Is your turnaround time driven or cost driven?

Time driven turnarounds: protecting commitments and reliability

In favorable economic circumstances, turnarounds are typically time driven. The primary objective is simple: restart production on the planned date. By the time a turnaround begins, sales commitments have already been made and customers expect delivery as agreed. Missing these timelines can result in contractual penalties, lost revenue, and reputational damage.

To safeguard the restart date, organizations focus on preparation and execution discipline, including:

• Thorough planning and risk based scheduling
• Strong coordination between operations, maintenance, and contractors
• Contingency arrangements to rapidly mobilize additional manpower

Unexpected events such as longer than anticipated repairs can still occur. However, in a time driven turnaround, every reasonable effort is made before and during execution to ensure the installation is operational as planned.

Budget discipline still applies

A time driven approach does not mean cost blind decision making. Even in strong economic conditions, budgets remain under scrutiny. Organizations are increasingly moving away from automatically maintaining or replacing all equipment during every turnaround.

Instead, maintenance decisions are guided by asset and reliability management principles, allowing companies to:

• Focus on equipment that directly impacts safety and reliability
• Defer non essential work without increasing operational risk

This approach protects reliability while keeping costs under control.

Cost driven turnarounds: when budgets dictate scope

In more challenging economic conditions, turnaround strategies often shift. Rather than being based on a well defined scope and a realistic assessment of risks, budgets may be set by the funds remaining after maintenance resources have been distributed across multiple sites and projects.

As a result, the turnaround scope is frequently reduced before execution begins. Non critical activities are removed to fit within the available budget, and there is little or no financial buffer to absorb setbacks. Because the budget is not grounded in a robust, risk based estimate, the likelihood of exceeding the allocated amount increases, despite the intention to control costs.

Safety versus reliability: a risky gap

Certain turnaround activities are legally required to ensure a safe installation and will always be performed. Safety compliance alone, however, does not guarantee reliable operation.

Common risks in cost driven turnarounds include:

• Equipment with obsolete or hard to source spare parts remaining in service
• Deferred maintenance increasing the likelihood of unplanned shutdowns
• Breakdowns during production leading to lost output and missed deliveries

This creates a critical gap between safety and reliability. Equipment may meet legal requirements yet still pose a significant operational and financial risk if it fails.

Short term savings, long term costs?

From a short term financial perspective, minimizing turnaround expenditure can seem reasonable, especially when budgets are constrained. However, short term savings often come at a high long term cost.

Unplanned breakdowns can result in production losses, reduced revenue, and declining customer confidence. Over time, reliability issues may push customers to seek alternative suppliers who can guarantee continuity of supply.

What initially appears to be cost control may ultimately result in higher total costs and reduced competitiveness.

Finding the right balance

The real challenge is not choosing between time driven and cost driven turnarounds, but finding the right balance between the two.

Successful organizations:

• Base turnaround decisions on risk, reliability, and business impact
• Align budgets with realistic execution scenarios
• Recognize reliability as a strategic asset, not just a maintenance outcome

At Cleopatra Enterprise, we help organizations make these decisions with clarity, supporting turnaround strategies that protect safety, reliability, and long term value.