O ajuste contínuo do plano nas campanhas de manutenção das plataformas de petróleo : uma tensão paradoxal entre recurso coletivo e desconexão do real

Abstract

This research focuses on the work of continuous adjustment of plans during petroleum platforms maintenance campaigns. The development of a new large-scale maintenance strategy, based on the project management theoretical framework, revealed a planning process that articulates a distributed collective, made up of a diversity of actors. The planned scenario is considered almost entirely predictable, but the offshore reality is extremely dynamic and marked by contextual variabilities and by the occurrence of unforeseen events. The anticipation of this reality is only partially possible, which thus accentuates the incompleteness of the plans and makes their continuous adjustment inevitable and necessary for them to continue being collective resources. This incompleteness offers the workers the possibility of making different uses of the plans, adapting them to the real work situations on board. However, it also gradually deviates them from the predicted reality. The analysis of plans designing process and use shows the existence of a planning system, in which the decisions taken have structural and cumulative repercussions. Over time, the adjustments trigger a mechanism of disconnection from the foreseen reality, which can result in the loss of the plans and the system’s internal coherence. Two concomitant guidelines can contribute to the situation: a flexible planning process and equip the planning and the execution teams.