STO Command Workbook — Shutdown, Turnaround & Outage Planning System (Excel)

Run your next shutdown, turnaround or outage on a system — not on hope and a whiteboard.

STO Command is a complete planning, readiness and execution system for shutdown / turnaround / outage (STO) events, built as an auto-calculating Excel workbook with a 25-page guide. It runs the three disciplines that decide whether an event succeeds:

1. CHALLENGE THE SCOPE — Every candidate job is entered once, answered on five fields (safety, regulatory, window-only, impact if deferred, deferral cost), and scored automatically. The workbook suggests Must-Do / Should-Do / Defer / Remove; your challenge meeting decides — and the decision and its basis stay on the record. Regulatory items are flagged Must-Do regardless of score.

2. PROVE THE READINESS — 40 readiness criteria in 8 areas (scope, planning, materials, contractors, HSE, operations, schedule, cost & controls), scored 0–4 with evidence at five gates (T-90, T-60, T-30, T-7, T-0). The workbook computes readiness by area and by gate, calls the status (Ready / At risk / Not ready), and counts red flags — the criteria due by now that are barely started. That list is your gate meeting agenda.

3. WATCH THE GROWTH — During the window, work packages are tracked planned-vs-actual with flags (Behind / Watch / On track) and forecast final cost per package. Every post-freeze change is logged and priced before it starts, and approved scope growth is reported as a percentage of your baseline budget — daily, while refusing is still possible.

Designed by a Reliability Engineer.

This product was designed by a Reliability Engineer with 15+ years in the industry, including experience across defense, aerospace, and weapons programs. He has built and implemented reliability-centered maintenance programs at multiple facilities — so the logic in these pages is not textbook theory. It is the same structure he has put into practice on real equipment, with real maintenance teams: the calculations are shown, not hidden — every number in this workbook can be traced back to its inputs and its method. Every worksheet is built to be used the way the work is actually done — in a session, on a plant floor, with the people who own the equipment.

Free updates included — if this product is corrected or improved, the updated edition is delivered free to everyone who purchased it, via the store.

ALSO INSIDE

• Event Charter: window, downtime cost and baseline in one place — every other tab reads dates and money from it, so there is one version of each fact
• Milestone Plan: 24 standard STO milestones that date themselves from your event start; overdue items compute their own days late
• Risk Register: probability × impact exposure and bands, mitigations, residual exposure
• Calculators: average and peak crew from packaged hours; the true cost of one overrun day; the real price of deferring scope to the next window
• Checklists: 66 field checks across the five phases (pre-shutdown readiness, execution & shift control, mechanical completion, restart readiness, closeout), gate-critical items flagged
• Worked Example: a complete fictional 6-day outage (food plant, 14 scope items challenged, readiness scored at T-30, execution snapshot at Day 4) with live formulas — every figure in the guide reconciles to it

THE GUIDE (25 PAGES, PDF)

The guide teaches the method section by section: why events fail on paper first, the charter, building the scope list and holding a sunset date, running the challenge meeting, gate discipline and red-flag recovery, packaging and labor loading, daily execution control, change control, restart readiness, closeout that feeds the next event, facilitation and escalation — plus two printable worksheets (scope-item worksheet and the 40-criterion readiness score sheet).

WHO IT'S FOR

Turnaround and outage managers, maintenance and reliability leads, planners and shutdown coordinators — for events from a two-day mini-outage to a major turnaround, in process plants, food & beverage, utilities, and heavy industry.

HOW IT WORKS

Instant download: one .xlsx workbook (Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets; standard formulas only, NO macros — every formula is visible and auditable) and one PDF guide. The registers ship empty and ready for your event; the criteria, milestones and checklists ship as content. Enter your charter, and the countdown dates itself.

SCOPE

This is professional planning and management support. It does not replace your site's procedures, permit-to-work systems, engineering standards or regulatory requirements, and it never authorizes work or a restart — readiness scores are a management tool, not a safety case. All worked-example figures are fictional and illustrative; deferral, crew and overrun figures are estimates and models, not guarantees.

FAQs

Is this software? Do I need a subscription or a special app?
No. It is one Excel workbook (.xlsx) plus a PDF guide — a one-time purchase, yours to keep. It runs in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets with standard formulas only. No macros, no add-ins, no logins.

What size of event is it built for?
Events from a two-day mini-outage to a multi-week turnaround. The scope register holds 150 items, execution tracks 100 work packages, and the readiness/milestone libraries are the standard set for a full event; small events simply use fewer rows.

How is this different from a project Gantt template?
A Gantt draws the schedule. This runs the event around it: scope challenge scoring, gate readiness with red flags, daily planned-vs-actual control, and change control with scope-growth tracking — the management system a schedule alone doesn't give you.

Can I adapt the checklists and readiness criteria to our site?
Yes. They ship as editable content (not locked formulas) so you can adapt wording, gates and offsets to your site's standard plan. The scoring formulas keep working on your edited lists.

Does it work outside process plants?
It was written plant-neutral: process, food & beverage, utilities, pulp & paper, metals and facilities events all share the same lifecycle. The worked example is a fictional food plant; nothing in the method is food-specific.

What does the worked example cover?
A complete fictional outage with live formulas: 14 scope items scored and challenged, readiness at the T-30 gate (with a red flag that later fires), 24 milestones with two overdue, execution at Day 4 with two packages Behind, and four change requests — every figure in the guide reconciles to the tab.

Can I reuse it for the next outage?
Yes — save a fresh copy per event. Your completed events become your calibration history (the guide's closeout section shows how to score the system against its own forecasts).

Does it authorize work or replace our permit system?
No. It supports planning and management decisions by qualified people under their site's authority.