Shutdown maths is unforgiving. A day of lost production at a processing plant, a refinery or a cement works costs more than the entire demolition package that delayed it. Which means the demolition contractor on a turnaround is not judged on price. They are judged on whether they hand the area back when they said they would.
Plan backwards, not forwards
Most demolition programs are built forwards from mobilisation. Shutdown programs have to be built backwards from restart, because restart is the only date that genuinely cannot move.
Working backwards changes decisions. It exposes which activities have float and which do not. It tends to move demolition scope earlier in the window than the first draft suggests, and it usually reveals that the handover to mechanical is tighter than anyone admitted.
The four places days disappear
Waiting on isolations and permits. Crews standing around on day one because a permit was raised against the wrong equipment number is depressingly common. Isolation requirements should be agreed weeks out, not discovered on the morning.
Waiting on cool down. Any area that has been hot has a period where people cannot work in it. Remote machines can often start earlier, which converts dead time into production. On a twelve day window that difference is material.
Extra scope. It always appears. Something is more corroded than expected, or once a panel comes off a second problem is visible. The right response is to hold crew capacity for it in the back half of the window and price it against agreed rates, rather than negotiate in a panic while everyone waits.
Handover disputes. The mechanical contractor will not accept the area, or the reline crew says it is not clean enough. Almost always because the standard was never written down. Agree what handover means before the outage, in writing, with both trades in the room.
Sequencing that survives real conditions
A good shutdown sequence has a few visible characteristics. Activities that can happen in parallel are actually run in parallel, rather than being drawn sequentially because it was easier to plan. High risk items sit early in the window, where there is still room to recover. Cool down dependent work is staged so that something useful is happening while temperature drops. And the last two days carry contingency rather than critical path.
Working under someone else’s system
On a shutdown you are one trade among twenty, working to a permit system that is not yours, under a coordinator with no interest in your internal arrangements. That is normal and it should be planned for. Crews arrive inducted with current tickets, documentation is written to fit the client’s process rather than your own template, and reporting happens at the same frequency as the other critical trades so bad news travels early.
The contractors who are invited back are rarely the cheapest. They are the ones whose scope came off the critical path quietly and on time.
Talk to someone who has run these jobs
If you have one of these coming up, the earliest conversation is the cheapest one. Call 02 8015 6345 or read more about our shutdown and turnaround demolition.
Perfect Contracting acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Traditional Custodians of the country on which we live and work. We pay our respects to the Traditional Custodians and Elders past, present and future, and honour their connection to the land and ongoing contribution to society.