Walkthrough

What goes in a turnover package

Last updated 12 August 2026

A turnover package is the argument that the machine was installed correctly, made to somebody who was not there and cannot inspect it. This is what goes in one, in the order it gets read — worked through a single real job rather than described in the abstract.

The contract governs. Scope, format and retention come from your specification. What follows is the shape most precision-maintenance packages take when nobody has specified one, and the order is not arbitrary: it is the order a reviewer actually opens things in.

The job

Project 4118 — overhaul and reinstall P-1201A, an API 610 BB2 crude charge pump on a grouted baseplate, driven by a 700 HP motor through a disc coupling. Wear rings and bearings renewed, baseplate regrouted, aligned to hot targets, vibration accepted to ISO 20816. One machine, one coupling, about forty records.

Small enough to follow end to end, and large enough that every failure mode below has somewhere to hide.

The sections, in the order they get read

#	Section	What it has to establish
1	Cover and index	Which machine, which job, which revision of the package. A package with no revision on it cannot be superseded, only argued about.
2	Equipment register	Tag, nameplate data, serials. Everything downstream keys off the tag, so this is the section that makes the rest navigable.
3	Procedures and specs	What the work was checked against, at the revision in force on the day. Not the current revision — the one that governed.
4	Instrument calibration	Certificates for every instrument that produced a number in this package. Read early because it can invalidate everything after it.
5	Personnel qualifications	Who did the work, and what they were certified to do at the time.
6	Foundation and grout	Product, batch, cure conditions, void check and its method. The one check that cannot be repeated once the machine is set.
7	Teardown and inspection	What came apart, what was found, what the wear pattern indicated, and the disposition of each part.
8	Clearances and fits	Bearing fits, internal clearance class, wear ring clearance, end play — as-found and as-left against OEM limits.
9	Bolt torque	Casing splits, baseplate and anchor bolts, with grade, lubricant, pattern and the calibrated tool.
10	Soft foot and shims	All four feet, the type found, and what went under each — including how many pieces.
11	Thermal growth targets	The cold targets and where they came from. Section 12 is unreadable without this one.
12	Shaft alignment	As-found and as-left, method, instrument, tolerance standard, verdict.
13	Run-in and performance	Uncoupled solo, coupled, then loaded. Bearing temperatures, process conditions, seal condition.
14	Vibration	Acceptance readings at every standard point, with the standard and the zone.
15	NCRs and RFIs	Everything raised, and how each was dispositioned and closed.
16	Punch list	What remains, categorised by whether it blocks startup, blocks handover, or is cosmetic.
17	Daily reports	The narrative. Usually skimmed — and read very closely indeed when something else does not add up.

Sections 11 and 12 are adjacent deliberately. An alignment sheet without its targets in front of it is a page of numbers with no criterion, and a reviewer who has to go looking for the targets will assume they do not exist.

Following one machine all the way through

Take P-1201A and pull its thread. A complete package lets a reviewer do this without asking a single question:

Register — P-1201A, Flowserve 8x10x17 BB2, serial SN-448120, 3560 RPM, criticality A.
Grout — Escoweld 7505E, batch LOT-22841, poured at 78 °F ambient and 74 °F foundation, cured 48 hours, hammer-sounded, no voids.
Teardown — wear rings at 0.031 against an OEM maximum of 0.025; wear pattern normal; disposition replace.
Fits — shaft 3.1494, housing 5.5118, C3 clearance, mounted by induction heater at 230 °F, end play 0.014.
Torque — casing split, sixteen 1-1/8 A193 B7, moly, star pattern, 640 ft-lb final, wrench TW-004 calibrated to 2026-09-02.
Soft foot — motor back left 4.0 mils, parallel; corrected with one 0.003 laminated shim; rechecked, all feet under 2.0.
Thermal growth — 300 °F operating, 14.5 in centreline, calculated 22 mils, verified on a hot check at 48 hours.
Alignment — as-found 14 mils low, as-left 1.0 mil vertical to a −22 target, reverse dial, ANSI/ASA S2.75 Excellent, accept.
Vibration — 0.09 in/s overall at the motor drive end, ISO 20816 Zone A, accept.

Every one of those lines names the machine, the instrument or product, and the criterion. That is what “traceable” means in practice, and it is why the tag has to be spelled identically in all nine places.

Five ways this package comes back

1. An instrument out of calibration

Wrench TW-004 expires 2026-09-02. If any torque record in the package is dated after that, every reading it produced is void — retrospectively, including ones that passed. This is checked first because it is one date comparison and it can end the review.

Fix: cross-check instrument IDs against calibration expiry before submission, not after.

2. An alignment with no targets

As-left 0.000 on a pump that runs at 300 °F either means the targets were zero — which is wrong — or that the targets exist somewhere and were not included. The reviewer cannot tell which, and the conservative reading is the bad one.

Fix: thermal growth immediately before alignment, with the source of the target named, even when the answer is assumed zero.

3. A verdict with no standard

“Within tolerance” against nothing. OEM, plant precision spec and ANSI/ASA S2.75 disagree, and at 3560 RPM they disagree by enough to change the answer.

Fix: name the document and the row on the sheet itself.

4. A count that does not reconcile

The register lists four machines; there are three sets of alignment records. Either a machine was not aligned or a record is missing, and from outside those look identical. The reviewer has to assume the worse one.

Fix: reconcile section counts against the register before submission. Where something genuinely does not apply, say so explicitly rather than omitting it.

5. Records that contradict each other

A vibration baseline dated the 24th for an alignment completed on the 26th. Somebody typed a date wrong, almost certainly — but the package now says the machine was accepted before it was aligned, and there is no way to tell a typo from a sequence problem after the fact.

Fix: check dates run forward through the package. This is the single most common reason a technically sound job gets returned.

The pass to run before you hand it over

Every instrument ID in the package appears in the calibration section, in date on the day it was used.
Every machine in the register has a record in every section that applies to it, and an explicit note where one does not.
Every alignment has thermal growth targets and a named tolerance standard.
Every torque record has a lubricant and a tool ID.
Every shim record has a piece count, not just a total.
Dates run forward: teardown before fits, fits before alignment, alignment before vibration.
The tag is spelled identically everywhere it appears.
Every NCR is closed, or listed on the punch list as open with an owner.
The package carries a revision, and superseded copies are marked as such.

Nine checks, most of them mechanical. They are worth running as a pass of their own because every one of them is cheap to fix before submission and expensive to fix after — not because of the correction, but because of what a returned package does to the schedule and to the next conversation with that client.

What this page is not

It is not your specification, and it is not a substitute for reading it. Where the contract names sections, formats or retention periods, those govern. This is the shape to start from when nothing has been specified, and the failure modes are the ones worth checking for either way.

What goes in a turnover package — millwrightqc.com/turnover-package