Oil and gas turnaround planning
AI support for refinery turnaround planning
Help turnaround planners review scope, workpack completeness and resource dependencies before a shutdown. The objective is a better-supported planning decision, with integrity, safety and operating authorization retained by the responsible site team.
Choose the planning decision first
A turnaround brings maintenance, inspection, projects and contractors into a constrained outage window. Define which decision needs support: checking workpack readiness, comparing scope options or finding resource conflicts. Separate mandatory integrity work from discretionary work. A planning model must not decide that required inspection or safety work can be deferred simply because it shortens a schedule.
Connect equipment, work orders and dependencies
Useful evidence includes equipment identity, approved work orders, inspection findings, maintenance history, workpacks, schedule logic and lessons from earlier shutdowns. Check the status and issue date of each source. A historic duration may describe different scope, access or plant conditions and needs context before it becomes a planning assumption.
- Review workpack completeness, including required materials, drawings, inspection steps and named technical owners.
- Map crews, specialist contractors, shared lifting equipment and access constraints to the affected activities.
- Record isolation, permit and simultaneous-operations dependencies as controlled planning inputs, not inferred permissions.
Surface gaps before the planning gate
A bounded assistant can compare the required workpack fields with available evidence and assemble an exception list. Planners check missing material, unclear scope, unresolved dependencies and conflicting resource allocations. Each exception needs an owner and review status. Missing records must remain visible; a completed checklist is not proof that the physical site is ready.
Compare scope choices with explicit assumptions
Candidate scenarios can show how changes to approved scope or resource availability affect modeled dependencies. Integrity and operations specialists review the consequence of deferral, inspection uncertainty and restart requirements. Distinguish a calculated schedule from a committed plan, and record which assumptions drive the comparison. Unexpected findings during an outage remain an important source of uncertainty.
Test planning usefulness on known work
Evaluate historical workpacks and schedules with expert-reviewed reference findings. Measure missed readiness issues, false exceptions, dependency accuracy and the effort to review a pack. Where schedule forecasts are proposed, evaluate held-out turnarounds without using later information. Test revised scope, incomplete contractor data and resource changes rather than relying only on a tidy demonstration dataset.
Define the planner’s review pack
Agreed outputs may include a workpack readiness register, source-linked scope questions, resource-conflict list and scenario comparison. Record unresolved assumptions, decision owners and cut-off dates. Handover includes the update process, interfaces, support boundary and fallback when data is late. A named connection to a scheduling or maintenance product is subject to actual interface assessment.
An illustrative shared-crane conflict
Two workpacks require the same crane during overlapping windows, while one inspection task lacks a confirmed preparation step. The assistant gathers the activity references and flags both issues. The turnaround team confirms equipment availability, access and isolation constraints before revising the plan. This illustrates a review workflow; it does not demonstrate reduced shutdown duration or operating cost.
Start with a bounded planning package
Bring one equipment group, a sample of workpacks and the readiness review your team already performs. Agree which omissions matter, who checks them and what constitutes a useful exception. Start with read-only preparation and reviewed outputs. Expanding scope, changing the schedule or authorizing field work requires the relevant planning and site approvals.
More clarity
Questions and answers
Does this replace our turnaround scheduler?
No. It can prepare evidence and highlight issues for the scheduler and technical owners. Approved schedule logic, work authorization and restart decisions remain within the site’s established process.
Can it decide which inspection work to defer?
No. Integrity and operations specialists decide that using the applicable evidence and controls. A model can compare documented assumptions, but cannot approve deferral or establish safety.
How much historical turnaround data is needed?
The answer depends on the decision. Workpack completeness may need an agreed checklist and representative packs; duration forecasting needs comparable historical events with trustworthy scope and outcome records.
Can existing maintenance and schedule systems be used?
We assess exports or interfaces, equipment identifiers, access and refresh needs. A limited read-only workflow can precede any separately scoped write-back or integration.
What benefit should a pilot measure?
Measure useful issues found, review effort and readiness evidence against the current process. Any claimed outage-duration or financial improvement needs its own measurement context and cannot be guaranteed in advance.
Start with one business problem