Turnarounds are among the most expensive and high-risk events a facility will ever undertake. But in a recent post-turnaround assessment, one glaring issue stood out: there was no governance structure and no defined milestones. Costly challenges often arise from poor governance, leading to inefficiencies, increased operational expenses, and missed opportunities for improvement. This highlights the importance of addressing governance issues to avoid unnecessary financial burdens and ensure better project outcomes.
There was no control document. No clarity on when the scope freeze would happen. No objective readiness gates for approvals, planning, preparation, or execution. The turnaround wasn’t just poorly governed; it wasn’t governed at all. Implementing structured turnaround solutions brings significant benefits, including improved efficiency, enhanced flexibility, and better overall outcomes by addressing common challenges and streamlining processes.
This isn’t a contractor issue. It’s a leadership issue. Governance belongs to the management-level leadership team in the plant and, to a lesser extent, the turnaround team itself. And without it, accountability disappears.
In this turnaround, milestones existed only in theory. Scope crept because there was no freeze date. Preparation tasks lingered unfinished because no one was held accountable to readiness gates. A well-structured organization with clearly defined leads is responsible for ensuring accountability at every stage of the turnaround, including clearly assigning accountability to the right personnel and managing manpower effectively.
When governance is missing:
The plant team loses its anchor for decisions.
The turnaround team drifts without clear deadlines.
Contractors push forward based on their own priorities, not the owner’s objectives.
These gaps give rise to common challenges and risks, such as miscommunication, resource shortages, and safety incidents, all of which can jeopardize the success of the turnaround.
The result is predictable: scope growth, reactive decision-making, and execution chaos.
Without governance and ownership, small cracks turn into major failures that can negatively impact plant production and overall performance:
Scope Bloat: With no freeze, “just one more” job slips in daily.
Preparation Drift: Training, onboarding, and permits are rushed at the last minute.
Reactive Meetings: Leadership discussions revolve around putting out fires and immediate concerns instead of measuring progress against objective gates or focusing on long-term improvement.
Lost Credibility: When there are no milestones, there is nothing for leadership to enforce — and culture quickly senses that deadlines don’t matter.
Well-defined processes and a commitment to continuous improvement are essential to prevent these failures and drive better outcomes.
Extreme ownership in turnarounds means that leaders create and enforce governance, and they own the milestones.
That includes:
A single, site-wide document listing every planning deliverable, milestone, and owner.
Examples: scope collection, scope freeze, readiness checks, contractor onboarding, safety training.
Leadership uses this as the yardstick to measure accountability.
The control document should outline the plan, required resources, and the tools and systems needed for successful execution.
Leveraging advanced technologies and fostering innovation supports governance, milestone tracking, and efficient management of work orders throughout the turnaround process.
Each milestone is a non-negotiable gate, with defined exceptions.
Scope Freeze gate: No predictable regulatory, MI, or capital scope enters after the published date.
Emergent scope (≤5 % TIC) must follow the site’s change-management process and secure all required approvals; anything larger reopens the freeze and triggers a formal recovery plan.
Readiness gate: If the scope is not fully defined, design packages are incomplete, or long-lead materials have not been verified, that work package is parked until 100 % compliant; no partial starts, no “we’ll figure it out later.”
Leadership teams must evaluate readiness at each gate and execute according to defined processes to ensure effective project delivery.
Leaders must defend these gates, even when it’s uncomfortable. Extreme ownership means saying: “We set this milestone. We own it. We enforce it.” Leaders must also assist teams by providing the right capability, service, and support.
Governance isn’t about paperwork. It’s about culture. When teams know milestones are real and enforced, accountability spreads down into every craft, every planner, every supervisor, embedding best practices into daily operations to ensure consistent governance.
Employees at all levels play a critical role in building and sustaining a culture of accountability, safety, and operational excellence.
The process should begin with clear planning and approval steps to ensure a structured and successful turnaround.
Looking back, the turnaround would have been radically improved if the plant leadership had:
Published a control document months in advance, defining every milestone and its owner, including budgeting and securing early approval for all planned activities, with specific attention to planning for shutdowns and maintenance activities.
Held weekly meetings to measure progress against that document, tracking work orders, scheduling, and monitoring the duration and lead times for each phase, which often span several weeks, not against anecdotes.
Enforced scope freeze and readiness gates without exception, managing modifications and executing changes only after proper review.
Establishing a clear point of contact and adhering to company best practices for turnaround governance are essential for accountability, communication, and successful project execution.
Even in plants that claim a Scope Freeze milestone, discipline is usually missing.
The milestone is typically scheduled, often 9–18 months before the shutdown, depending on the facility’s size and complexity of the turnaround; however, leadership treats it as a soft suggestion, not a gate.
What belongs inside the scope freeze
All regulatory / mechanical-integrity / reliability work that can only be done in a shutdown.
Every capital project that is tied to the outage window. MOC and IFC drawings should be complete prior to submitting the scope.
Any scope already identified in the 24-month Long-Range Plan.
What does NOT belong after the freeze
“Oh, we forgot these PSVs” discoveries at –3 months.
Capital packages green-lit after the freeze because someone “finally got budget”.
Routine inspection findings that were predictable with a proper evergreen scope challenge process.
Industry rule-of-thumb: reserve 3–5 % of TIC for true emergent scope (breaks on the run, corporate directive shifts, genuine discoveries). Anything above that is proof that the freeze gate was never honored.
But beware scope churn, the silent killer. Adding and deleting scope at the same rate creates zero net change but doubles planning effort. Measure gross churn (|adds| + |deletes| + |changes| ÷ frozen TIC); best-in-class plants keep it under 5 %. Any scope change after freeze must go through the same change-management process as a new add: justification, cost/schedule impact, steering team approval. No “net zero” loopholes.
Scope Freeze only works when leadership defends the 95 % and forces every late addition through the site’s formal change-management process with required approvals; no shortcuts, no side-door e-mails.
The core lesson is this: governance is leadership’s job, and leadership must own it.
When leaders abdicate governance, chaos fills the gap. When leaders create governance, milestones become the backbone of accountability.
Extreme ownership doesn’t mean doing the work yourself; it means owning the system that ensures the work gets done.
Turnarounds don’t fail because contractors don’t care or because crews don’t work hard. They fail because leadership doesn’t establish and enforce governance.
The principle is simple:
If you don’t own the milestones, you don’t own the turnaround.
Leadership means setting governance, publishing milestones, and holding the plant and turnaround teams accountable. Anything less is flying blind.
Without a Control Document, turnaround planning becomes fragmented and reactive. A Control Document aligns deliverables, owners, and due dates, giving turnaround leadership team the tool to enforce accountability and readiness.