Project Grade 9 Careers & CTE
Thorncross Membrane Plant: The Shift Turnover Package
A four-session grade 9 careers project in which teams build the turnover form and escalation rules a fictional membrane plant's operators hand across at shift change.
Objectives
- Students will sort shift information by whether the next operator has to act on it.
- Students will design a one-page turnover form in which every field traces to a stated duty.
- Students will write escalation rules that place four plant incidents and name who is called.
Vocabulary
Key words: shift turnover, escalation, lockout and tagout, permeate, clean-in-place, work order
Teacher overview
The fictional Thorncross Membrane Plant runs with one operator on duty at a time, so everything the next operator needs has to cross a fifteen-minute gap at the shift change. Over four sessions, teams build that plant's written turnover package: a one-page report form, a sheet of three escalation rules, and a memo to the superintendent defending what they left off the form. The misconception this project is built to correct is the belief that a complete turnover is a long one. A form that asks for everything gets filled in where the answers are easy and left blank where they are hard, which is why the brief sets a limit on fields rather than a minimum. Teachers can open Session 1 by inviting someone in the building who works a shift change, such as a nurse or a bus dispatcher, to describe what their own handover covers and what tends to get missed in it.
Project Brief
Driving question: What belongs on the one page an operator hands to the operator taking over, and what happens to everything that does not fit?
Scenario. The fictional Thorncross Valley Water Authority treats brackish groundwater at the Thorncross Membrane Plant. Three reverse osmosis trains produce the plant's water. One operator is on duty for each of the three shifts, which change at 7 a.m., 3 p.m., and 11 p.m. Each change has a paid overlap of 15 minutes. Turnover today is a conversation and a spiral notebook. The superintendent, Ilse Brannock, wants a written package for the plant's procedure binder. Your team builds it.
Constraints, all set for this fictional plant.
- The turnover report fits on one side of one page and holds at most 12 fields. A field is one labeled space a person writes in.
- Six fields are required and cannot be cut.
- The other six come from the candidate list below, or from an item your team writes, and each one must name the duty it serves.
- A turnover has to be finished inside the 15-minute overlap. You will time one in Session 4.
- The escalation sheet holds exactly three rules. Each rule names a trigger, the action the operator takes, and who gets called.
- All four incidents below must fall under one of your three rules.
The six required fields.
| # | Field | Why it is required |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Status of each train: running, standby, or out of service, and why | The next operator cannot start work without it |
| 2 | Any water quality result outside a limit, the time it was found, and the action taken | The plant's permit requires the record |
| 3 | Any alarm that sounded, who answered it, and whether the cause was cleared | An unanswered alarm repeats on the next shift |
| 4 | Chemical tank levels and any delivery received or expected | Running a feed tank dry stops production |
| 5 | Samples taken and samples still due, with deadlines | A missed permit sample cannot be taken late |
| 6 | Open work orders and any equipment locked out, and by whom | Lockout and tagout protects the person working on it |
Candidate fields. Choose six.
| # | Candidate field |
|---|---|
| 7 | Feed pressure and differential pressure for each train at the end of the shift |
| 8 | Permeate flow trend since the last cleaning |
| 9 | Hours run since the last clean-in-place, and the next cleaning scheduled |
| 10 | Cartridge filter change-out date and current differential pressure |
| 11 | Which wells ran and their pumping levels |
| 12 | Concentrate disposal line status |
| 13 | Road or weather conditions affecting the next shift's drive in |
| 14 | Contractors, inspectors, or deliveries expected next shift |
| 15 | Calls from customers or from the office, and what was said |
| 16 | Tools or vehicles taken out and not returned |
| 17 | Housekeeping left unfinished |
| 18 | Training or paperwork the operator did not finish |
The four incidents.
- Incident A. At 2:40 a.m. the permeate conductivity alarm sounds on train 2. The operator restarts the train, the reading climbs again, and it stays above the plant's stated limit.
- Incident B. At 5:15 a.m. the antiscalant day tank reads a quarter full, which is about two days of feed at the rate the plant is running. The next delivery is three days away.
- Incident C. Differential pressure across the cartridge filters rises steadily all shift but stays under the change-out limit. Nothing else changes.
- Incident D. At the 11 p.m. shift change, the arriving operator finds the pump room door propped open and standing water across the floor.
Final deliverable. Your team turns in three things to Superintendent Brannock: the one-page turnover form; the escalation sheet with a table placing each of the four incidents under one of your rules, with the action and the person called; and a memo of about 300 words that lists the six candidate fields you cut, defends two of those cuts, states which rule catches Incident B and why, and reports how long your timed turnover took against the 15-minute overlap.
Milestones
- Session 1, sort what the next operator needs. Read all 18 items from the fictional plant, including the reason given for each required field. Sort every item into one of three groups: required by the permit or a safety rule, useful to the next operator, or better kept in another record such as the log book or a work order. Output: a sorted table with one sentence of reasoning for each item your team puts in the first group.
- Session 2, draft the form. Lay out the one page. Place the six required fields, then choose six candidates. Add a trace column naming the duty behind each field. Output: a drafted form, plus a cut list naming the six candidate items you left off and a reason for each cut.
- Session 3, write and test the escalation rules. Write exactly three rules, each with a trigger, an action, and the person called. Test the rules against Incidents A through D. If an incident fits no rule, or fits two, revise the rules rather than the incident. Output: the rule sheet and a table placing all four incidents.
- Session 4, run the turnover under the clock. One member plays the outgoing operator at the fictional plant and reports a shift from notes the teacher supplies. A second fills in the form as the incoming operator. A third runs the timer and marks any field that was skipped or guessed. Revise the form, then write the memo. Output: the finished package.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form within the constraints | The form runs past one page or past 12 fields, or a required field is missing | All six required fields appear, yet the form exceeds a stated limit | The form holds at most 12 fields on one page and includes all six required fields | The form meets every limit and its layout groups fields in the order the fictional plant's operator would gather them |
| Fields traced to duties | Fields are listed with no duty named | Some fields name a duty, others are included by habit | Every field names the duty it serves, and the cut list gives a reason for each of the six items left off | Traceability is complete and the memo defends two cuts by naming what the plant would lose and how that loss would be caught elsewhere |
| Escalation rules | Fewer than three rules, or rules that name no action and no person to call | Three rules exist, yet one incident fits no rule or fits two | Three rules each name a trigger, an action, and the person called, and all four incidents are placed | Placement is complete and the rules state how the operator decides when two rules could apply to one incident |
| Turnover trial and memo | No timed trial was run, or the memo does not report it | The trial was run but skipped fields are not accounted for | The trial is timed against the 15-minute overlap, skipped fields are listed, and the memo answers the Incident B question | The memo also names one change the team made after the trial and the evidence from the trial that prompted it |
Differentiation
Support
Give these teams the sorted table from Milestone 1 already completed for eight of the 18 items, so their work starts from a worked pattern. Supply a blank form template with the six required fields pre-printed and six empty rows to fill. For Session 3, provide the three rule triggers as sentence starters covering quality, safety, and supply, and let teams write only the action and the person called for each. Pair the timing role in Session 4 with a checklist of the fields rather than a blank sheet.
Extension
Ask these teams to add a fourth rule that applies only when the fictional plant is running unstaffed overnight on remote monitoring, then show which of their existing rules it changes. They can also write the one-paragraph instruction a new operator in training would need in order to fill in the form correctly on a first shift, which is harder than designing the form.
ELL supports
Pre-teach turnover, escalation, standby, lockout, and due before Session 1, using the blank form itself as the visual so each word sits next to the field it labels. Allow the Session 1 sort to be done with cut paper strips rather than written reasons, with the reasoning given aloud to the teacher. Provide the memo as a frame with four openings: the six fields we cut were, we cut two of them because, Incident B falls under rule, and our timed turnover took.
Extensions
Have two teams exchange finished packages, then run each other's turnover cold, with the outgoing operator reporting a shift the receiving team has not seen. The receiving team records every question the form failed to answer. Exchanging procedures is close to what happens when a fictional utility like Thorncross adopts a form written at another plant, because a form usually omits whatever its author was in the habit of saying aloud.