Why Turnaround Scaffold Scope Grows and How to Plan for It
Updated: Oct 6
Lessons from the 2026 Athabasca Oil Corporation Leismer turnaround
Athabasca Oil Corporation reported that its three-week Leismer facility turnaround, completed in May 2026, finished on budget and on schedule.
On that same job, Heartland Energy Solutions Inc. built 46,906 cubic feet of scaffold that was not in the original estimate, 17 percent more than the scope we priced.
Both statements are true. The relationship between them is the subject of this article.
Scope growth is the rule
Asset Performance Networks benchmarks turnaround performance against a database of more than 1,350 turnaround observations across refining, chemicals, gas processing, power and upstream operations. Their published finding is that work scope expands by an average of 19 percent between scope freeze and execution. Top-quartile performers hold that growth to 7 percent.
Heartland's scaffold growth at Leismer came in at 17 percent. The two measures are not perfectly comparable, ours runs from original estimate to final scope rather than from a formal scope freeze, but the order of magnitude is the point. Scope growth in the high teens is what a well-run turnaround looks like.
The same research found that more than two-thirds of turnarounds exceed planned cost and schedule by at least 10 percent, or experience a trip after start-up. Forty percent miss by more than 30 percent.
Those numbers describe scope released after planning, not estimating error. The distinction matters when you are reading bids, because a contractor's real capability shows up in how they handle work that was never on the drawing.
Why the growth lands hardest on scaffold
Scaffold is the first trade in and the last trade out, and it sits downstream of every decision every other discipline makes.
A vessel gets opened and the internals are worse than the inspection report suggested. A permit sequence shifts and two work fronts swap places. Weather closes a lift. Operations holds a line that was supposed to be blinded on day two. Somebody still needs safe access to a place nobody planned to reach, and scaffold is what makes that access exist.
Because scaffold is overwhelmingly a labour trade, that growth arrives as hours, crews and shifts rather than as a material order you can expedite. There is no supplier to call. You are competing for the same constrained resource your schedule is already short of.
The Leismer numbers
Cubic feet | Cubic metres | |
Original estimate | 276,000 | ~7,815 |
Final scope | 322,906 | ~9,144 |
Growth | 46,906 (+17.0%) | ~1,328 |
Erected before the outage began | 311,195 (96.4% of final scope) | ~8,812 |
That last line is the one that mattered on site.
By the time the turnaround clock started, Heartland had 96.4 percent of the final scaffold scope standing, roughly 35,000 cubic feet more than the entire original estimate, built before the outage began. Crews arriving on day one found access already in place rather than waiting behind a scaffold crew.
Getting the growth absorbed in the pre-outage window instead of during the outage is what keeps scope growth off the critical path. It is the difference between a number in a report and a delay in a schedule.
What drove it
The Leismer turnaround carried two kinds of work at once. In AOC's own description, it "included recurring maintenance on a four-year frequency and scope for the tie-in of new equipment for the expansion project."
That combination changes the character of the job. The expansion is a roughly $300 million program at Leismer targeting an exit rate near 31,000 barrels per day in 2026 and 40,000 barrels per day by the end of 2027. Running live-plant maintenance and new-build tie-ins through the same window, on the same permits, in the same congested footprint, produces more discovery and more re-sequencing than either scope would alone.
Four things drove the additional volume:
Access that changed once work was open. Scope you cannot see from grade.
Permitting sequence. Work fronts released in a different order than planned.
Weather. The pre-outage build ran through an unusually long winter.
Operational requirements. Live-plant constraints that shift what can be reached, and when.
The weather was not a minor factor. Environment Canada's spring outlook, reported in March 2026, forecast cooler-than-average temperatures and above-normal precipitation continuing through March, April and May across northeastern Alberta, following a winter that brought record snowfall to the region. The pre-outage scaffold that got 96.4 percent of the scope standing went up in those conditions.
"One of the most positive surprises from the AOC turnaround was the team's ability to overcome an extended northern Alberta winter, with colder-than-normal conditions and above-average precipitation continuing into March, while completing the pre-turnaround scaffold work safely and efficiently. Despite these weather challenges, the scaffold team successfully accommodated approximately 35,000 cubic feet of additional scope, and the insulation work was completed slightly below budget. Overall, the project was completed with an excellent safety performance and record." — Brian Fahner is Director at Heartland Energy Solutions Inc., with over 45 years in industrial scaffold, insulation and fireproofing across Alberta's energy sector.
The insulation result, and why the two are connected
Heartland's insulation team completed the planned scope plus additional scope identified during execution, and finished slightly below the approved budget.
Scaffold volume went up 17 percent. Insulation came in under. The mechanism behind that is worth understanding.
When scaffold and insulation sit with one contractor, the access decision gets made once. Scaffold built for an insulation crew is dimensioned for the work that crew will actually do, erected in the sequence they will actually work, and struck when they are genuinely finished rather than when a separate contractor's schedule says so. That removes re-erection and crew standby time, the two costs a scaffold-to-insulation interface reliably generates.
This does not make an integrated award cheaper on every job, and we would not claim otherwise. It removes a specific category of cost that shows up at close-out rather than at bid.
Safety while scope was moving
The Leismer turnaround was completed with no recordable injuries across the pre-outage, outage and post-outage phases.
Moving scope is precisely the condition under which scaffold incidents happen, which is what makes that record a planning outcome rather than a lucky one. Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Code, Part 23, requires that site-built scaffolds be visually inspected and tagged before initial use and at intervals of not more than 21 calendar days while in use, using the green, yellow and red tag system set out in the Code. Any scaffold that must support an evenly distributed load exceeding 367 kilograms per square metre, or that is of a type not described in Part 23, requires certification by a professional engineer.
Modifying a scaffold resets its tag status and requires fresh inspection, with reassessment where the duty rating changes. Nearly 47,000 cubic feet of unplanned scaffold means a great many modifications, each carrying that obligation, most of them in snow.
How Heartland handles it
Two things do most of the work.
The first is daily digital reporting. Progress, safety and cost go to the client every day the job is running, so growth is visible while there is still time to act on it. An owner who learns about scope growth in a monthly invoice has lost the ability to make a decision about it.
The second is carrying scaffold and insulation together. It removes the interface where growth in one scope becomes standby time in the other, and it puts a single contractor on the hook for the access sequence rather than two contractors negotiating it.
Both are visible in the Leismer numbers. Scope grew 17 percent, and 96.4 percent of it was standing before the outage started.
Questions worth asking before your next turnaround
If you are evaluating scaffold and insulation contractors for an upcoming outage, these separate the contractors who have absorbed scope growth before from the ones who have not:
What was your actual scaffold volume against estimate on your last three turnarounds? A contractor who cannot answer has not been tracking it.
How much of the scope was standing before the outage clock started? Growth absorbed pre-outage costs money. Growth absorbed during the outage costs schedule.
How do you price and approve growth mid-outage? Ask to see the mechanism, not the intention.
Who makes the call when a work front opens early? Field authority matters more than an org chart.
How do I see progress and cost during the outage rather than after it?
Can you carry both scaffold and insulation? If not, who owns the interface, and what happens when the two schedules disagree?
How do you maintain tag compliance when scaffolds are being modified daily? The credible answer involves named people and a documented cycle.
What happened on the job that went badly? Every contractor has one. The ones worth hiring will tell you about it.
Build with confidence
Heartland Energy Solutions provides industrial scaffolding, insulation, fireproofing and site services support across Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
If you are scoping a turnaround, we would rather have that conversation early than bid it late.
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