Shutdown Stories: Lessons from the Frontlines of Turnarounds

The complex and high-stakes nature of shutdowns and turnarounds requires constant adaptation, strategic foresight, and a commitment to best practices. As we gear up for the 2024 Shutdowns Turnarounds Superconference, we asked our esteemed speakers to share their hard-won lessons, biggest wins, and impactful moments from the field. Here’s a look at the stories and wisdom they’ll be bringing to this year’s event.

Keys to Success

Peter Reier, a Senior Advisor with Advando shares “Turnarounds are only successful when the effort is genuinely collaborative and compliant to process. There are countless reasons why turnarounds fail to achieve collaborative participation or fail to meet turnaround (TA) process compliance, but none of those reasons are “good reasons”, and none are insurmountable. Compliance requires leadership accountability; it is really that simple.”

Lessons Learned

You can’t assume new tech will work perfectly out of the box in a high-stakes environment like a turnaround Colin Herbert, a Shutdowns Supervisor at ConocoPhillips tells us. “One important lesson I’ve learned is that the utilization of new (scheduling) software requires contingency planning.” Always prepare for the unexpected, even with the best tools at hand.

Colin Xander, the North America Turnaround Director with INEOS recalls “A critical lesson I learned: never touch your contingency funds before the shutdown itself. Use a scope growth fund to manage the changes that inevitably happen between scope freeze and shutdown, ensuring on shutdown day you have your full allotment of contingency available to cover discovery and productivity issues.”

Biggest Wins and Success Stories

Reier imparts “I’ve never seen a truly successful turnaround that wasn’t a fully integrated event under one management team and compliant with the TA process.” He continues “I’ve seen too many turnarounds that fall short of this standard, and I could fill a book with ‘Tales from the Turnaround’—and spoiler alert, none of those stories are flattering for anyone involved.”

The key is integration and adherence to a defined process.

Herbert shares a big win that came with “the integration of all turnaround activities—operations ramp-down and ramp-up, capital projects, maintenance, and other critical activities—into one single schedule.”

This approach allows every team to understand the broader plan, overall schedule and align their efforts with shared priorities. The result is a smoother, more efficient process that saves both time and resources.

Colin Xander says one of his most rewarding projects “finished under budget, ahead of schedule, and safe, but also fun!” He goes on to explain that “we worked as a team from day one. Development was flawless, leading to a team well prepared for success. Good subject matter experts were available, but all worked with the turnaround manager, rather than trying to take control. Discovery was minimal, and in all the spots where it was expected. Scope control was outstanding, leading to disciplined results on cost and schedule.”

The takeaway? Shutdowns success relies on unified teamwork from day one with everyone, aligned, contributing and focused on the ideal outcomes in both cost and schedule.

Avoiding Common Mistakes

Peter Reier: “The number one mistake I would call out above all others: leadership teams that do not have a published, updated, and maintained ‘long ranch strategic maintenance plan’.

This one trumps all others for the following reasons;

• If leadership does not know what they want, and when they want it, expecting excellence in results is naive.
• The long-range plan is typically one of the top three key deliverables in any turnaround process, usually the only one that leadership is asked to be responsible for, what does it say to everyone else when leadership blows off their part of the responsibility?
• The long-range plan promotes collaboration by setting clear execution targets and keeping all teams clear on the overall plan. The worst thing to hear at the beginning of an engagement is, “we don’t actually know when the TA will be yet”… I mean this literally — you should know, always, at least the next 5 years of execution windows, more correctly you should know 20 years into the future, and that schedule should be more or less fixed.

Process driven, has to apply top to bottom.”

According to Herbert “Optimism” is an easy trap to fall into. And of course, resource limitations can be disastrous, as he outlines a time when “less personnel showed up for day one than were required in the plan.”

Herbert’s words highlight a common pitfall in planning: assuming everything will go smoothly. Realistic expectations are key to navigating the challenges of resource limitations.

Xander told us how a lack of scope control can lead to costly surprises. “Many sites allow extra work under a certain dollar figure to just be executed in the field without management approval. They also use punch lists. These “off the books” work items always lead to surprise cost and schedule results. “

He also outlined some other missteps to avoid.

• Always validate job plans. “The planner said it would take xx hours. Did it? Unvalidated job plans that get reused next time could be error carried forward.”
• “Invest the time in managing every detail of cost—from cost reporting to actual cost control. Ensure contracts are written to avoid surprises on invoices.”

Impactful Memories

Peter Reier: “Not so much a moment, as an epiphany, allowing myself to understand that not only was the “expert driven” approach that I’d driven myself toward for most of my career yesterday’s news, but it was never the ‘right’ path in the first place.

The superstar practitioner role that I invested much of my career in becoming was good for the ego, but never, not ever, really achieves results that even begin to meet the bar for excellence.

I hit the ego reset button, and became the champion for process driven, systems thinking.”

Sharing a standout moment in his career, Colin Herbert recounts when his team was faced with an unexpected challenge. “Over the course of 19 intense hours, the team developed a viable solution that was then approved by management.” Experiences like his highlight the power of determination and collaboration in any shutdown project.

The insights shared by these industry veterans underscore the dedication, adaptability, and collaborative spirit that drive success in shutdowns and turnarounds. What makes the Shutdowns Turnarounds Superconference so unique is the atmosphere; the sharing of excellence—the ability to hear firsthand stories and learn from your peers who have been through it all.