Turnaround & Shutdown Support: A Planning Checklist for Heat Exchange Assets

A shutdown window is a fixed-duration resource, and heat exchange assets are almost always on its critical path — bundle pulls, retubes and hydrotests take real time that can’t be compressed by adding manpower alone. The planning questions answered weeks before the window opens decide whether it closes on schedule.

Spares strategy: the single highest-leverage decision

Whether replacement tubes, gaskets and bolting are staged on-site before the shutdown starts — or ordered once an inspection finding requires them — is usually the single biggest lever on shutdown duration. Fabricating or sourcing a replacement tube bundle mid-shutdown, once an inspection reveals it’s needed, can consume the entire window on its own.

• Pre-stage likely spares (tubes, gaskets, bolting) based on the previous inspection’s findings
• Sequence hydrotests to avoid queuing multiple vessels behind one test rig
• Confirm bundle-pull access and rigging requirements before the window opens, not during it
• Align NDT crew availability with the actual shutdown schedule, not a generic booking
• Pre-approve contingency scope for likely findings so approval delay doesn’t eat window time

“The exchangers that blow a shutdown schedule are rarely the ones that fail an inspection — they’re the ones nobody staged a spare bundle for.”

Hydrotest sequencing: a queuing problem, not just a procedure

Where multiple vessels share one test rig or water source, hydrotest order matters as much as hydrotest procedure — sequencing the units most likely to fail (and need rework) earliest in the window leaves recovery time if a retest is needed, rather than discovering a failed test on the shutdown’s last scheduled day.