I have worked both as a Maintenance Planner, which includes Turnaround Planning. Here is brief job scenario that may help explain. A maintenance planner takes a work order from the operations to, let’s just say, replace a 12’ valve in a pipe rack. The planner will go out look at the valve, estimate what activities are needed to execute the work (build a scaffold, remove insulation, etc.), what materials are needed, what equipment are needed (i.e. – cranes, JLG, etc.). Once this “list” of activities is created the planner would then put labor hours and durations to each item, and schedule the sequence in which it is to be worked. If this work is to be conducted during an outage the planner would place this small schedule in to a large network of activities in a logical place for the work to be carried out during the turnaround (TAR). During the TAR the planner reviews what orders are being worked, updates them accordingly, what orders are coming on the next shift and ensures materials and equipment are available, and meets with the next shift to give them a status from the previous shift.

That is a long winded explanation, but I think I covered everything.

TLW