Disciplined governance, clear accountability, and early leadership alignment are the real differentiators in effective turnaround management (TAR). From establishing a TAR Steering Team in advance to enforcing scope control, freeze dates, and decision authority, his approach reflects time-tested practices that consistently deliver safer, on-schedule, and on-budget outcomes.
Effective turnaround management (TAR) begins with strong governance and clear accountability, anchored by the formation of a TAR Steering Team and the appointment of a clearly defined TAR Manager. This structure establishes ownership, decision authority, and alignment across operations, maintenance, engineering, and support functions to ensure disciplined execution of the turnaround. The following are best practices regarding turnaround management:
The TAR Manager’s role is:
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- Acts as chair and facilitator of the TAR Steering Team, with the operations manager as the client and the maintenance and engineering managers as key members. Other members include senior site managers responsible for HSE, inspection, capital projects, procurement, and finance.
- Responsible for the safety, quality, schedule, and overall cost of the TAR. The TAR Manager also has the duty to control manpower levels to ensure that the TAR is properly staffed. All efforts for the TAR associated with operations preparedness, capital and maintenance expense activities should be combined under the control of the TAR Manager.
- Takes the lead in developing the TAR premise document, which provides the overall purpose, objectives, and constraints for performing the TAR. It should clearly establish the specific business, operational and execution criteria against which all potential scope items are evaluated to determine whether they should be included.
A TAR Steering Team should be established to keep the turnaround on schedule, on budget, and aligned with established operating practices. The TAR Steering Team should be in place at least 24 months prior to each major (high complexity) TAR event, which means it may be a permanent team if you have major TAR events every year or two. The key responsibilities of the TAR Steering Team are as follows:
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- Set and communicate the TAR priorities to the entire site: safety, quality, duration, and cost, in that order.
- Establish and document a premise that aligns to the business needs and principles of the facility.
- Understand the TAR process and demand discipline to it by all plant and support functions.
- Act on threats to achieving the TAR objectives.
- Control the scope and scope growth.
- Track preparation progress and correct promptly.
- Ensure the TAR Manager is supported with strategic planning, financial control and reporting, well managed TAR related capital projects, problem resolution, work scope policy, project milestones and freeze dates, communications, TAR calendar changes, and compliance to all established policies. This is important as I have seen TAR Managers sink due to the lack of support in some or all these areas.
- Monitor cost and duration forecast relative to budget and act on variances.
- Monitor environment for potential impacts on turnaround (e.g., business conditions, company-wide production needs, plant performance, corporate requirements, and initiatives, etc.) and act, as necessary.
- Regular communication of key points to the entire site.
The following reflects methods consistently used in well-executed TAR management efforts:
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- The TAR Manager and the TAR Steering Team should write a work scope development policy prior to the compilation of the initial worklist. This should normally be in place at least 18 months prior to the TAR and act as reference for scope development. The policy should consider all maintenance, capital and inspection work necessary to enable the unit to safely operate to the next planned turnaround. Always look forward to two TARs when planning for the next TAR as you do not want to miss required scope that will need a shutdown between the next two TARs. Only doing essential work is key as any added scope increases the complexity exponentially and lowers your chances of success.
- Strictly adhere to your milestones including the TAR start dates unless there is an overwhelming business reason to changing it. I have seen senior VPs trying to change the start dates based on short term market conditions and downplay the costs related to loss of momentum, keeping the contractors and expensive hired equipment such as cranes on standby or losing specialist contractors to scheduled work at another facility. Spend time preparing your case and ensure it is clear.
- A freeze date should be established for all capital and expense work and strictly adhered to. For major (high complexity) TARs I recommend using 14 months. This date is an important control policy that allows for adequate planning and procurement of needed material and equipment. All staff associated with the TAR should fully acknowledge that date. Any work requested after the date must be reviewed and approved through a work request approval process, ideally by the TAR Steering Team. Approving work after the freeze date will also increase the complexity exponentially and lowers your chances of success as it will strain your planning process and may even affect the quality, duration, and cost. I have seen engineers risk assess and easily justify the approval of work requested past the freeze date, which is why this needs to be elevated to the TAR Steering Team so they can assess the true impact to the site. Be strict in this area.
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