P 54 JMD DTA Contd.

P 54

JMD DTA Contd.

When that was the issue we faced for running the cooling water mains, we had an entirely different challenge when it came to main refinery fire water system! As I said in the beginning, the team assumed that there shall not be more than 5000 equivalent hydrants in DTA- including both ISBL and OSBL hydrants, Monitors etc. and went ahead designing 10X1000M3/Hr  fire water pumps in pond 2 pump house. As the engineering progressed we were in  for surprise shock! The total number of equivalent hydrants requirement crossed 6000 mark and it  called additional pumping capacity and storage pond. When the whole team was blinking for a workable solution, Mr Bob Green ,Bechtel Civil specialist came out with a brilliant  idea and  a workable resolution. He identified and suggested that there is a low lying area adjacent to ETP West of road A, which happens to be about 400M only from the pond 2 area. He proposed that can be developed as additional pond and required additional fire water pump provision can be done in that. With that lead we jumped with joy. Then we went into detail and configured the new pump house orientation such that both the pump house discharge can be clubbed into single manifold. That resulted to have two fire water ponds 2&2A combined into single discharge with 16 pumps- any 10 operating with 6 stand by thus meeting TAC conditions fully. Though we implemented 16 pumps in 2 ponds, every one in the team felt we are gross over designing ;but what to do! The national rules stipulate that. Even international majors like Shell  & international re-insurers M/S Munich RI commented that India is one country where empirical formula approach is prevalent. It is a different story that I have taken advantage of this excess margin while conceiving the fire water requirements in J3, which I will narrate when I address the J3 design basis.

Here I would like to emphasise that the whole management are having the wrong concept that executing ISBL projects are the biggest challenge when compared to OSBL and infrastructure build-up for a complex.They think ,specifying and designing equipment  like column,reactor , exchanger are the only challenges but forget the tricky issues like utility package sizing, specification and their distribution and yard piping interconnect for process streams and tank farm and how they can make or break the smooth running of complex!

All of us think ,water is the harmless media and any Tom Dick &Harry can handle their challenge. But nobody has analysed how&what can go wrong while executing utility packages for water and how many water types come into picture in a chemical plant or hydrocarbon processing.Added to misery, since Jamnagar is dry area, we are fundamentally dependent on sea water as main water source.  That adds its issue of transporting and handling water with high sodium chloride.
As OSBL project manager of DTA, though I had the main task of project engineering the main  inter-connecting pipe rack and interconnect piping running into thousands of kilometers, my focus and attention has been spent mostly on water systems and its transportation. Here I would like to bring out several incidents involving water only, which literally made or broke my career in Reliance.
                                                                                                                 Contd....

 Key Aspects :- Critical challenge, Incident analysis, Innovative, Multi discipline exposure,
Proactive approach, Technical issues, Ups&down

P 53 JMD DTA Contd.

P  53


JMD DTA Contd.

Having generally addressed the involved principles for arriving the overall DTA complex layout, let us look into how the engineering and detailing proceeded at Jamnagar.

Typical of Reliance that too with Bechtel back-up, the underground piping activity started even before the basic engineering was in place. The Cooling water mains and fire water are the two which took top most priority. As these two fall under OSBL scope, the team at Bechtel London and at Jamnagar  worked round the clock for accumulating the available indicated numbers by the licensors and prepared an estimated requirement. The Project,Process team , utility experts had two day mind boggling deliberations and arrived at the qty. requirements for cooling water  and strategic placement for cooling tower locations and number of cells and spare/future estimates. There used to be battle royal discussing which CT should cater to which ISBL and group of plants. As AR had executed similar multi plant requirements at Hazira, calling the shots with conviction became easier and every one got convinced to endorse. AR &Dr JVK having worked jointly at Hazira , took the practical gamble of having 30% margin and contingency and prepared the spread sheet. That became blessing in disguise later including to cater to capacity enhancement as well as new plant additions in that geographical contour. Even some of Bechtel engineers got excited to be in the team and gave the momentum for progress. When it came for fire water, since we developed the overall plot plan  displaying the units locations identified, the joint team- Bechtel LP, Technofire and ex-TAC officers, Reliance OSBL Projects(AR team) took the gamble of going for 10 X 1000 M3/Hr at each location- main plant area, Refinery tank farm and marine tank farm. That was because, in those days there was no specific rules for FW qty.from CCE or IS but only TAC Rules were the statutory guidelines.  The odd  thing in those days was- TAC rules arrived at pumping capacity based on summation of equivalent hydrant demand and 50% spare pumping capacity. The problem was that no one in the country imagined  that there could be this vast requirement that may arise!; but rule was the rule and we were forced to adopt. Though Bechtel LP specialists felt odd, to follow the national statutes they could not help to reduce the number of pumps as well as pond capacity. In those days since Jamnagar was practically desert area, we decided to opt for sea water as fire water media as much as possible; but at the same time , made sure that only fresh water shall be the media for fire fighting in all ISBL plant areas.  These considerations forced us to develop so many ponds and their corresponding fire water pumping system.  While conceiving the cooling water and fire water network all across, every member felt the experience of life term opportunity and relished.

Here I have to include two specific points that we came across in Cooling water network routing and Fire water pumping capacity in main refinery area.

Cooling water header routing:  Without realizing or having an idea of the main header diameter involved, that time Engineering  President ( himself managed field execution in his period) gave instructions to Bechtel Principal Piping Engineer to route the headers on pipe rack, since Jamnagar plant area soil is of rocky nature! Jim Skipper and PB Patel came running to me saying' Ram, what can we do? The President has given us this directive and how do we abide? Should we tell Civil team to enhance and engineer the rack elements to bear  2 X 90" dia. fully loaded water pipe load that too not one but in pairs?' Having heard that I laughed and told the team to go ahead buried design only and I will manage and convince the President. Every one of them were afraid how AR is going to face this challenging task.  But my job became easy. When they went and told him that AR has taken this call, immediately he changed and asked them to proceed with under ground only. I never touched this subject with him at any time.                                                                      Contd....

Key Aspects :- Accountable, Attitude, Conviction, Incidence analysis, Initiative, Leadership,
Planning, Technical issue, Team building 

P 52 DTA Ph1 Refinery Contd.

P  52

DTA Ph1 refinery Contd.

Flare system- Zeeco & Petron-  Darton, Sanjeev Chikkalpatti, Rane

FM 200 System for PIBs- Kidde,Vijay Fire-  Harish Salot

Fire water Monitors- HD Fire-Harish Dhramshi

Deluge valves system- Inbal&TechnoFire- Shimpshon& Praful sanghrajka

Fire&Gas System- Wormald

I have included major players only. There were many more who played their part but I am not able to recollect their names to mention here.

Having said that, let us recollect the specific instances which made my career development both high & low  in these period of 39 months!

Story about overall plot layout and how did we arrive at allocating land area for respective ISBL.

Reliance/Bechtel had certain fundamental principles , utmost importance for meeting statutory guidelines for safety  + Principal Licensor requirements.  Added to that Vaastu compliance, sourced land contour, non-availability of frontal portion of land area to main highway etc. contributed many factors while arriving at the would be world largest refinery complex.

Out of these Safety, Vaastu Compliance and Licensor stream flow recommendation played very important role.

Green Belt: Though the Government Regulation call for only 50M Green Belt at periphery boundary of plot, due to non availability of that piece of land in the frontal area, we were forced to leave 800M space in front! But presently the story is different! In the beginning M/S BPCL were owning that land and they were thinking of establishing their tank terminal there, which never came. After a year or so, they realized that and then sold off to Reliance-where the mango forest has been established by Reliance  and Reliance also deals with mango pulp making.

Coming to Vaastu factors  Reliance has engaged the services of one specialist consultant Dr M V Rao from Hyderabad for Vaastu studies. With Lat/Long demarkation marked,  and identifying the high/low point paving of land area and studying the centre of gravity of earth forces, his recommendation of fire/water/high mountain and Mother's Womb etc. were marked in the overall plot drawing. That only caused to build DHA Pyramid at South West Corner of DTA plot adjoining 713 Fire water pond and PP flare, which was constructed using the concrete rubble generated during construction. Today also the portion of Mother's Womb plot is left vacant to comply that  Vaastu studies.                                                                                                                                       Contd.....

Key Aspects :- Technical issue, Team building, Ups&down 

P 51 DTA Ph1 Refinery Contd.

P  51

DTA Ph1 Refinery Contd.

Having addressed the basics of DTA conceptualization, let me bring out the listing of personnel who all stood/supported me for successful execution of the  OSBL in first refinery at Jamnagar. Rather, saying supported, I should say shouldered !

Of course from Bechtel- the project and engineering team at London/Delhi- M/S Pat Mc Cormack, Laxman Odedra, Vi Patel, Pratap Patel, Jim Skipper, Bob Green, Dave Whatmore, John Catchpole, Gordon, Mike Alaka, Ashok Kapoor &others

AR's OSBL Project team- M/S KS Shinde, H Pandya, SK Sen Gupta, BM Sharma, K Prabhakaran, Aravind Govindarajan, Rajagopal, AVN Murthy, SM Pathak,

AR's Direct lieutenants- Bhavesh Parikh, Mohit Jain, Manish Gupta

AR's team from plant side- M/S PB Patel, Jaman Bhalani, Anil Patel.  Of course M/S M L Sinhal and Kirit Brahmabhatt performed as customer end  managers and helped in freezing the overall picture.

Process Assistance- M/S Samir Karnik, Mommin, MLakshmidurai.

AR's OSBL Construction team- M/S PBM Rao, Jitendra Prakash, Motwani, Nagaraj ,RM Shah as leaders for respective domain areas.
Under them stalwarts  Viz: Kallol Patra, Muniyandi, Pratap, Sai,Anantha Narayan, L Raghunath, Mukesh Garg & others contributed their might in successful execution.

When coming to vendor side, list goes very long! One important point to be highlighted here. Be it supply vendors or turn key contractors, "nobody felt you & me, but we only prevailed throughout."
Even expatriates in the team felt that spirit  and appreciated. Let me list out several of them. If I have missed out anybody, I request others to bring to my attention to update.

Tankages-  VTV- Raghavan,Kannan, Bridge&Roof- Roy, ISBL desal& condensate tanks- Jagasia
Cryogenic tank &system- LGA/Whessoe & Punj Lloyd  - M/S Popmal, Peter, Mike Demert, Shivendra Kumar, Garg
Sea water Filtration-  UEL-Srivastava
Sea water piping internal lining- PSL- Dr Kurtz, Sehgal ,Ahuja
ETP-  Wabag-  Rajiv Mittal, Arunachalam
Cooling Towers-  Paharpur CT-Vikram Swaroop,BK Sahni
Desal Plants-  IDE, Israel-Henri,Tuvia
CW&FW Pumps- KBL-  Sanjay Kirloskar, Satish Pillai
Fire Water System &Network- TechnoFire- Praful Sanghrajka, Dilip Koimattur, TRA Krishnan(the Chartered Engineer)                                                                                Contd....

Key Aspects :- Human relations, Responsible, Team building

P 50 DTA Ph1 Refinery contd.

P  50

DTA Ph1 Refinery Contd.

The Detailed Engg. for all the plant sites got established in Jamnagar but still the project activities and procurement continued at London. So almost all project team members were shuttling between London/Mumbai/Jamnagar. Though the detailed engineering has been shifted to site office, still the
overall design features freezing and procurement activity continued from London only. So it was real double edged sword for the project leaders! Typical of vendor data receipts and vendor drawings review etc. were going to and fro. In those days ,since the computer technology has not developed for e-room upload and transfer etc. it posed its own issues.  In some cases, even we called the vendor back office designers to London for across the table review/ discussions&update.
In Jamnagar end, Mr John Newman established excellent team  and the stage wise review of deliverable went through like  a well oiled machine. The discipline wise interface check got performed smoothly- especially when it came for underground drawings G84 series. That benefited us for carrying out head start for site grading,pond configuration and under ground piping for cooling water and fire water all across various individual plot areas. Indirectly that helped construction to undertake the OSBL pipe rack  footings and casting foundation for tall columns well in advance  before the equipment arrival.

When it came to transport logistics of equipment  &receipts, since Reliance had bitter experience while handling equipment receipts at Patalganga  from Bombay based fabricators, Bechtel &Reliance team  formed a task force to study&evaluate various options. In those days, even Gujarat high way roads were not evenly surfaced  and wide enough for heavy/tall equipment transportation. That resulted &evolved the concept of LO-LO/RO-RO jetty and Haul road-16Kms from Sikka jetty to JMD site.

Here I have to bring out a specific  issue highlighting PBMR's vision and confidence!
 The last 4 Kms land between Sikka village to the water front was squashy soil  and Bechtel members were not confident enough arriving at any solution for bringing the heavy equipment weighing 2000 MT! Rao being a civil engineer having worked with EIL at Visag port (part of VREP for HPCL), which had similar issues, suggested to MDA that he has a workable solution- as anyhow Reliance is sourcing boulders for gravel/stone pitching by excavating land area at South plot,why not we spread part of these builders in that 4 Km stretch ?  Form Sethu Samudram ( part of Ramayana story where squirrels spread the stones and formed pathway from Dhanushkodi to Lanka to enable troops to cross over) &utilize thus formed road for transporting equipment from the water front to haul road ! As MDA was desperate and worried, he had one to one agreement/ understanding with PBMR  and gave him 6 weeks time to attempt and verify/ prove. Since Rao had all the resources at his command,he did succeed. After 6 weeks, MDA drove one heavy vehicle as well as his Mercedes Benz to and fro and approved/ got convinced. For info. that  JMD Sethu Samudram is the only route through which all  equipment,columns, compressors, reactors etc. of J1/J2&J3 are being brought- both indigenous as well as imported! The company has made the policy of bringing all equipment only through water front thus avoiding road congestion.                                                 Contd........

Key Aspects :- Attitude, Conviction, Critical challenge, Delegation, Faith, Incident analysis, Innovative, 

P 49 DTA Ph1 Refinery.

P 49

DTA Ph1 Refinery

Having defined the refinery capacity, let us look into how the basic&detailed engg. progressed.
To start with , even M/S Bechtel functional specialists were at a loss to freeze the utility balance  and struggled. It took them several months to arrive at numbers; Reliance members present at London had more confidence  and were able to define the max.&minimum limits both in terms of flow as well as pressure requirements for most of the utilities. But one thing has to be noted here. M/S Bechtel team did not feel shy ;they cross checked /validated them &accepted. That gave a head-on start.

As the PM for utilities&offsite, let me cover only those areas where my direct involvement was there.  With the presence of Reliance Utility operation personnel ( M/S MLSinhal/Mommin/Laxmidurai/PB Patel/Samir Karnik) we could arrive at the utility packages sizing; Mr Pratap Patel of Bechtel was the lead engineering manager for this portion. The entire team had very good understanding  and Mr Vi Patel as OSBL Dy.project manager could drive. But there was  a problem with Bechtel OSBL PM!
Mr Mike Cross, OSBL PM did not have any confidence on any of the members and dragged his feet at all times. On one occasion,in one management meeting with MDA, he got completely exposed ! That was regarding the site grading and land refill for the entire land area of the acquired property. He presented a huge requirement as if to shave/grade  the complete area and get them refilled to achieve grade level. Even the civil specialist of Bechtel Mr Bob Green was not in agreement with his suggestion. On that exposure, he was removed from his position  and Mr Pat Mc Cormack took over.
After that the entire Basic Engineering for OSBL went smooth in London. Packages like  Desalination plant, Cooling Tower, CW/FW pumps commitment etc. went smoothly.

Then came the major shift. Both Reliance & Bechtel felt that the overall expenditure may run very high if we have to use only British expatriates for the entire Detailed Engineering &why not we shift the scenario to India itself and carry out under Bechtel management. Reliance management thought it fit to create a full fledged temporary infrastructure to accommodate about 900 people capacity seating space and then move. That resulted in the creation of temporary SSO. For info. that temporary SSO is still functional and in use. Rather that is the central pivot for accommodating the engineering activities  and office space for top construction management personnel.

Having decided to shift to India, PMSP put M/S S Narayana, A Gopalakrishnan and myself on the job of arriving at the total manpower requirements Project wise/ Discipline wise .They along with Bechtel core engineering management team interviewed the personnel from various Indian engineering companies- M/S Aker, H&G, IDEA... &selected teams from them.  Mr John Newman of Bechtel was transferred to Jamnagar as the Central Head and given the charge to manage all these manpower completely. John ensured that each plant area was given to one agency only so that their internal co-ordination/inter discipline check process etc  were carried out smoothly. I would say that Reliance was blessed to have the services of John Newman as overall head of engineering. In that OSBL was given to IDEA team and Sai was the head of that team.                   Contd.....

key Aspects :-Attitude, Human relations, Leadership, Technical issue, Transfer 

P 48 Life time Opportunity-Enjoy!

P 48

Life Time Opportunity-Enjoy

This was the slogan the management used to motivate all employees involved in Jamnagar DTA refinery execution. The team from Hazira projects-especially the core construction team was transferred lock stock&barrel to Jamnagar. That team took care of preparing the infrastructure as the PMC and DEC selection was going on.

Out of the two remaining international parties, M/S Bechtel was keen to take this challenging assignment that too from an Asian client.  Strategically they planned to take up this job and execute from their London office where large Indian origin Britishers were present.  So they picked up the bite with a counter challenge. That is, they can consider to agree for completion in 46 months,but with a bonus/penalty condition.i.e if the project is completed earlier than this stipulated period, they should be paid a bonus @ $1 Mn /month and the penalty vice versa. So it was Win-Win deal. As most of us in the team did not have prior exposure for such a challenge, we were afraid and scared! To manage the situation&to make the client personnel feel good, Bechtel posted Mr Bip Desai as their London Office manager, who got involved directly during the initial phase of project.  For strategic reasons, Reliance posted Mr Mike Kinney, an ex-Flour manager as the Project Director and Mr Maurice Banniyan as Process Lead. This was only to project that Reliance means business and expat internationals are managing this project challenge. But this did not continue more than 3 months! In those days MDA was personally monitoring the project developments and progress. He used to visit London every month and used to spend two days to take stock. Rather Reliance forced Bechtel to change 2 project directors in that period and it also altered its leadership. Mike Kinney was brought to Jamnagar to manage materials and PMS Prasad was elevated to take charge as Reliance Project Director. From IOC, Mr PK Kapil was brought in and asked to take care of reviewing Process systems /Heat&material balance etc. One by one, all the discipline leads were inducted to take their positions and Area Project PMs identified.  The beauty was that there was no difference between a Bechtel person to that of Reliance manager and no hierarchy management. When it came to procurement, Bechtel lead will be the focal point for vendor technical discussions but all commercial negotiations will be performed by Reliance procurement team & order will be released by Bechtel.
The beauty was that even Britishers adopted to Reliance style of functioning and used to stay late hours for completing day's targeted work.

The project activity started at London office-Hammersmith in March'95, but the official kick-off was calculated from end May only. By the time PMSP took the position.Here it is important to mention -how the refinery capacity went on increasing just like stocks in exchange! When the negotiations went on, the intended refinery capacity was only 9 MMT/Annum. MDA, when he visited London in June, had a close door meeting with the team and then in the monthly review meeting with Bechtel/Reliance went on dictating 9 to 12, then 13, then 14 and then froze it 15 on that day. But for public knowledge, the original refinery was completed for 21.5 MMTPA. The Coker plant was awarded to Foster-Wheeler, Houston and they took the engg. also exclusively under their control. That caused some pin pricks during execution.                                                     Contd........

Key Aspects:- Attitude, Faith, Motivation,