Tag numbers for manual valves?
Coming from oil industry/EPC, I'm accustomed to NOT having individual tag numbers for simple manual valves. In my new job, they have tagged every valve in the entire plant... V001, V002 etc. (As you can see, a very small plant!) We're going to be designing another (much larger) plant in the next year or so. Does anyone else ever tag all manual valves?
It also depends on your plant maintenance management policy and/or software...
For
example, I once worked in Oil Refineries running SAP (PM module) where
every single pipe, exchanger, pump, valve or piece of equipment had its
own ID both as a physical object (equipment number) and as a
geographical and functional location (technical coordinates, the last
branch of multi-level tree structure: plant, train, system, line,
sub-line, etc...).
This allowed to manage the state of each
single piece of physical equipment (mounted in a certain location, under
repair, out of order, etc.), to run separate statistics, to address the
causes of failures (due to the function or due to the equipment) and so
on...
Nuclear power plants might. Years ago I worked on a number of Refinery
projects for one specific Client where this question came up.
We finally defined certain criteria for doing it. But it was never done on any of the projects.
Before
you start a Valve Numbering Program, you must advise the client to have
a clear and meaningful purpose for doing it. They will pay for the
initial work and they will go on paying for a very long time. It is time
consuming and once started it goes on for the full and complete life of
the plant or it is not worth doing at all.
1. Do not number any
(non-instrument) valves until the end of the Detail Design phase and the
Isometrics have been issued for fabrication.
2. Update all P&ID's for all other marks.
3. Take all clean copies of all P&IDs and all piping isometrics.
4. Create a Valve Numbering data base (excel spreadsheet) to record the following:
- Valve Number
- P&ID Number
- Line Number
- Valve type (Gate, Globe, Plug, Ball, Butterfly, Check, etc.)
- Valve function (Shut-Off), Throttle, etc)
- Commodity (Water, Oil, Acid, etc)
- Valve normal Setting (Open, Closed, etc.)
- Install Status (Original, Replacement, Reconditioned, etc)
- Valve Brand
- Model Number
- Install date
- Last Maintenance Date
- Last Maint. Reason (Replace packing, replace seats, etc )
5.
Start the Numbering and go from one end of the process to the other
makring the P&IDs, the Isometrics and the Valve list.
6. Send the Number Column of the list to a tag maker. The Tag is to have only the "Number" (no other data).
7. Update the Isometrics and the P&IDs for the added numbers.
8. Establish a Sub-Contractor to do the Valve taging
When the Tags are available and the P&IDs and Isos are ready Issue the Package to the Taging sub-contractor.
9.
Have a QA/QC team Follow the Tagging to insure the Tagging is
correct. The QA/QC team should be made up of one or more members of the
engineering company staff and the Client personnel.
10 Develop a Training module for the Client Maintenance Staff to cover the Valve Numbering policy, Procedure and Purpose.
MORE NEWS