Dolphin Completes 34-Exchanger Turnaround for Abu Dhabi Gas Plant in 28 Days

A gas processing plant in Abu Dhabi scheduled a full turnaround with a fixed 28-day window to inspect, clean and recertify 34 shell and tube exchangers across its production trains before the plant could safely resume operation. With that many units sharing one shutdown calendar, the sequencing plan mattered as much as the technical scope itself.

Dolphin's turnaround crew pre-staged tubes, gaskets and bolting based on the previous inspection's findings, and sequenced hydrotests across the available test rigs to avoid queuing multiple vessels behind one another during the window. Units most likely to need rework were scheduled earliest, leaving recovery time in the calendar if a retest turned out to be necessary.

“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.”

Contingency scope for likely findings was pre-approved before the shutdown began, so an inspection result requiring repair did not have to wait on a separate approval cycle mid-window — a delay that, on a fixed 28-day turnaround, would have consumed days the schedule simply did not have.

All 34 exchangers were cleaned, inspected by NDT, repaired where required, and hydrotested within the 28-day shutdown — with full documentation delivered to the client ahead of plant restart, allowing the operator to close out the turnaround and resume production on the original schedule.