A plant shutdown almost never fails on the technology. It fails because the right people do not get through the works gate in time. Start planning staff eight to twelve weeks before the turnaround window and you keep the date — start four weeks before and you pay for it.
Why lead time is the real bottleneck
In maintenance planning, staffing needs are often settled last, because they supposedly can be covered at short notice. That is true for labouring work, but not for the trades on the critical path: welders with a valid procedure qualification, pipe fitters with plant experience, electronics technicians with DGUV V3 authorisation. During the turnaround season those people are in demand everywhere at once.
On top of that comes the administrative route. Before the first working day there is site-specific instruction, occupational health checks, access authorisation and often a safety course. Each of these steps has appointments that a plant cannot multiply at will. Ten extra specialists mean ten instruction slots — and those are scarce in the turnaround window.
The four questions to settle before you ask for staff
- Which trades are on the critical path? Only there is redundancy in staffing worth it.
- What proof does the plant require? Procedure qualifications, occupational health examinations, access training — best as a list, not from memory.
- Which shift model applies? Two or three shifts changes staffing needs and costing considerably.
- Who gives the induction? If your own supervisors are fully occupied during the shutdown anyway, a Work contract with our own supervision is often the better choice.
A rule of thumb from practice: For a team in double figures allow eight to twelve weeks of lead time. For individual specialists a few working days is usually enough — as long as the plant can schedule the instruction at short notice.
Where the hours are really lost during a shutdown
The three most common sources of loss are not technical. First: waiting for approvals, because work permits are not prepared. Second: hunting for material, because prefabrication and site are not in step. Third: rework, because testing happens at the end instead of alongside.
All three can be defused with staff planning. An extra person in work preparation often saves more hours during a shutdown than they cost. The same goes for testing alongside: with a materials tester in the team you find the fault at the seam, not at the acceptance.
Capacity or a work package?
For a turnaround window with daily changing needs, Temporary staffing is usually the right route: you direct the work, we provide the capacity and the proof. If, on the other hand, there is a clearly describable package — a defined section of pipework, say — the Work contract is cleaner, because responsibility is unambiguous.
What does not work is the hybrid: a work contract in which your supervisors allocate work to our people. Legally that is temporary staffing and it will be assessed as such at the next audit. More on that in the article Temporary staffing, work contract or placement.
A checklist for the next turnaround
- Name the trades on the critical path — with numbers, not just job titles
- Obtain the plant's list of required proof and pass it to the service provider
- Reserve instruction slots before the staff are named
- Plan a buffer for replacements: absences are the rule during a shutdown
- Fix a contact on both sides, reachable at weekends too
- Schedule acceptance and testing steps alongside, not as a block at the end
How we staff shutdowns in the chemical industry is set out under Chemical Services. If your turnaround already has a date, the best time to ask is now — not once the plan is finished.
Report a turnaround requirement