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.