Talk with Colin Xander, North America Turnaround Director of INEOS Styrolution

Collin Zander on Fixing the Turnaround Crisis: From Nuclear Discipline to Real-Time Maintenance Insights

In a recent podcast appearance, Colin Xander, North American Turnaround Director at INEOS Styrolution, offered a candid assessment of the industrial maintenance landscape—one that, in his view, remains mired in inefficiency and costly delays. Drawing from his early career in the U.S. Navy’s nuclear program, Xander highlighted the stark contrast between military-grade precision and the inconsistent execution that plagues many modern-day turnarounds.

Xander, who also recently launched a nonprofit initiative called Promise for the North, briefly touched on his Arctic-focused charity work before shifting the conversation to more pressing concerns within heavy industry. According to Xander, many maintenance and shutdown projects suffer from a fundamental lack of discipline, real-time data, and cohesive strategy—factors that can lead to staggering financial consequences. One unnamed firm, he notes, racked up losses of $400 million over the span of a decade due to schedule slippage and poor project visibility.

To address these challenges, Xander advocates for the implementation of digital tools such as electronic work permitting systems and live dashboards powered by platforms like PowerBI. These technologies, he says, can eliminate outdated bottlenecks—such as multi-hour delays waiting on physical permits—and instead provide stakeholders with actionable, real-time productivity metrics.

One of the most overlooked yet costly aspects of turnarounds, Xander adds, is scaffolding. Often consuming up to 15% of a project’s budget, scaffolding should not be managed in isolation but bundled into all-inclusive contractor rates to avoid scope creep and invoice disputes.

His recommendations are clear: rigorous front-end planning, transparent communication across all parties, and a structured process for capturing micro-level learnings throughout the project lifecycle. Without these measures, Xander warns, even the most well-funded operations risk becoming yet another statistic in the long list of industrial inefficiencies.