Turnaround planning cut from 14 weeks to 9

Problem

The refinery’s major turnaround was planned from six spreadsheets and a scheduling tool that nobody fully trusted. Permit-to-work packs were compiled by hand, and every scope change took days to ripple through the critical path.

Planning for the last turnaround had started 14 weeks out and still finished with open clashes between contractors in the final fortnight.

Approach

We began with three weeks of process mining on five years of work-order history, plus shadowing of the planning team. That showed that around 60% of planner time went on re-keying and reconciling data rather than planning.

• One scope register as the single source of truth, integrated with the existing scheduler and maintenance system.
• Automated generation of permit-to-work packs and job safety analyses from the register, with every safety document still signed off by a named person.
• Critical-path re-baselining on each scope change, with planners approving exceptions rather than building the plan.

Result

The plan now updates within minutes of a scope change. The planning team of seven took on a second site without additional headcount.

Results