A refinery’s planned turnaround had historically pulled experienced operators off the running side of the plant — degrading both the turnaround and normal operations. The redesign built a separate turnaround staffing model alongside normal operations.
Refining · Planned TurnaroundA US refinery was preparing for a 38-day planned turnaround on one of its main processing units. The previous turnaround, conducted 5 years prior, had pulled experienced operators from adjacent running units to staff the turnaround crew — producing measurable cost on both sides: a slower turnaround completion than the plan required, and a string of upset events on the running units that had cost more than the turnaround labor savings the approach was supposed to deliver. The redesign built a separate, parallel turnaround staffing model. Normal operations were not raided. The turnaround completed within the plan window, and the running side of the refinery moved through the 38-day window without the upset pattern the prior turnaround had produced.
A US refinery running multiple processing units in continuous operation, with approximately 720 operations and maintenance personnel across the site. The refinery operates on a regular turnaround cycle, with the largest unit—a fluid catalytic cracker complex—due for a major planned outage every 5 to 6 years. Adjacent units (crude distillation, hydrotreating, alkylation) continued running during the FCC turnaround, with feed and product flows redirected to maintain overall refinery output. Union workforce, with separate contracts covering operations and maintenance.
The prior FCC turnaround had used a "pull from running units" staffing approach — rotating experienced operators off adjacent units onto the turnaround crew, with junior operators and contractors backfilling the running-unit positions. The post-mortem on that turnaround documented two problems. First, the turnaround ran 6 days past the plan window because the pulled operators, although experienced refinery hands, were not optimally configured for turnaround-pace execution. Second, the adjacent running units experienced 7 significant upset events during the 38-day window — flaring events, off-spec product runs, and one recordable safety incident attributed to backfill operator inexperience. The combined cost of the schedule overrun and the running-unit upsets was estimated at $11M to $14M, against the labor savings of roughly $2M that the pull-from-running-units approach had been intended to deliver.
The upcoming FCC turnaround was scheduled during a market window in which refinery margins were strong — making any upset event on the running units particularly expensive in opportunity cost. The previous approach had been broadly understood as inadequate, but the operational habit of pulling from running units had reasserted itself in the early turnaround planning meetings. Leadership wanted a different model on the table, with the operational logic and cost picture documented before the planning team defaulted back to the prior approach.
Phase 1 · Business Assessment
We rebuilt the cost picture for the prior turnaround with all sides included. Direct turnaround labor, the labor cost of the backfills on running units, the cost of the 6-day schedule overrun, the cost of each of the 7 running-unit upset events (including off-spec product, flaring, recovery hours, and the one recordable safety incident), and the carrying cost of the FCC unit being down for the additional 6 days. We then modeled three alternative staffing approaches for the upcoming turnaround: the prior pull-from-running-units approach, a fully contracted turnaround crew, and a hybrid parallel model combining a contractor pool, a small permanent turnaround-services team, and a set of temporary 12-hour rotation operators hired specifically for the turnaround window who would not be pulled from running units after the turnaround completed.
The hybrid parallel model emerged as the lowest total-cost option once running-unit risk was priced into each scenario. The fully contracted approach was actually the most expensive on labor lines, but offered the cleanest separation between turnaround and running-unit staffing. The hybrid approach kept the labor cost moderate while preserving the separation that prevents running-unit degradation. Critically, the prior pull-from-running-units approach, when its running-unit upset cost was included, came out as the most expensive of the three on a total-cost basis — despite appearing cheapest on the labor budget line that the planning team had been using to compare options.
Pulling experienced operators off running units to staff a turnaround looks cheap on the labor line. The cost shows up on the operations side — in upsets, off-spec product, and recovery hours — and that cost almost always exceeds the labor savings the approach was supposed to deliver.
— Jim Dillingham, Senior Partner, Shiftwork Solutions LLC
Phase 2 · Workforce Assessment
We engaged the operations workforce on three dimensions: their experience under the prior turnaround approach, their preferences for the upcoming turnaround, and the integration patterns they had observed between contractor crews and refinery operators in past work. The feedback was consistent across the running-unit operators who had been rotated onto the prior turnaround: the rotation had been disruptive to their own crew dynamics, and several reported that they had felt insufficiently prepared for the turnaround-pace work even with their experience on the running units. We also engaged the maintenance contractors who had worked the prior turnaround and the refinery’s turnaround-services agency. Both confirmed that the rotational pattern from the prior turnaround had been more friction-heavy than a parallel-model approach would have produced.
Phase 3 · Solution Design
The redesigned staffing model had three components running in parallel with normal operations. First, a 60-person contractor crew specifically qualified for FCC turnaround work, drawn from two established turnaround-services agencies the refinery had relationships with. Second, an 18-person temporary 12-hour rotation crew hired specifically for the turnaround window with explicit non-conversion terms — they would work the turnaround and not be placed onto running units afterward, eliminating the secondary disruption the prior approach had created. Third, a permanent 12-person turnaround-services team within the refinery’s own maintenance organization, available across all future turnarounds and not assigned to specific running units. The total cost envelope was modestly higher than the prior pull-from-running-units labor line, but substantially lower than the prior total cost once running-unit upset cost was included.
Phase 4 · Implementation Preparation and Rollout
The implementation manual documented the staffing structure, the coordination protocols between the turnaround organization and the running-unit leadership, the qualification verification process for the contractor and temporary crews, and the demobilization plan for the temporary 12-hour rotation crew. Particular attention was paid to the running-unit leadership channel: the prior turnaround had produced friction at the boundary between turnaround and running-unit work, and the new model required explicit protocols for who would coordinate which decisions. Contractor sourcing and qualification verification began 9 months before the turnaround start date. The temporary 12-hour rotation crew was hired and trained over the 3 months immediately before the turnaround window.
Measured against the client’s stated objective:
| Metric | Prior Turnaround | Redesigned Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Turnaround duration vs. plan | +6 days | On plan (38 days) |
| Running-unit upset events | 7 | 1 |
| Recordable safety incidents | 1 (backfill operator) | 0 |
| Operators pulled from running units | ~85 | 0 |
| Direct labor cost | Baseline | +~$1.8M |
| Total cost incl. running-unit impact | ~$11M–$14M above plan | Within plan |
The running-unit leadership reported that the 38-day window had felt operationally normal — a stark contrast to the prior turnaround, which had been described in the post-mortem as "a 38-day fire drill on every adjacent unit." The contractor crew, drawn from established agencies the refinery had vetted, integrated more smoothly than expected, with the permanent turnaround-services team providing the institutional knowledge that the contractor crew needed. The temporary 12-hour rotation crew completed the turnaround window at full strength — the explicit non-conversion terms and a completion bonus tied to attendance held the group through the 38 days. The refinery has adopted the parallel-model approach as its standard for major turnarounds going forward.
The Design Principle: Turnaround staffing should be planned as a parallel organization to normal operations, not as a redeployment of normal-operations personnel. The cost of redeploying experienced operators off running units is almost always larger than the labor savings — and it shows up as operational degradation in adjacent units precisely when reliability matters most.
The pattern in this engagement repeats across refining, petrochemicals, and other process industries with periodic major maintenance events. The operational habit of pulling experienced operators from running units onto turnaround crews is reinforced by the labor-line view of cost: redeploying internal staff looks cheaper than hiring contractors or temporary workers. But the labor line is incomplete. The full cost includes the operational degradation of the running units during the turnaround window, and that degradation is consistently large enough to swing the comparison toward the parallel-staffing model when it is fully accounted for.
A second pattern: a permanent turnaround-services team inside the operation, even a small one, dramatically improves the integration of contractor and temporary turnaround crews. The institutional knowledge that runs in such a team — equipment-specific procedures, refinery culture, coordination protocols with running-unit leadership — closes the gap that contractor-only models cannot. The marginal cost of carrying a 10-to-15-person turnaround-services team year-round is small compared with the operational gains it produces across the multi-year turnaround cycle.
If your team is preparing for a major turnaround and the staffing plan involves rotating experienced operators off running units, the most useful first step is a rigorous cost picture for the prior turnaround — including the running-unit impact, the schedule-overrun cost, and the safety profile of the backfill arrangement. That picture usually changes the conversation about how the upcoming turnaround should be staffed.
Shiftwork Solutions LLC has guided hundreds of engagements across refining, petrochemicals, mining, and other process industries with periodic major outages over more than three decades. Visit shift-work.com to start a conversation.
