unit(s) to be taken for planned outage shall be
prepared defining the objective of outage i.e. projected jobs to be taken up and
anticipated expenditure, the expected improvement in availability and revival in the unit
efficiency after maintenance.
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The requirement of manpower during overhaul shall be met from internal resources to
the extent possible. However, external resources can be sought under the following
conditions:
b. When the requirement of human resources is large over a short duration and
cannot be met from available manpower at the station.
The maintenance cost shall be projected on the basis of feed back from work order cards
regarding consumption of spares and materials, tools, and manpower together with
generation loss. Maintenance costing shall be done by a costing engineer under
maintenance planning group.
The cost of unit overhauls in terms of generation loss and resource requirement during
the planned outage are very high and therefore, decision making process for overhaul of
the unit has to be in an integrated manner.
The generation plan should have the provision for unforeseen outages like tube failure,
breakdown and trippings on account of external reasons besides planned outages. The
declaration of overhaul subsequent to any forced outage has to be avoided because of
its undesirable affects on resource availability. With the commissioning of additional units
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to the grid such decision and declaration will upset overhaul plans of other units/stations
and dislocate the overall regional plan.
The inter-dependency of stations on the services from external agencies like BHEL and
ILK, Central Maintenance & Overhauling workshop and power demands or Regional
Electricity Boards, an integrated approach to unit outage planning is essential.
The assistance of external agencies like BHEL, ILK and Central Maintenance and
Overhauling Workshop, etc. can be better coordinated by projecting station’s 5 year
rolling plan on their manufacturing and servicing schedule. This will also help in quick
mobilization of resources like spares and manpower. The agencies can allocate their
facilities and resources to match with the requirement of specific unit of particular station
and can generate aggregate resources to meet the overall requirement of the regions.
The various regional electricity boards functioning under Central Electricity Authority
have to plan the generation of their region. NTPC regional plans for major overhauls and
station location plans have to be made supplementary. To this effect a four tier planning
system has to be evolved as follows:
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a. Regional 5 year rolling plan.
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d. Station annual location plan.
NTPC Corporate Centre and Regional Offices would like to have a realistic projection of
power generation throughout the year. The sequence of unit and planned outage has to
be such that there are minimum number of units under overhaul at any point of time and
NTPC commitment to regional grid will largely depend on the effectiveness of these
outage plans.
It is proposed that NTPC regional plans should be evolved in conjunction with the
regional electricity boards. NTPC regional plans for all the station in a region are to be
drawn so that capacity outage is spread uniformly throughout the year and matches with
the regional grid demand. (Figure-8).
These plans shall have projections of five years and reviewed updated every year to
project the assessment for the next five years in a rolling manner. Such a rolling plan
should be able to project following information:
Stations have to develop a major replacement plan of all the generating units for the
entire life cycle of 25 years. Such plans will indicate a trend of replacement in the
equipment/parts which are likely to fail before the life expectancy of the entire unit such
as super heaters, reheaters, high pressure valves, safety valves, gear reducers, ash
disposal lines, slurry pumps, chemical piping, resins, conveyor belts and drives, coal
crushers, turbine rotor blades, turbine bolts, feed pump rotor, HP heater coil, HT motor,
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transformer, switch gears, cables, etc. These replacement plans have to be conceived
on the basis of the following:
a. Coal quality.
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b. Creep life of various components.
c. Duty conditions.
d. Wear rate.
f. Plant history
A typical life cycle plan has been given in Figure-9 for reference.
The effectiveness of overhaul management shall largely depend on the system approach
and accuracy of assessment forming the basis of 5 year rolling plan developed by each
station.
Stations will develop a 5 year rolling plan for overhaul of all the units, and update every
year for next five years. These plans will be developed on the basis of followings:
e. Feed back on plant incipient problems, expected action for correction and revival
in performance/efficiency as its result.
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f. Financial scheme for justification of heavy expenditure with better plant
availability and efficiency.
h. Resource availability.
i. Fuel cost.
j. Generation cost.
k. Capital investment.
l. Revenue budget.
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Figure No. – 10 shows the part of the typical rolling plan only indicating date of
overhauls. These plans have to be supplemented with the text to explain each and every
point given above.
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STATION ANNUAL LOCATION PLAN
Station annual location plans are the detailed account of operation and maintenance of
the proceeding year and plans for the next year. The objective of this plans is to identify
all the constraints to achieve the generation level and organize resources for effective
operation and maintenance. It is envisaged that station will prepare the review of
preceding year and identify all the major activities to be undertaken next year. The plan
shall incorporate the following:
a. Generation budget.
b. Fuel budget.
c. Manpower budget.
d. Spares budget.
e. Revenue budget.
The overhaul plans will form the part of these annual location plans which will give the
history of each unit, key problem areas and modifications to be carried out in the
following years.
The plans will include discussion about the resources like spares, manpower, special
tools and tackles and services required from outside agencies. The annual location plan
of the station will include details as given below with a text to explain various points:
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a. Annual planned generation of individual unit of the station.
c. Unit merit rating based on its performance in the last one year.
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d. Wear and tear trend of major components and equipments of each unit.
e. Justification for heavy expenditure with better unit availability and reliability.
f. Resources availability.
g. Fuel cost.
h. Generation cost.
i. Revenue budget.
The Figure 11 shows a time schedule for preparations of station annual location plan.
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8. Time & Outage Period
The selection of time of overhauls though dependent on several factors, is the best when
grid demand is minimum or can be supplemented by other sources such as hydro-plants.
The period from August to November may be ideal for unit overhaul, however it is difficult
to complete the overhauls of all units within the period.
c. Plant condition.
e. Resource availability.
Unit merit rating is decided on the basis of its availability performance & reliability over
the past years and the cost of generation excluding fuel cost. Since cost of fuel is
governed by Government pricing policy from time to time cost of heat input may not be
considered as the criteria for merit rating.
It is anticipated that by 1991 NTPC shall have an operating capacity of about 7000 MW
comprising of 200 & 500 Mw units. The overhauling of NTPC units shall affect the
capacity outage by 15-20%. Considering SSTPS (5x200 + 2x500 MW) as typical case, it
is estimated that in 1991 about 225 days of outage shall be required by 200 MW unit &
150 days of outage for 500 MW unit to undertake unit overhauls and to meet statutory
requirement which shall cause an average capacity reduction of the station by 16.5%
(350 MW approx.) throughout the year (Figure-12).
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The above loss of capacity on account of overhauls & statutory requirements alone will
result into revenue loss of Rs. 40 lakhs (approx.) per day @ Rs. 0.50 unit) or about 150
Crores (approx.) per annum to the super thermal power station of 2000 MW. Besides the
serious financial implication, availability and plant utilization factors are likely to be
impaired to meet preventive & routine maintenance and thereby affecting forced
outages.
The decision for taking the unit for overhauls should therefore be governed carefully for
optimum utilization of available resource with uniform work load over the year and strictly
adhered, to avoid disruption of plans of other units/stations.
OUTAGE DURATION
The outage duration shall be deemed from the day unit goes off load for the overhaul till
it is resynchronized. Since unit overhauls are to be accomplished within the given time
schedule it is essential to identify the objective of shut down and define each
maintenance work/activity in detail and arrange matching resources.
The duration of different types of nit planned outages is defined and it is aimed to contain
the unit overhauls within the stipulated time schedule. All necessary inputs shall be
planned and arranged at appropriate time so that the outage is not extended beyond the
planned duration thereby disrupting generation as well as resource availability plans of
other units, stations and the region.
a. Work quantum.
b. Working pattern.
c. Resources availability.
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Work Quantum
The clear details & accuracy of assessment of the work quantum anticipated to be taken
up during the outage is essential to avoid last stage additions leading to shortages or
non-availability of resources thereby stretching the outage duration.
Working Pattern
The outage duration shall be fixed on the basis of execution of work whether on all the
week days including Sundays/Holidays or not, and daily working hours.
Resource Availability
On the basis of anticipated work load an accurate & detailed projection of requirement of
resources, manpower & skill, spares & material, tools & plants etc. should be made and
steps taken to ensure their timely availability.
SCOPE OF WORK
In order to contain the duration of overhaul, it is essential to anticipate each and every
work desired to be undertaken during the overhaul with clarity. These jobs should be
enlisted on the basis of following:
c. Jobs arising as a result of system modifications for plant betterment and safety
requirement.
The entire unit has to be divided into sub-areas for the purpose of defining the area of
responsibility and each job should be clearly enlisted in consultation with the concerned
area in-charge and any last minute additions should be avoided.
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WORK CALENDER
It is essential that all the days falling during the span of overhaul should be examined
and list of holidays, weekly off days worked out. A decision should be taken in advance
whether the maintenance activities will continue on holidays or not and the duration of
overhaul planned accordingly. The stipulated duration given in Section-1.3.14 in inclusive
of holidays falling within the period of overhaul.
WORKING PATTERN
The requirement of work force and duration of outage shall also depend upon the
number of working available for overhaul on each day. Thus a decision regarding
continuation of maintenance activities for number of working hours (8/12/16 or 24 hours)
on each working day should be taken and communicated to all concerned. The
intimation has to be given to the external agencies also to be agreed upon by them to
ensure its effective implementation.
Once the time of overhaul is determined and quantum of work to be executed as well as
working pattern is decided the analysis of resource requirement, its availability and
optimum utilization is of prime importance. Any situation leading to non-availability
improper utilization or scheduling of resources may have a compounding effect on the
plans leading to extension of outage duration or compromise in work quality.
HUMAN RESOURCES
The job to be done departmentally and through external agencies are classified based
on the availability of manpower. The assessment of requirement of manpower in quantity
and quality is essential for different types of work Planned.
The movement of working crew from one job/equipment to another is also planned.
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SPARES & MATERIAL RESOURCES
On the basis of repair and maintenance jobs planned the assessment of spare parts,
consumables & materials, etc. is done. Their availability at station is checked and for the
short fall procurement action is initiated to ensure timely availability.
The requirement of general & special tools, machines, e.g. cranes, material handling &
transportation, welding generators, compressor etc. as decided to be required and/or
supplied to external agencies is established and their availability in working condition
should be assured during the period of overhaul.
The station should assess the requirement of other facilities such as fabrication,
manufacturing & workshop, radiography & stress relieving, photography etc. during
overhaul. In house or external agencies as necessary should be tied up for the same.
GENERAL AMENITIES
The station should assess the requirement of general amenities to large work force
engaged during overhauls such as accommodation & kitchen, toilet, crèches, drinking
water, tea, dispensary & medical facilities, stores & office cubicals for contractors etc.
and make suitable provisions for the same.
SYSTEM SUPPORT
The success of any planning activity shall depend on the faith, association & co-
operation and the effective coordination among different groups/departments. Each
individual has to work individually as well as jointly with dedication to achieve the
objective.
Planning is a continuous process and should not be considered absolute. Initial failures
should not be demoralizing and efforts to combat their recurrence should be termed as
innovation. Lack of appreciation at initial stages should not discourage and deviate the
institution of planning towards short term gains, instead taken as a challenge.
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The station management should therefore provide all necessary infrastructure & system
support to achieve its objective of maximum generation & optimum maintenance through
the institution of planning.
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In the last three decades, there has been a considerable advancement in the design,
manufacture and control technology of high capacity steam generators, and due to the
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prohibitive cost of outage, there is an increased awareness on the part of owners to go
for stringent quality assurance measures from manufacturing stage to erection.
The erosion rate of boiler tubes has been reduced by incorporating low fuel; gas
velocities through improved design, use of wear resistant, material and higher tube
thickness.
There has been a major break through in the water chemistry, flue controls and other on-
line monitoring instruments to conduct fail safe operations of high capacity and high
pressure boilers.
The sophisticated water treatment and monitoring techniques such as on line silica
analyzer and pH meter to ensure the drum internals and other heat transfer elements
free from any corrosion or scaling. The inherent features of furnace safeguard
supervisory system e.g. drum level and furnace pressure trips, use of electromatic safety
valves in addition to spring loaded safety valves and other advanced control systems for
boiler trippings under adverse operation ensure safety of personnel, pressure parts and
firing equipments. Besides above, NTPC boilers are continuously monitored through
Data Acquisition System and have capability to display and log any deviation of the
operating parameters.
In Western countries like U.K. & West Germany the requirement of statutory inspection is
stipulated after 30 months for a 200 MW size unit and 36 months for unit size of 500 MW
and above.
It is established that the effective installed capacity of a 2000 MW size power station will
be reduced by an average of 350 MW throughout the year on account of statutory
inspections alone (Figure-12).
According to annual statistics about 90% of 200 MW units of the country are reliably
operating beyond the period of 18 to 24 months without any statutory inspections.
In view of above it is proposed that NTPC should take up the matter periodicity of
statutory inspection under the provisions of IBR which is far from the today’s relevance
because of growing reliance on instrumentation & controls.
This will enable NTPC to plan the major overhauls of its units in a more rational manner
and step up its generating capacity and maintain the reliability of plants at the same time.
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9. Long Term Planning
The planning functions which help the unit to maintain its original level of performance in
terms of output, efficiency and reliability and cater to long term needs of the station are
considered under the Long Term Planning.
The following are the essential inputs for any successful planned system.
d. Type of crafts men and skill required, their availability and productivity.
e. Requirement of spares & consumables, tools & plants etc., their souce of
availability.
h. Quality checks.
For the planning projections to be close to actual, it is essential that feed back data of
previous shutdowns/maintenance in quantified terms is available.
The successful execution of major repairs/overhaul will depend upon the easy and ready
availability of resources based on the accurate information. LTP management therefore
besides planning shall also serve as an information bank.
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RESPONSIBILITIES OF LTP MANAGEMENT
Besides the function of serving as an information bank, long term planning shall have the
following specifications.
Custodian of all the registration licences under IBR, IEA, Factory Act, Indian Explosive
Act and their timely renewal/extension.
Preparation of station’s life cycle plan for major replacement and renovation.
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Preparation of a realistic annual outage plan considering work load and availability of
resources including finances.
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Accurate assessment of resource e.g. manpower, spares & material, tools & tackles etc.
for requirement annual unit outages.
Control & Schedules of resources during planned outages to ensure timely execution of
work programme.
Coordination among agencies (internal & external) deployed for quality checks,
contractors, area engineers and other associated groups for manufacturing, resources,
safety, gate passes & housekeeping etc.
ORGANISATION STRUCTURE
The maintenance planning of the station has to carry out a wide range of functions,
through an integrated planning system, to provide an effective service to maintenance,
coordination with operation and organize documentation and feed back service to station
Management and Corporate Centre.
The approved organization structure of station maintenance planning group for NTPC
Super Thermal Power Station is shown in Figure 13 to 18.
OUTAGE COMMITTEE
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station. He will head the team of inter disciplinary executives responsible to conduct the
outage of a particular unit.
The outage committee will be responsible for execution of overhaul as per the details
planning from unit off load to synchronization and shall ensure that all the jobs are
carried out as per laid down specifications and quality plans.
Team members will be nominated from different department/groups at least six months
ahead of overhaul and kept informed of the various activities in connection with units
planned outage.
Representatives from unit operation shall be drawn to plan the sequence of isolation,
permit to work and recommissioning procedure. The representative of material
department shall be inducted to maintain a close liaison between procurement, issue and
actual users.
The role of each outages team member should be clearly defined and responsibility of
each member clearly fixed up prior to commencement of work.
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FUNTIONS OF AN OUTAGE COMMITTEE
The general guidelines for the responsibility and function of outage team is given as
follows :
Figure-19 shows a coordination flow chart for a Typical overhaul management support
system.
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UNIT OUTAGE CONTROL ROOM
A unit outage control room shall be set up under outage manager to coordinate various
maintenance activities, their resource requirement and transaction of vital informations.
ENGINEERING DETAILS
It is envisaged that all the documents and manuals, relevant cross-sectional drawings
incorporating the modifications and deviations, erection & commissioning protocols.
Quality Assurance protocols and assembly passports for rotory equipments e.g. turbo
generator, feed pumps, fans etc. shall be handed over to maintenance planning group by
project erection group. These documents will be classified according to functional groups
and identified by unique codes for easy references.
COMPUTERISATION PLANS
An ambitious plan has been drawn to computerize the entire maintenance systems
with the help of real time computers. Under the proposed plan the main frame computer
will be stationed at the Corporate Centre which will be linked with the computers located
at the power stations. The various stations will be interlinked in such a manner that
information can be exchanged between corporate center and stations and also between
the two stations. In time to come the minor maintenance will be controlled by the stations
and major maintenance like unit overhauls or break down will be additionally monitored
from the Corporate Centre and regional head quarters.
The power generating units, equipment sub-assemblies, spares, cost centers, work
specifications, defects, outages, etc. have already been identified by unique codes.
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Shortly these will be utilized as effective management tools to understand, equipment
behaviour and reliability, maintenance cost benefits utilization of resources and plant
inventory.
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10. Maintenance Planning System In NTPC
Introduction
Power being a basic infrastructure for economic growth, high emphasis, for its
development at a rapid pace, have been given. To meet the challenge of power-
shortage, NTPC was formed with an objective to plan, design, construct and operate
coal pit head Super Thermal Power Station. The power plants being set up by NTPC
would comprise of large power generating units of 200 MW & 500 MW capacity using
latest sophisticated Equipment and instrumentations. Investment in high technology high
value equipments are to be justified by effective maintenance which can lead to high
availability and optimum capacity utilization.
NTPC, since its inception, had recognized the need of acquiring professionalism in the
management of power industry for reliable service to customers and has made all
possible efforts to standardize certain system in Engineering, Construction
Commissioning, Project Management, Finance Management, Personnel Management,
Material Management etc. Implementation of these system have paid rich dividends in
the form of early completion of projects and commissioning of units on or ahead of
Schedule.
A similar approach has been conceived to manage the operation and maintenance of
running power stations of NTPC and achieve a sustained capacity utilization. An
effective system known as “Maintenance Management System” has been developed in
consultation with experts from BEI (UK) and adjusted to suit Indian conditions. This
manual deals with the principle of maintenance management system and short term
tactical planning. The long term strategic and overhaul management have been dealt in
a separate manual on “overhaul management”.
Objectives
The maintenance management system has been developed with the following broad
objectives.
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1. To maximize availability of generating Units with minimum maintenance costs
and down time.
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2. Most effective utilisation of resources.
3. To carry out maintenance jobs in accordance with the laid down procedures
within stipulated time.
4. To plan for the major and manual ovehaul statutory inspection and to obtain
statutory certificate from the competent authority for the safe running of the
equipment.
5. To predict the life cycle of assemblies and sub-assemblies and prepare major
replacement plants for next 10 to 15 years.
7. To forecast the plant generation in consulation with grid control and schedule
major maintenance in accordance with the generation plan.
In other words the maintenance management system incorporates all the components of
maintenance organisation and effective control of Repair and Maintenance.
System
The maintenance management system has been conceived based on work control and
feed back concept in which all maintenance activities are pre-determined with its
standard input like work instruction, manpower tools, spares and estimated completion
time.
The allocation and arrangement of resources, required for maintenance jobs are the
prime objectives of the system. A central controlling office called work control office,
permit to work control office and material control office are the main ingradients for
implementation of the system.
For the purpose of effective work control system ‘equipment’ will form the basic
maintenance unit and all its technical specifications/manufacturer’s details etc. will be
recorded in plant inventory card. (Chart No. 1).
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The power station has to be classified into various systems, sub-systems/as indicated in
annexure under codification chapter.
Data regarding man and material have to be identified for maintenance of each
equipment and written on work specification cards. The maintenance jobs in the power
plants are generally catagorised in the following heads.
The jobs may come from the above sources only, need to be rationalised and planned
according to priority availability of work permit and availability of resources. The system
is designed to regulate the total quantum of work in a manner that the maintenance work
load remains uniform throughout the day, week, and year and utilisation of available
resources is optimum. It enables maintenance personnel to achieve a balance between
work-load and the available resources.
Organisation
The maintenance is a service function needs to operate in accordance with the needs
and priorities of production department. However operation department will not sacrifice
the maintenance to achieve short term gains.
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With in the planning and maintenance, it is essential to identify the various functional
elements and clearly define the role of planning vis-à-vis area engineers.
The following functions of maintenance have been rationally shared between area
engineers and planning engineers.
1. Identification of equipment.
4. Actual supervision.
The engineering functions like trouble shooting, resource identification including spares
and quality supervision have been entrusted to area engineers whereas planning,
resource mobilisation and documentation will be looked by maintenance planning
engineers.
The total sanctioned discipline wise manpower in the maintenance and maintenance
planning is given in Chart-1, Chart-2(a), 2(b) and 2(c). In accordance with the basic
policy of system, maintenance crew will operate in all three shifts of a day besides the
general shift. It is envisaged that there will be multicraft personnel in the shift who can
undertake effective maintenance work which do not involve too many resources and co-
ordination. The shift personnel will give priority to the emergency maintenance whereas
general shift people will consists of personnel of specialised nature and will undertake
major jobs which require precision and close supervision. In this context it is essential
that the shifts personnel be given opportunity to be rotated in a small number within the
general shift to improve their overall expertise gradually.
According to the proposed system there has to be close co-ordination between the
functioning of shift, maintenance planning and respective area engineers. Ideally the
control of the shift personnel along with shift store should be under the control of a
maintenance co-odinator since success of maintenance largely depends on the effective
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management of resources. However, area engineers find it difficult to give up the control
of personnel to other department thus making the task of planning difficult. Provisionally
a decentralised concept needs to be introduced to control the electrical, mechanical and
C&I personnel by separate group heads. At a later stage a common group head to be
known as maintenance co-ordinator assisted by experienced foremen of different
discipline can be incorporated
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The shift personnel will also be utilized to assist the operation/maintenance department
in the disconnection, connection of electrical connection, coupling and decoupling of
rotary drives, repair of minor leakages of coal, steam, water and ash, removal of foreign
material from mills etc. In case, of urgent requirement of multi-disciplinary services like
mechanical plus electrical or electrical and C&I or any such other combination the
operation personnel will co-ordinate between different department outside the normal
shift hours. For planned work, matter can conveniently be sorted out by discussion in the
daily planning meeting.
Function and responsibilities of long term, short term planning, maintenance department
and Corporate centers, maintenance management group:
The function and responsibilities of long term, short term planning, maintenance
department and corporate centers maintenance management group along with the
function and duties of the executive are given below:
2. To prepare and ensure all necessary arrangements for the following year’s
overhaul work programme.
4. Operate section of permit to work system before, during and after major overhaul.
3. Liasion with operation for the planning of defects rectification and apprise them
about maintenance work and delays if any.
4. Allocation of station maintenance manpower to achieve short term and long term
objectives.
7 To receive input documentation from the long term planning office and to
schedule accordingly.
8. Co-ordinate and exercise control over the production of power for 24 hours.
10. To receive, monitor and integrate work-order cards in accordance with station
administration and to ensure that defects which require long term planning are
correctly routed to the long term office after diagnostic appraisal.
11. To maintain on-going lists of priority work and to ensure that short term plant
overhaul programme are prepared and issued as required.
13. Review and improve methods of maintenance equipment and staff-skill and crew
size to achieve safe and efficient maintenance. Revise work specification cards
accordingly.
17. To maintain history of all the equipment, plant inventory cards and spare list
cards.
Planning Process
The detail planning of each unit outage is unique in nature and may not only differ from
one station to another put from unit to unit, depending upon the nature and quantum of
work, unit condition, load demand and resource availability etc. It is therefore not
practical to make any standard plan to suit all variations. However, since large number of
the activities are repetitive in nature, an effort has been made to design a “Standard
Work Module” for Minor, Medium and Major nature of unot overhaul in the following
sections. This may serve as a guide line to decide initially the jobs which are to be
undertaken in the successive years of overhaul under the accepted maintenance policy
of NTPC.
The planning process of any unit outage has essentially three stages of progression as
follows:-
Each stage involves several events for successful execution of planning. The Figure 20
shows the major events of the three stages of planning process.
Pre-shut –down planning essentially begins from the time unit is synchronized. The initial
information and behaviour of the base line data of plant and equipment form the basis of
work plan to be undertaken in future. Similarly data obtained during the previous
overhaul will provide sufficient feed back to structure the realistic plan and will help to
access the actual quantum of work.
A brief history of unit shall be maintained for reference in the Unit History Record Sheet.
The salient points to be recorded are as per format of Unit History Record Sheet
enclosed in Chart No. 2. The details may be recorded and updated from O.R.T. reports,
monthly performance reports, annual NTPC report, and special investigation reports.
Reference of all such reports shall also be made for ease of retrival. With all the
available information, quantum of work to be taken up during overhauls is assessed.
Since work list forms the basis for analysis and planning of resources, its accurate
assessment is of utmost importance.
WORK LIST
An accurate identification and detailed listing of various jobs to be taken up during shut
down is the primary step to predict the requirement of resources and duration of outages.
This list may be prepared on the basis of information to be obtained from following
sources:
This work list is compiled by the long term planning in consultation with area engineers
and circulated to all the concerned for review and suggestions.
The quantum of work during the outage will vary from year to year depending upon the
operating hours and duty conditions of the unit. However, an effort has been made to
develop standard work modules to be undertaken during the outage period of 14, 45 and
60 days. The station maintenance planning group can develop their work plans along
similar lines depending upon the actual requirement and local conditions.
The list include modification jobs which may arise out of following requirement:
Jobs enlisted on plant betterment shall be treated as an independent project and all
necessary inputs e.g. technical feasibility, approved drawings, cost analysis, material
and resource availability, financial provisions and sanction etc. will be obtained and
reviewed in advance.
NOTE Each proposal should carry detailed technical feasibility and analysis and should be treated as an independent project for evaluation
of Cost benefits.
CHART NO. 5
The various defect jobs pending for want of unit outages or resources and outstanding
preventive maintenance jobs are enlisted and incorporated in the worklist for their
completion during unit’s proposed shut down.
RESOURCE ANALYSIS
Once the total quantum of work is assessed it is imperative to plan & match the
availability of resources for effective execution of unit outage within the stipulated time
frame. The areas which shall require attention and review are enlisted below:
d. Availability of material handling facilities e.g. cranes, lifts, transport etc. inhouse
or through outside sources and their scheduling.
j. Requirement of general facilities for additional work force from outside agencies.
Duration of repair & overhauls shall depend on the basis of quantum of work and
availability of manpower in sufficient quantity & quality.
It is estimated that for a 200 MW unit medium overhaul the peak requirement of
manpower shall be about 950-1000 with a an average deployment of 450-460. A typical
manpower deployment pattern for a 200 MW unit medium overhaul is enclosed in figure
21. PERT Network for 45 days overhaul is shown in the Figure 21-22.
The assessment and planning of manpower shall have to be done with care by
classifying the scope of work into three groups:
It is suggested that the jobs of similar nature should be classified together so that a
particular gang can move to undertake similar jobs on various equipments. The total
manpower can be divided into number of crews or gangs to be uniquely identified by a
number. The movement of each crew from one equipment to another has to be planned
over the total duration of unit maintenance. When the total manpower requirement is
established, availability of the internal resources should be examined considering the
routine maintenance jobs and emergencies of the operating units. The areas of high skill
requirement should be catered by the internal human resources to the extent possible
and labour intensive jobs can be awarded to outside agencies.
The possibility of external human resource requirement shall mainly arise under following
circumstances:
In some organisation spares are also managed as all other materials. Initially the
maintenance department indicates their requirement and quantity to be stocked to the
Material Management Department. Then they tally the list with their inventory and raise
indent to replenish the stock up to inventory level. This kind of management is called
replenish Management. But difficulty here comes since the consumption is extremely
erratic, purchasing in small quantities is not economical. So this creates some sort of
adhoc replenishment process requirement which in turn generates new purchase orders.
Management of spares needs attention because of its involvement and direct effect on
the performance of the system.
So while ordering for any equipment initial set of compulsory spares are ordered, and
while commissioning the equipment depending on the knowledge and technical details
available we again order for general spare parts and keep a level of inventory according
to convenience of the system and industry.
While planning for any type of spare part of a equipment we should have detailed
engineering drawings from final level assembly to assemblies, sub-assemblies and up to
part level. Technical detail, supplier and his catalogue No., the supplier’s reference nos.
are also needed. If the facilities are available, one may try for alternate supplier or may
develop local vendors for spares supply.
b. The lead time of various spare parts should be taken care with an adequate level
of inventory in the stores. But at the same time excess of storage should be
avoided. Particularly for power plant spares, the suppliers are Monopolistic type
so one has to take care of their long lead time. So with proper planning well in
advance we can optimize the level of stock and cost consideration. Therefore we
have to assure the availability of spare parts in the stores as and when required
but without blocking excess capital in spares.
c. There should be proper quality control before taking the spares in the store. The
spares should be make of standard material as per the original. The storage
should be proper, so that they are not affected by all atmospheric conditions.
If the availability of spares is upto the required standard then the down time can be
reduced and the maintenance cost also can be reduced. The quality of maintenance
work can be improved resulting in improved operations. It will result in reduction of
As mentioned in earlier topic the availability of spares directly affects the maintenance
work reducing outages which in term improves the plant performance. For efficient
Management of spares one has to interact with the various sections of organisation. This
is described as follows:
This aggravates the wear and tear of various parts and certainly increases the
consumption of spare parts in unpredictable manner and thus up sets the inventory
situation and planning. So all these problems bring out considerable interaction between
operation maintenance and spare parts management. Each segment can help or hurt
functioning of others. So proper co-operation between operation, inventory and purchase
can assist the maintenance and extensive discussions on problems, can improve the
functioning of the system appreciably.
While designing the parts the maintenance aspect is not taken care since if the designer
takes care of preventive maintenance, it complicates the design. The concept of
maintainability is to be introduced with the component and equipment design. The
Maintenance Engineer may interact with the designer; identify the high value failure
prove parts which could be redesigned to make them more reliable. Also the small
wearing parts may be separated from non wearing more expensive parts. Modular
design may also be used with slightly higher initial cost and reducing the down time and
maintenance cost. This design interface is very important and now this is being adopted
in India. It needs special attention of designer specially with the mechanical equipments.
Operators should be trained enough and they should report any incipient component
failure observed as unusual noise or degradation of operation at the earliest. While this
may create a small shut down it will save a larger down time in future.
Inventory of spares is most important factor of spares management. The spares are
relatively slow moving and only 5-10% have their noticeable consumption. So a very
important decision has to be taken for replenishment of various moving parts and also to
stock or not to stock. Some parts are stored only as insurance item. If it is left on
maintenance department, they would like to have every spare part which is ever
expected to be required. So here maintenance department should only assess the likely
consumption rate of spares. This estimate should be based on engineering judgments
coupled with data or experience of similar items.
The top management has to make decisions about assurance level and budgets. If
budget is not permitting high assurance level, they should be ready to accept-stock-outs.
But generally it is left to manager of spares and maintenance to sort it out amongst
themselves generally top management demands cost effectiveness. This interaction
between top management and other section is most important and possibly least
understood.
The concept of repair or replace also effects the requirement of spares. If we are going
for replacement the spares budget will be high and it will reduce the labour cost and
down time. If we go for repair then it will decrease the spares cost but it will increase the
down time and labour cost.
Typically at lowest level of maintenance the engineer has to decide, if the repair can be
carried out with relatively simpler skill, tools and test equipment and if the failure prone
parts are accessible. He has to choose between replacing the assembly or sub-
assembly or part instead.
Problem of lead time is much evident in an industry like power plant. In a free flowing
market where production and consumptions are constant there is no problem. But for
industry like power plant where very few or even single supplier is there the planning
should be well in advance. An attempt should be made for alternate supplier.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
Inventory control of spare parts is different from inventory like raw material etc. The
spares are slow moving parts and only 5-10% show their noticeable movement of
consumption. So while taking decision on stocking of spares many agencies are to be
involved. The Maintenance Engineer should give consumption rate of spares based on
engineering judgment with the help of the data available for the spares.
Satisfactory material control means that needed parts are available in adequate amount
as and when required. A requirement in the form of a list of spares is sent to the spare
parts cell by maintenance department which is then procured and stocked in store.
While re-ordering the stock a travelling requisition is used. When the stock of a particular
spare part reaches a level, an order is automatically placed to the supplier which
supplies the component to the stores.
For selection of spares in quantity joint decision between maintenance and purchase has
to be taken. Here well known A-B-C pattern of annual usage may work well. As
thousands of spares are consumed annually only a few (~15%) account for bulk (70-
80%) of consumption value, these items are called as ‘A’ on the other hand ‘C’ items
represent almost 50% range of items but contributes 15% annual consumption value. ‘B’
items are intermediate ones. Since spare parts used are erratic and can occasionally
The optimization could be done in cost attributes (A-B-C) and criticality attributes (V-E-
D). It would then be sensible to have an almost guaranteed level of assurance of
availability of low cost vital items. This would mean a high safety but low down time
losses. On the other hand high value desirable items have the lowest assurance level.
Mathematical models in the form of decision matrix can be developed.
The final decision of inventory depends on A-B-C and V-E-D analysis, nature or a repair
and assurance level required. Some spares have to be stocked with large safety stock
because of their criticality. Lead time has to be taken in due consideration while ordering
for spares. Depending on reliability of supplier and alternate resources of getting supply,
planning as well as ordering has to be done in well advance. Then only a proper
inventory can be maintained.
HUMAN MANAGEMENT
It has been experienced that successful execution of any unit overhaul has been many a
times governed by environmental factors of the people engaged in the work. A study of
human management during several unit overhauls has revealed that often this aspect
gets little attention. It is estimated that a careful planning and clever handling of this
aspect shall help in a reduction of the outage duration by about 20-25% which is
considerable in terms of cost as well as unit availability as compared to the expenses on
this overhead.
e. Location and numbering of winches, welding sets etc. to avoid confusion and
delays.
i. Availability of on the spot first aid facility and necessary safety appliances.
k. Authorisation of area engineers for signing issue slips to draw material from site
stores and general stores.
l. Facility of round the clock availability of electrician, crane operators, jeep drivers,
ambulance drivers, with necessary service facilities.
n. Availability of a gang round the clock to undertake repairs of working tools such
as jacks, grinders, hand lamps, extension boards and lighting etc.
a. Electrician - 3 Nos.
b. Fitters - 4 Nos.
0UTAGE EXECUTION
The outage duration begins at the time unit is off load till it is re-synchronised inclusive of
both days. From detailed net work for a typical 45 days overhaul, it is evident that 3-4
days are required for initial cooling of boiler and turbo-generator and about 17 days shall
be required for the re-commissioning activities considering date of hydraulic test as the
reference. Consequently about 24-25 effective days are available for the overhaul
activities in all the areas and disciplines viz. electrical, mechanical and C&I.
e. Recommissioning checks.
f. Documentation of data.
It is proposed that all the members of outage committee will meet once a day at about
1200 hours to review the progress. The meeting known as outage committee will be
chaired by the outage manager. The duration of the meeting should not normally exceed
for more than an hour. The representative of major contractors should also be invited to
The reporting of the overhaul work progress will be through formats prescribed. The
frequency and the pattern of reporting will be as follows:
a. Daily equipment work progress shall be reported by area engineers to LTP cell
discussed in the outage committee meeting. The daily work progress shall be
reported to station DGM/GM.
b. Weekly Unit overhaul progress shall be reported by LTP Cell to Station DGM/Gm,
ED, GM (OS) and other concerned authorities at Corporate Center. O.S. will
compile the exception report and forward it to board and CMD.
It is proposed that area engineers/contractor will fill up the manpower reporting sheet
prescribed. The planning cell will compile the area-wise and craft-wise statements and
copy of the same will be given to outage manager, who will take appropriate measures
with the contracting agencies in case of short fall in the number or level of skill.
The Quality Assurance Sheets prescribed are given as guidelines for the planning. It is
proposed that the design values of clearances, alignment and set value will be entered in
these sheets in consultation with the area engineers.
The inspection of furnace will be undertaken by the area engineers jointly with O.S. &
R.D. Once the facilities with R&D are developed, they will undertake the measurement of
tubes/headers thickness by ultrasonic equipment and hardness of vulnerable boiler
tubes, to establish the pattern. R&D will also raise the microstructure of headers, rotors
etc with the help or replicating tapes and carry out other NDT, as necessary.
It is proposed that recommissioning plan and check lists will be adhered for every
equipment during the trial run & commissioning activities. Any deviation from the logical
sequence of events or safe procedures will be recorded in the outage completion
reports, to avoid recommissioning delays in future.
The various operating parameters will also be logged on the sheet which will also form
the part of completion report and equipment history.
OUTAGE REPORT
An outage report will be prepared after the completion of overhauls. The relevant
information should be complied in such a manner that it supplements the overhaul
planning and serves as a valuable feed back to future planning process.
The main points covered under the report shall be as follows operating hours of the unit
for previous overhaul total cumulative operating hours.
f. Quality checks carried out on equipments and records of major clearances, back
lash and alignment values, tube thickness, analysis of transformer oil, calibration
records of instruments etc.
The relevant features incorporated in the report should be used to assess the
effectiveness of the planning system and actual overhaul control mechanism.
This completion report will bear a unique number indicating the project code, unit code,
year of outage and number of overhaul. Reference of this outage report, completion
report shall be entered into plant history record.
INTRODUCTION
Objective
The objective of contracts is to make the needed equipment material, works and services
in the right quantity and quality at the right time and at the right place, after giving fair
and equal chance to all tenderers, subject to the Corporate Works/Procurement Policies.
Maintenance Contract
a. the skill required for repairing or overhauling certain equipments is not available
in maintenance department.
b. the man power and tools required are not sufficient in the maintenance
department.
The example, overhauling Boiler and its auxiliaries, the man power requirement varies as
given below:
The next three days more labour is required for scaffolding and after it is over, during
cleaning requirement reduces. As here, the fluctuating requirement does not warrant us
to have the maximum manpower which will cost more for the personnel department
along with many social management problems. Meanwhile, the Maintenance Department
has to look after the other unit’s maintenance works.
Consider the another case. Overhaul of Turbine. It is a specialized job which can only be
done by the manufacturer (BHEL) who has more trained specialists and the spare parts
needed. Hence, that work needs to be given contract to BHEL.
TYPES OF CONTRACTS
If the work is laying of new roads or path ways, erection of new equipment or changing
some design or modifications work on the equipment requires a separate contract. e.g.
lining the fly ash and bottom ash slurry channels with iron plates to reduce the checking
of them by making the flow path more inclined.
As bulk of project work or the maintenance work may be carried out, more attention is
given to contracts. Experience would indicate that the system of contracting in projects
may be set with delays. Frequently, contracts may not provide for adequate internal
control and fail to rebate payments to the performance on the milestones envisaged in
the project plan/maintenance or overhaul plan. The contracting process consists of three
broad steps namely:
Contract Preparation
The contract should define precisely the obligations of the contractors and the project
authorities and include the schedule of work and milestones selected from master plan
and schedule. Some of these milestones may need to be related with the effort of other
related contractors. To be able to obtain effective control over the contractors, there
should be incentive and penalty clauses which may be linked with the achievement of
the tasks.
In regard to selection and award of contractors, there appears to be need to reduce the
time in scrutiny of tenders, selecting a contractor on the basis of the lowest bid only,
would not ensure that a competent contractor is chosen. Besides the price, past
After the contracts are awarded, document are signed and the project enters the
construction phase, a certain amount of control needs to be exercised over the
contractor and the contract should provide the authority for exercise of this control. This
would enable the project management to monitor all contracts regularly and maintain an
upto date master schedule and cost plan to facilitate evaluation and review.
CONTRACT PACKAGING
Objective
As the first activity, the total work should be broken down into smaller, well defined
packages. This is done with a view to optimize the number of contracts to be handled for
better planning coordination and implementation of the whole project.
Package Design
In breaking down the total project works into smaller packages, the factors to be
considered:-
The contents of a package should be interplated that prospective bidders can tie up with
suppliers of the various elements (equipments) and services involved in order to be able
to quote for the entire package. This will ensure adequate competition in bidding and
consequent procurement at optimum cost.
The packages formed should include such combinations of equipment and services that
can be advantageously/engineered for the preparation of specification for bid documents
and subsequent product design and drawings.
The terminal point of each package should be clearly defined and the proper tie ups of
these between packages ensured.
b. Full details of its terminal points and then tie up with other packages.
CONTRACT SCHEDULING
To ensure timely execution of the work, a contract schedule shall be developed. This will
identify the major milestone events in the contract works and indicate their scheduled
date of completion. This will enable the co-ordinators to evaluate the progress of works.
If found lagging, reviewing and updating of schedule shall be necessitated.
CONTRACT BUDGETING
Estimating the cost of the services/equipments will enable the finance department to
allocate its funds to various expenditure outlays efficiently. The normal rule is:
Alternatively budget estimates may be arrived at by using actually quoted values for
similar contracts in some other projects, with suitable price adjustments for changed
conditions.
a. Covering letter.
b. Project synopsis.
d. Amendments, if any.
f. Technical specifications.
h. Drawings.
For the purpose of delegation of powers one of the following methods of tendering shall
be used:
Open Tendering
b. Bids are invited from contractors on the approved list made after pre-
qualifications.
Limited Tendering
1. Contracts of value less than Rs. 50,000/- and where bids are invited from at least
four parties from the approved list of enlisted contractors.
2. Bids are invited from a limited nos. of parties for valid reasons and for emergency
project work. The approval of competent authority is sought.
Single Tendering
Where bid is invited from single party (BHEL, Railways) if monopoly exists or rules are in
services.
It is imperative that frivolous bidding is avoided and only various contenders bid.
Moreover it is possible to cover if not recover, part of the cost incurred in the bid
documents.
APPROVING AUTHORITY
Type of Tender
Requests of extension of bidding time shall be taken up from case to case in consultation
with the competent authority.
c. organisation guidelines.
BID GUARANTEE
To ensure that the Contractor executes the work after the contract has been awarded to
him, he shall be required to pay a bid guarantee of value 2% of the contract price at the
time of submission of bids. For Non-IDA contracts the above shall normally be subject to
a maximum of Rs. 50,000/-
Validity
The bid guarantee shall normally be valid for 30 days more than the required validity of
offer.
Forfeiture
a. tender is revoked, or if prices are increased after bid opening and during validity
of offer.
b. Contractor refuses to enter into contract after the contract is awarded to him.
Submission
The bid guarantee shall be submitted in the original and four copies of the bid or
equivalent US dollars and along with the bid document but in a separate envelope.
The successful bidder’s bid guarantee shall be returned after he submits the “Contracts
Performance Guarantee”.
Bid Guarantee of all unsuccessful bidders except the second most responsive bidder
shall be returned after the issue of Letter of Tender.
And it will be returned after signing of the contract agreement or at the expiry of
guarantee whichever is earlier.
c. Rectification of all defects which might occur during the warranty period.
The value of the performance guarantee shall be 10% of contract price. It should be
provided in the designed Performa to the NTPC and normally given at the time of signing
the contract.
Return
This money will be returned at the end of warranty period. The return shall be subjected
to satisfactory performance and guarantee tests.
Normally the liquidated damaged will be payable at the rate of half percent (1/2% of the
contract price per WEEK and subject to a maximum of 5%.
However if the delay is not attributed to the contractor these dates may be shifted.
PRICE BASIS
If the execution period is less than one year or so, firm base for price is included,
otherwise escalation conditions are taken into contract.
SPARES
Performance is guarantee tests shall be carried out at site to stick compliance with
stipulated conditions.
b. The saving by NTPC due to discount by contractor. Generally NTPC keeps 20%
as the variation in quantity at the same unit price quoted.
The payment for the equipment/service say overhaul shall be normally paid in the
following stages.
BID OPENING
The people who will normally be present at the bid opening are:-
2. Engineering 1 representative.
3. Finance 2 representatives
4. Contracts 2 representatives
NOTE
2. Alternative offers.
3. Discount offered
Clarifications and some alternate offers and concessions are, then, discussed and
settled with that contractor.
AWARD OF CONTRACTS
Approval Requirement
Then contractor is asked to prepare the work schedule and if suits with NTPC’s
estimated schedule, NTPC will agree to it. OR, necessary alternations are made.
The following are settled with the successful bidder before the award of contract.
1. Progress Reporting.
2. Payment Schedule.
Then Letter of Intent (LOI) is prepared and given to the bidder in duplicate. When
returned from the bidder after duly signing on each page of LOI, NTPC authority will sign.
Now the contract DOCUMENTS are signed and the contract is awarded.
The Engineer-in-Charge shall have the rights to supervise and inspect the work while in
progress. Through better co-ordination between the contractor and the Engineer-in-
Charge the work/service is completed. Periodic evaluation of the work is necessitated.
Sub-Contracts
Normally for the maintenance contracts sub contracts are not given. It is the
responsibility of the contractor to look after his sub-contractor and complete his work
satisfactorily.
Required tools (Welding sets, crane, Power) and consumables are supplied by NTPC,
NTPC’s man power also some times used for the completion of the work.
INTRODUCTION
NTPC has been entrusted to set up pit head Super Thermal Power Stations in the
country. Main objective of forming NTPC is to boost up country’s total generation
capacity to such a great extent to defuse the power crisis within the coming decade. To
meet this challenging job, NTPC has to ensure high standard level of performance,
availability and efficiency of the power stations being installed. In order to achieve high
availability and reliable performance of plant and equipment, some modern maintenance
techniques have to be adopted in the maintenance management system.
General practice now relies on preventive maintenance system i.e. time based
overhauls, based on previous experience and the expected life of wearing components.
As a result, action is often taken before it is really necessary. The built-in-reliability of the
equipment is ignored and replacement etc. are carried out unnecessarily, since initial
faults are not discovered at a sufficiently early stage to prevent un-planned breakdowns.
This procedure significantly reduces the likelihood of catastrophic failure, but does not
guard against unexpected deterioration/damage between overhauls. In brief time based
maintenance will not provide high availability of the equipment or in turn reliable power
generation.
The plant maintenance department can hold machinery in good running order with a
minimum of intervention by applying monitoring techniques. Condition Monitoring is used
in two distinct ways, for “non-condition maintenance”, also known as predictive
maintenance and in “permanent monitoring”.
On Condition Maintenance
e. Decrease the duration of the overhauls, the maintenance staff having planned the
necessary action in advance.
There are various methods of condition monitoring of machines. Following are the major
methods – mainly applied for power plant equipment:-
Vibration Monitoring
Vibration analysis is the most widely used dynamic technique for monitoring condition of
moving machinery. By continuously or regularly checking, machine vibration level and
character, i.e. its signature, the condition of machine can be kept continuously under
surveillance.
Shock Pulse
SPM measures and evaluates the shock pulses caused by mechanical impacts in rolling
element bearings to check the condition of antifriction or its lubrication or installation.
Thermography
Thermography is a temperature surveillance technique and useful for locating hot spots
in transmission system and the areas where heat generation in equipment is suspected.
The sophisticated equipment installed in power plants always stand the risk of failure due
to improper maintenance or by natural deterioration of machine. Therefore it is
necessary to introduce the condition monitoring techniques in maintenance organisation.
This technique will be applied on machineries and other critical equipment on priority
basically and later as a regular monitoring system on all improvement equipment.
i. Condition Monitoring
The function of CBM in our plant maintenance will be as shown schematically in Figure-
25.
All critical items of individual equipment will be brought under this scheme for one time
and periodic monitoring of equipment condition and trend analysis of its parameters like
‘output’, ‘pressure’, ‘temperature’, ‘flow’, ‘vibration’, ‘properties of oil’, ‘erosion/corrosion’
etc. for each equipment, in trend analysis, initial parameters will be recorded. Periodic
readings of all these parameters will be recorded and any change in the trend will be
analysed to identify the defects for necessary corrective action.
Condition Based Maintenance will be applied in following major areas for detecting any
changes:
i. Structural components.
For detecting the changes or any flaw development in above areas few Non-Destructive
Testing techniques such as radiography, magnetic and liquid particle and ultrasonic
inspection etc. will also be employed. The deterioration will be regularly monitored and
when exceeds the limits (as established by the manufacturer of the equipment)
immediate advance warning for necessary action will be conveyed to concerned division.
In a Thermal Power Station most of the critical equipments are rotating machines which
require the efficient maintenance using condition monitoring techniques. At the
beginning stage vibration analysis (as it has wide application) shall be used to determine
the health of the machine. When vibration measurements are introduced into a
maintenance system, it is most common to use personnel already in the system or
having some background of this technique. This is possible because the skills required
are easily learned and developed from experience, and goods instruction material is
available.
Two types of personnel will be necessary. One is the operator who will perform the
actual measurements following a well laid out measurement procedure. In a fully
developed scheme he has only to record the vibration signals with preset instruments
and turn over the data in the form of taped signals or graphs of spectra to the
maintenance engineer at the end of the day for analysis or evaluation by the latter. The
maintenance engineer is responsible for preparing the measurement procedure and
performs analysis and evaluation himself, particularly during the development period.
The measurement procedure should include which points on the machines should be
measured, in what sequence, the manner in which instruments should be used and the
desired running conditions of the machines. The points on the machines should be
prepared for easy attachment of the vibration tranducer and market with a reference
number.
The engineer should instruct the operator the purpose and the execution of the
programme. It is advisable to gain experience by taking the measurement many times on
a small number of machines. This will also reveal the repeatability of the procedure.
The engineers should also gather technical details to help him diagnose any faults
detected. These are details such as rotational speeds, bearing geometry, numbers of
rolling elements, gear teeth, turbine blades etc. This information can be set up in
diagnostic reference sheet for each machine.
To improve the plant availability, reliability and efficient maintenance system, Condition
Monitoring is the only economical technique which if implemented will lead to benefits to
the organisation. Condition Monitoring has already been used and proved well in western
countries. Using this technique it is reported that improvement in output to the extent of
45% have been achieved in some power stations in Western Countries. Therefore,
looking into the benefits of Condition Monitoring, NTPC has taken it as a policy to
introduce this programme in all its projects. For this purpose training to executives are
being provided and necessary instruments are being obtained. To provide guidelines in
the application of Conditions Monitoring to the projects. Operation Services Division has
already issued a number of condition Monitoring Memoranda and also issued a
‘Specification for Laboratory Testing Instruments’ covering also Condition Monitoring
instruments.
It is hoped that with these efforts in a short span of time, it will be possible to switch over
the existing maintenance programme to predictive maintenance using Condition Based
Maintenance Management Systems.
Day-2 Short Term-Outage Planning, Long Term Organisation of major overhaul, Human Management,
Maintenance Planning spare part planning.