In the world of refining and petrochemicals, a turnaround is among the most demanding events in the life of a facility. It is a planned shutdown where thousands of maintenance, inspection and upgrade activities converge under intense time pressure to safeguard long-term reliability and compliance.
Having recently managed one of HMEL’s most complex refinery turnaround 2025, this reality is not theoretical to me. It is lived experience.
A turnaround brings together tens of thousands of parallel activities, a workforce that can peak in the tens of thousands, and a compressed execution window where every hour matters. The operational risk is obvious. But the deeper challenge is human. The question is not whether complexity exists, but whether discipline, alignment, and safety culture can hold under pressure.
At HMEL, our answer has been consistent and tested in real conditions. Zero Harm is not an aspiration we speak about when things are easy. It is the standard we hold ourselves to when the system is under maximum stress.
Why Zero Harm Cannot Be Negotiable
During a major turnaround, trade-offs are constantly tempting. A delayed permit. An unexpected discovery. A critical path activity under schedule strain.
What the recent turnaround reinforced for me is this: the moment safety becomes a variable, the system begins to fail. Not gradually, but decisively.
At HMEL, we are clear that no schedule recovery, no cost pressure and no operational urgency justifies compromising safety. This clarity is not symbolic. It translates into decisions on the ground, even when they are uncomfortable.
In our recent turnaround, this philosophy enabled disciplined work execution across more than five million man-hours, without a single lost time injury. That outcome was not accidental. It was the result of design.
Laying the Groundwork Long Before the Shutdown
A safe turnaround does not begin on Day One of the shutdown. It begins years earlier, in how seriously preparation is treated.
For the recent turnaround, alignment workshops were not treated as procedural checkpoints. They were deliberate forums for challenge. Scope was stress-tested. Risk hotspots were debated openly. Engineering, maintenance, operations, Health & Safety and business partners aligned with a shared mandate.
We used simulations, mock-ups and scenario planning to surface issues before they could emerge on site.
Critical lifts were rehearsed digitally and physically. Confined space risks were redesigned out through robotic inspection, AI-enabled confined-space monitoring and remote troubleshooting with licensors using Real-VR headsets. These were not technology showcases. They were safety decisions.
Accountability was explicit. Every role knew its decision boundaries and escalation paths. In a turnaround of this scale, ambiguity is a risk in itself.
Using Global Benchmarks Without Losing Local Ownership
We continue to benchmark our turnarounds against global best practices through structured frameworks such as iTAP. This brings discipline, phase-gates and objective performance measures into planning and execution.
But what the recent experience reinforced is this. Frameworks enable performance, but ownership delivers it.
During execution, real-time Power BI dashboards, over 4,900 digital work packs and a dedicated war room near critical units enabled rapid decision-making and protected the critical path, even when significant equipment discoveries emerged.
Despite these discoveries, key units were commissioned ahead of schedule, reinforcing that safety-led execution and schedule discipline are not mutually exclusive.
What Zero Harm Looks Like on the Ground
Zero Harm is not a policy. It is behaviour.
It looks like leadership presence in the field, not for inspection, but for engagement. It looks like supervisors empowered to stop unsafe work without hesitation. It looks like contract workers confident enough to raise concerns, knowing they will be heard.
During the turnaround, daily toolbox talks became active risk conversations. Implementation of initiatives like HMEL-PLUS, Integrating Human Performance & Behaviour Based Safety, strengthened the management resolve towards safety culture. Global incident learnings were shared openly, helping teams anticipate and mitigate real-time risks across lifting operations, confined spaces and high-energy jobs.
Equally important was worker welfare.
With a peak workforce of over 15,000 personnel, satellite canteens, hygienic meal services, safe drinking water, and 24×7 upkeep of welfare facilities were treated as core safety controls, not support services. This focus helped sustain alertness, morale and execution quality through long shifts and compressed timelines.
Learning That Extends Beyond the Event
No turnaround, regardless of outcome, is complete without reflection.
Post-turnaround reviews at HMEL are structured to extract insight, not just data. What assumptions held. What failed under pressure. What must change next time.
The recent turnaround raised our internal benchmark. More importantly, it expanded our collective confidence. It demonstrated that even highly aggressive global schedules can be delivered safely when preparation, alignment and trust are non-negotiable.
Each turnaround must leave the organisation more capable than before. That is how learning compounds.
A Personal Reflection on Leadership in Turnarounds
After decades in operations, one truth has only become clearer to me.
Turnarounds succeed or fail not because of equipment alone, but because of people. The planner sequencing thousands of activities. The technician working at height. The supervisor managing competing pressures. Each decision matters.
Leadership in these moments is not about authority. It is about presence, clarity, and consistency. HMEL Management stood steadfast every step of the way.
When teams see safety upheld even under extreme schedule pressure, it builds credibility that no communication campaign can substitute.
In the end, success is not measured only by hours saved or capacity restored. It is measured by whether every person returns home safely, whether systems restart stronger and whether the organisation emerges wiser.
That is the standard we must hold ourselves to. Every time.
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