16 Jan, 2025
By EZTRAK Software
Turnarounds are among the most expensive, time-sensitive events a refinery or plant will ever undertake. Even with months of planning, a single missed change order or undocumented scope shift can derail budgets and schedules in days.
Turnarounds are among the most expensive, time-sensitive events a refinery or plant will ever undertake. Even with months of planning, a single missed change order or undocumented scope shift can derail budgets and schedules in days.
In fact, more than 80% of turnarounds experience cost overruns, often due to inadequate visibility into change events and poor coordination between planning and field execution. When change is inevitable but unmanaged, the financial impact can be staggering, not because teams aren’t working hard, but because they can’t see the full picture soon enough to act.
In any shutdown, turnaround, or outage (STO), change is constant. Equipment inspections uncover new damage. Regulatory requirements shift. Material deliveries run late. Each of these triggers a cascade of adjustments, including new work orders, added labor, revised schedules, and unexpected procurement needs.
When these changes are tracked manually, the financial picture quickly blurs. Paper forms, Excel trackers, and disconnected ERP modules make it nearly impossible to answer critical questions in real time:
Without centralized visibility, project leaders can’t manage the domino effect. Costs get buried, approvals lag, and the turnaround’s final report becomes a post-mortem rather than a management tool.
Many organizations attempt to manage cost and change control within enterprise systems like SAP or Oracle. While these platforms excel at accounting and compliance, they aren’t built for the fluid, high-pressure environment of a turnaround.
Typical pain points include:
In a dynamic turnaround, these delays translate to real dollars. Each unapproved scope addition compounds cost variance and extends outage duration — often by hours that multiply across crews and shifts.
Organizations that manage change well treat it as a discipline, not a reaction. They build systems and habits that make it easy for anyone — from field foremen to financial controllers — to log, approve, and monitor scope shifts in real time.
Best-in-class turnaround programs share several characteristics:
During a turnaround, conditions change fast. If those changes aren’t logged immediately, they’re often lost in the chaos. Real-time cost capture enables field teams to document new work, labor hours, and material usage the moment they occur. Whether through tablets, mobile devices, or digital work order forms, this instant visibility prevents missed costs and gives managers an up-to-the-minute view of budget impact.
Manual approval chains and paper-based change requests can delay decision-making by days. Automated workflows ensure every change follows a consistent, auditable process — from proposal and approval to budget revision and execution. Notifications keep supervisors and finance teams aligned, reducing bottlenecks and keeping the project moving without sacrificing control.
In many facilities, cost control, scheduling, and materials management operate in separate systems. Integration bridges those silos. When costs, work orders, and materials live in one connected platform, stakeholders can instantly trace how a single scope change affects labor, inventory, and schedule — and make decisions based on complete, real-world data.
Even well-planned turnarounds can drift off target without early detection. Automated variance tracking continuously compares approved budgets against actual spend and progress. Dashboards highlight discrepancies by craft, area, or job package, allowing project leaders to spot issues early, investigate root causes, and reallocate resources before small deviations snowball into costly overruns.
Transparency builds trust, both in the field and the boardroom. With a centralized system, every change event is logged with timestamps, responsible parties, and justifications. Leaders gain a clear record of what changed, who approved it, and why. At closeout, this complete audit trail simplifies reconciliation, supports lessons learned, and strengthens cost forecasting for future events.
The goal is proactive awareness. When every dollar, hour, and change event is visible in real time, decision-makers can act early — not after overruns occur.
Technology alone doesn’t solve the change management problem. Culture does.
Field supervisors need the tools and the confidence to report change events immediately, without fear of blame. Finance teams must collaborate closely with operations, ensuring that cost impact is understood before approvals are finalized. Leadership must reinforce that visibility is protection, not punishment.
By combining the right systems with a culture of transparency, teams can transform how they view cost control, from a back-office task to a frontline advantage.
The next frontier in turnaround cost management is predictive intelligence. As more organizations digitize their event data, patterns emerge: certain contractors generate more change orders, specific equipment types trigger recurring overruns, and weather or logistics variables correlate with higher costs.
AI-driven analysis will soon help planners anticipate likely changes before they occur, allowing budgets and materials to adjust preemptively. Combined with real-time dashboards and mobile reporting, this will redefine readiness, giving teams the insight to plan for the unexpected.
At EZTRAK, we’ve seen firsthand how hard it is to manage cost control during the chaos of a turnaround. That’s why our platform was designed specifically for STO environments, integrating cost tracking, material management, and change workflows into a single, intuitive system.
With modules that capture change events in real time, route approvals automatically, and link every dollar to the associated job and material, EZTRAK gives teams complete accountability and transparency from day one.
The result: shorter decision cycles, fewer surprises, and turnarounds that finish closer to plan — both in budget and schedule.
Want to take control of your turnaround costs? Book a demo today to learn how EZTRAK can help you better track costs and manage changes for a more efficient and profitable turnaround.
Experience the power of EzTrak today. Get started with a free demo or speak with our experts.
