Power

Operations, maintenance and refurbishment

For safe and effective operation of plant, we need to identify issues early, and find workable strategies to overcome them. The benefits of doing this well – reducing both costs and risks – could make the difference between a business’s success and failure.

Hydropower operations and maintenance costs are often 3–5% of the capital value of the asset. Over the life of the asset (possibly more than 70 years) this adds up to significant cost. Unforseen failures and poor performance will increase these costs even further.

Time lost through breakdowns and forced outages can have significant commercial impacts, and deficiencies in operation and maintenance also pose serious safety and environmental risks. To reduce these risks takes regular, ongoing and expert attention and a clear understanding of performance targets and what could jeopardise them.

We have ongoing first-hand, day-to-day experience of managing, operating and maintaining hydropower stations over the long term, and our specialists draw on this when working closely with clients to manage hydropower assets effectively. Our experience in monitoring, inspecting and testing gives us the edge in identifying issues early and recommending strategies to overcome them, saving our clients time and money in the future.

As hydropower assets age, well-managed upgrades and refurbishment can often significantly improve performance more economically than replacing them completely. Because we deal with the challenges of keeping ageing infrastructure running, we appreciate the complexities of older technologies and the need for cost-effective, workable solutions to maintain and refurbish existing infrastructure in line with the performance requirements of our clients.

We have assisted clients in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and Africa to operate and maintain their hydropower assets, to minimise risks and costs, and to maximise performance, reliability, availability and safety.

Our services include:

• due diligence reviews
• plant condition monitoring review, testing and inspection
• maintenance optimisation and integration services
• plant overhaul, upgrade and failure analysis
• Plant risk identification and mitigation plan development
• upgrade and modernisation studies
• design and supervision of major refurbishment works
• training for operators and maintenance personnel
• flood studies and ongoing inflow and flood forecasting and monitoring.
• lifecycle planning
• root cause analysis
• failure modes and effects
• standard operation procedures
• operational standards
• outage management and planning
• maintenance specifications.