What's included
Turnarounds are planned in months and measured in hours. The template is organized into the six stages a shutdown, turnaround and outage (STO) event actually moves through:
- Long-range planning, Business case, turnaround objectives, preliminary budget and the target window, typically opened 18-24 months out. Milestone: turnaround sanctioned.
- Scope development & freeze, Worklist collection, challenge sessions, risk ranking and the hard scope freeze that stops late additions. Milestone: scope frozen.
- Work package development, Job plans, isolation and permit strategy, resource loading, contractor scoping and the detailed execution schedule.
- Procurement & long-lead items, Materials, exchangers, catalyst, valves and specialist services ordered against their lead times, plus scaffolding and equipment mobilization.
- Execution, Shutdown and cool-down, isolation, inspection, mechanical work, reassembly and testing, the window where every hour counts. Milestone: mechanical completion.
- Start-up & close-out, Re-commissioning, return to service, demobilization and the post-turnaround review that feeds the next event.
Who uses this template
Turnaround managers, maintenance planners, and reliability engineers at refineries and petrochemical plants use this for a major shutdown. It spans long-range planning, scope freeze, detailed work packages, execution, and start-up, coordinating thousands of tasks and contractors during the tightly costed window when the unit is offline.
How to customize it
- Set the execution window first and work backwards, turnaround dates are usually fixed by production, not by planning convenience.
- Pull the scope freeze earlier if your worklist is large; 8-12 weeks before execution is common.
- Add discipline rows under Execution (mechanical, E&I, inspection, civil) so each contractor sees its own sequence.
- Load long-lead procurement against real supplier lead times, not nominal ones.
- Mark every permit, isolation and inspection sign-off as a milestone so nothing proceeds out of sequence.
Scheduling tips
- Protect the critical path through execution. During the window, the chain running shutdown → isolation → inspection → repair → reassembly usually drives return to service. A day lost there is a day of lost production.
- Schedule inspection findings as a risk, not a surprise. Build discovery work allowance into the plan; unknown scope found on opening equipment is normal, not exceptional.
- Sequence long-lead procurement against the freeze. Anything ordered after scope freeze that has a lead time longer than the remaining runway is a schedule risk you can see months ahead.
- Run the start-up sequence as its own mini-project. Return to service has dependencies as tight as the mechanical work and is often under-planned.
- Keep a daily percent-complete during execution and re-export the chart for the morning meeting so every contractor works from the same picture.
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Frequently asked questions
How far in advance should a refinery turnaround be planned?
Long-range planning for a major turnaround typically begins 18-24 months before the execution window, with scope freeze commonly 8-12 weeks out. The template lays those stages out on a timeline so you can see whether your runway is realistic.
What is a scope freeze and why is it on the schedule?
The scope freeze is the point after which no new work is added to the turnaround worklist. It appears as a milestone because late scope is the most common cause of overrun, everything after it depends on the worklist being stable.
Can I show dependencies between turnaround activities?
Yes. Open the template in the free gantts.app editor to link finish-to-start relationships across isolation, inspection and repair, so downstream work shifts automatically and the critical path stays visible.
Is the refinery turnaround template free?
Yes, free to download as Excel, PowerPoint or CSV, and free to edit online with no sign up.