T-minus 120: if your turnaround starts in March, this is already late.

The rule for all five: a count, a percentage or a date. Never a status somebody asserts in a meeting.

What should already be done

1. Scope is frozen, and the additions are counted. Published guidance puts scope freeze six to twelve months before the start, twelve for the big events. If the list is still open at 120 days, every late addition raises the odds of expediting, change work and schedule pressure.
   Measure Scope added since the freeze: count, hours and cost, visible the day each was added.
2. Every long-lead item is on a purchase order. Seventeen weeks is the whole budget. Any item whose lead time is longer than 17 weeks and has no PO is late today. Expediting can’t recover every missed lead-time decision.
   Measure Long-lead items without a PO: zero.
3. Every scope item has a package number, and the packages have steps, crew and duration. The scheduler needs them to build the integrated schedule. If the steps aren’t written, he writes them, and the schedule drifts from the package before the event starts.
   Measure Packages missing any of the three: zero. Packages developed: a percentage.
4. Contractor estimates are in one format, with an award date. Bids in three formats can’t be compared, so awards slip, and a late award pushes everything behind it: mobilization, training, the manpower plan.
   Measure Packages with an estimate in the standard format: a percentage. Mobilization dates confirmed: a percentage.
5. A readiness number nobody compiled by hand. If the readiness review takes a week to assemble from four systems, it describes last week. The gate gets declared complete because the people in the room say so.
   Measure One percentage, calculated from the package, material and constraint data, circulated the day before the meeting.

A gate you cannot measure is just a meeting.

What late costs

Late scope becomes expedited material. Expedited material becomes a crew waiting at the flange. A waiting crew becomes a slipped day. Each one is cheaper to fix at this gate than at the next, and none of them show up in the schedule until they’re on the critical path.

The item that is late at 120 days is the item everyone is chasing in the last ten. It never gets less late on its own.

The gates still ahead

Work packages: reviewed and accepted by the executing contractor, permits and isolations listed, every package tied to an activity date. Material: staged by package, shortages listed against the date they matter. Execution-ready: packages and material issued, one package captured end to end on a phone as the field test, daily cost reporting live.

The full checklist, every gate and every measure: Turnaround readiness checklist by gate.

Scope-freeze timing: The Chemical Engineer, Controlling your maintenance turnaround scope; Cleopatra Enterprise, The role of scope freeze in turnarounds.

One mention of the product, then we’re done: EZTRAK calculates readiness from the underlying package, material and constraint data instead of asking someone to compile it for the meeting. If you want to see what T-120 looks like on a live system, write to us.