It may be hard to believe, but the success or failure of your shutdown (outage, turnaround) is determined long before you shut down the equipment and begin the event. While many treat the shutdown as a marathon event that must be survived, the insightful among us know that it is the actions that occur in the t-12 months, t-6 months, t-2 weeks, and even t+2 weeks time frames that really determine the success or failure of our efforts.