When the Site is No Longer Purely Under Construction, Part 5

Sometimes before systems are turned over to operations, there’s a “stepping on each other’s toes” problem.

On the system commissioning side, there’s a production schedule that has work slated for instrument technicians, electricians, and test engineers. Sometimes, there’s a crew composed of multiple disciplines to perform loop checks and functional testing. This is complicated enough, already.

Further complication arises when operators have their own schedule for interacting with this same equipment. It would be nice if the project management schedule kept this sort of thing from happening, but in the real world there’s often a disconnect in that regard.

What can happen is you go to the panel to energize the circuit for functional testing, but the operators have their tag on your lock. “By rights” you can just remove their “illegal” tag, but that could get someone killed. Make sure they remove their tag before you remove yours. If this creates a work stoppage, report the incident to the project manager.