Surviving the big turnaround

The normal day-to-day fix, prevent, predict activities the typical industrial maintenance professional handles as standard operating procedure can fall into a familiar, comfortable routine. In a way, there's a lot of repetition involved and once a person gets good at it, the work becomes easier and predictable.

But, there comes that hopefully rather rare day when the plant schedules The Big Turnaround. Suddenly, the familiar routine is out the door only to be replaced by, in some cases, the uncertainty that goes with opening a mechanical can of worms.

It’s times like this that excellence in maintenance planning shines. Or should I say, preplanning. If you find there’s a turnaround in your future, you might want to examine the contents of a free online set of guidelines called the Turnaround Project Management Primer

The material contained therein is excerpted from the STO Planning and Management Handbooks, published by InterPlan Systems Inc., Houston. Knowing that every turnaround is, to a large degree, plant specific, certain commonalities exist among them all. This tutorial touches on the underlying mechanism of turnarounds, the management aspect that should be one of those commonalities.