Watching our refinery turnaround go from 6 weeks to 11 days in 3 years

Honestly I did not believe the old timers when they said turnarounds used to drag on for a month and a half. We just wrapped one at the plant outside Gary, Indiana and it came in at 11 days start to finish, and this was on the same unit we did in 2021 that took us 38 days. The big change is how much gets pre-fabbed off site now, we got whole tube bundles and header assemblies trucked in already fit up, so the field work is mostly rigging and tie-ins. Plus a few of the young guys started using laser scanning on the vessel internals before we cut anything, so no more guessing on clearances. Ngl it feels like a different job some days. Anybody else seeing the pre-fab thing really eat into their turnaround hours or is it just our shop?

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ninaw8828d ago

That line about whole tube bundles and header assemblies getting trucked in already fit up hits home. We did the same thing on our last coker turnaround in Texas, had the convection section modules built in Louisiana and shipped over, and we cut like 9 days off the schedule just on that alone. The laser scanning thing is real too, our inspection crew started doing it on the drums and we stopped having those awful surprises where a nozzle doesn't line up and everything stalls for two shifts. Its weird because the hours are way down but the planning side is a whole different beast now, feels like half the job happens in a conference room months before anyone picks up a wrench.

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