Refineries and petrochemical
New build beside live plant, documented to the operator's standard.
Refinery and petrochemical scopes have two customers: the project that has to finish, and the operating organisation that keeps the records for the life of the unit. Deskely produces evidence that satisfies both, including the pre-start-up safety review.
- Certification level
- Per unit
- Environment
- Live and brownfield
- Operator gate
- PSSR
- Retention
- Life of asset
Choose your project type
The problem
The project finishes. The records stay for thirty years.
A refinery unit is commissioned once and operated for decades. The people who will rely on the commissioning record — process safety, inspection, maintenance planning — are not in the room when the documentation format is decided, and they are the ones who pay for it later.
Meanwhile the project has its own pressures: new equipment tying into live units, permits and isolations shared with operations, and a start-up date sold to a refinery economics model.
The friction shows at the pre-start-up safety review. The operating organisation asks for evidence in their structure, the contractor has it in theirs, and several weeks are spent converting one into the other while the unit sits ready.
What the project is actually up against
The standards and constraints that shape a brownfield refinery scope.
- Isolation authority
- Shared with live-plant operations
- Permit-to-work issued by the site, not the project
- Tag numbering
- Operator's existing scheme retained
- Safety review
- PSSR against API RP 750 / OSHA PSM-style criteria
- Retention
- Life of asset, typically 25–30 years
- Commissioning passes
- Cold then hot, separated by PSSR
Setting up the register
Units and subsystems that match how the plant is actually operated.
The breakdown follows operating reality: process units, utilities, offsites and tank farm, each split into subsystems that can be commissioned and handed over independently. Shared utilities are held separately so a common scope does not hold a unit hostage.
The tag register is drafted from the drawing package — P&IDs, line lists, instrument index, electrical schedules — with the source drawing kept behind each tag. On a brownfield scope the existing plant tag numbering is preserved, because the operating organisation will not renumber their asset to suit a project.
That single decision, made at setup, is what makes the eventual dossier usable by the people who inherit it.
What actually blows the schedule
Four failure modes specific to new build beside a running unit.
Isolation certificate expires mid-test
A tie-in test outruns the permit window shared with operations, and work stops while a new isolation is authorised.
Isolation certificates and their expiry are tracked against the ITRs they gate, so a lapsing permit is visible before it blocks the crew.
Brownfield tag renumbered by the project
A contractor issues new tag numbers for convenience, and the operator's CMMS can no longer match records to its own asset register.
The plant's existing tag numbering is enforced at register setup and never overwritten downstream.
PSSR evidence assembled from scratch
Safety-critical records — relief devices, trips, fire and gas — are scattered across contractor files and take weeks to compile for the review.
Safety-critical tags are flagged at setup and filtered as a single evidence view exportable on demand.
Cold-phase punch lost at cut-in
Punch items raised during chemical cleaning and steam blows are closed administratively rather than physically before feed is introduced.
Punch stays attached to the tag through hot commissioning; Category A blocks the certificate above it regardless of phase.
Cold commissioning and hot commissioning
A refinery unit is commissioned twice, once with no hydrocarbon in it and once with feed running through it.
Cold commissioning is chemical cleaning, steam blows, air blowing and reinstatement, loop checks and trip testing, catalyst loading under inert gas and machinery solo runs. Hot commissioning is feed cut-in, furnace light-off, establishing reflux, getting on-spec product to rundown and the witnessed guarantee run.
The pre-start-up safety review sits between the two, and it is the point at which project evidence has to convince operations, HSE and often an insurer that the unit is safe to take feed.
Because both phases run against one register, the tag tested on air is the tag that runs on feed: trip test results stay attached through the cut-in, cold-phase punch stays visible during the ramp, and performance test data lands in the same dossier the maintenance team inherits.
What the review reads
The records a PSSR panel actually opens, and when they are created.
Relief device proof test
Overpressure protection is set and functional before feed
During cold commissioning, re-verified pre-PSSR
Trip and interlock functional test
Safety instrumented functions respond within spec
Loop checks through cold commissioning
Isolation and permit history
Tie-ins were executed under authorised, closed-out permits
Continuously, at each tie-in
Cold commissioning punch status
No Category A items remain open ahead of hydrocarbon-in
Reviewed immediately before PSSR
Guarantee run performance data
The unit meets contractual throughput and product spec
During hot commissioning, post-PSSR
Handover
A dossier the site can still use in ten years.
The handover package exports per unit and per subsystem in the structure the operating organisation retains, with certificates, signed records, punch position and preservation history under the tags the plant actually uses.
Category B items that will be closed during normal operations are carried with an owner and a date, which is what makes the outstanding list credible to the maintenance planner receiving it rather than something quietly written off at handover.
Because the dossier is exported from the live register, the operating organisation can be given a package for a subsystem the week it is complete, instead of everything arriving as one archive months after start-up.
Scale, in numbers
What a brownfield unit tie-in typically runs through the register.
8–15
tie-in points per unit revamp
2 passes
cold then hot commissioning, split by PSSR
25–30 yr
typical record retention on the operator's side
1
tag numbering scheme, kept from project through operations
How it runs
How a refinery scope is set up in Deskely.
The structure is chosen for the people who will keep the records, not for the convenience of the project that produces them.
- 01
Break down by unit and utility
Process units, utilities, offsites and tank farm become systems and subsystems that can be certified and handed over independently.
- 02
Keep the operator's tag numbering
Existing plant tags are preserved on brownfield scopes so the dossier remains usable by maintenance and inspection after the project leaves.
- 03
Draft the register from drawings
P&IDs, line lists and the instrument index are parsed into a tag register with drawing references retained for engineer review.
- 04
Flag safety-critical elements
Relief devices, trips, interlocks and fire and gas tags are marked so their records can be filtered as one view for the safety review.
- 05
Commission against live-plant constraints
Tie-in and isolation scopes are executed on tablets at the tag with offline capture, so records exist the day the work is done.
- 06
Certify per unit and export for PSSR
RFSU is gated on the records beneath it, and the evidence pack exports per unit in the operator's retention structure.
FAQ
Questions about Refineries scopes.
Keep reading
Oil and gas commissioning
The full sector view: certification ladder, preservation, handover and the terminology behind them.
Read moreCertificates
MC, RFSU and handover certificates issued from signed records, with the gates enforced by the data.
Read morePunch lists
Category A and B punch raised at the tag, carried with an owner, and blocking certification where it should.
Read moreOther oil and gas scopes: LNG trains and gas processing, FPSO and floating production, Brownfield tie-ins and turnarounds, Fixed platforms and jackets, Subsea tie-backs, Pipelines and compressor stations, Terminals, tank farms and jetties, Hydrogen, ammonia and carbon capture, Decommissioning and late life.
