$1.1 billion in maintenance projects at U.S. refineries kicked off in Q1 2026. Nearly half of that spend belongs to three companies: ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum, and Valero.
Spring turnaround season runs late February through May on the Gulf Coast. If your facility has a major unit turnaround on the schedule right now, the PHA revalidation was supposed to happen before the wrench hit the flange — not during.
Here’s the pattern I see every turnaround cycle: the engineering team spends 11 months running day-to-day operations. Then in month 12, someone realizes the turnaround scope requires a PHA update, the P&IDs haven’t been redlined since the last MOC, and three of the five basis standards are two revisions behind current RAGAGEP.
The scramble that follows is predictable and expensive. Emergency consulting engagements at 2x rate. Compressed review timelines that miss edge cases. Documentation that technically satisfies the audit checklist but wouldn’t survive a post-incident OSHA investigation.
Most refineries operate on a 4–6 year turnaround cycle for major process units. A CDU that was last turned around in 2021 is approaching its next major outage this year or next. If the engineering standards your PHA references haven’t been gap-analyzed since then, you’re betting $165,514 per finding that nothing material changed in the RAGAGEP.
Standards modernization isn’t a turnaround-season project. It’s a continuous compliance function. The facilities that treat it that way never have the January scramble.
When does your team typically start PHA documentation prep relative to your turnaround date? Months ahead, or weeks?
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