Completing a power plant’s start-up and commissioning usually means pushing the prime contractor to wrap up the remaining punch list items and getting the new operators trained. Staffers are tired of the long hours they’ve put in and are looking forward to settling into a work routine.
Just when the job site is beginning to look like an operating plant, a group of engineers arrives with laptops in hand, commandeers the only spare desk in the control room, and begins to unpack boxes of precision instruments. In a fit of controlled confusion, the engineers install the instruments, find primary flow elements, and make the required connections. Wires are dragged back to the control room and terminated at a row of neatly arranged laptops. When the test begins, the test engineers stare at their monitors as if they were watching the Super Bowl and trade comments in some sort of techno-geek language.