Online shutdown management training
Learn the key elements of a best-in-class shutdown management process to deliver shutdowns that are safer, on time, and on budget.
What you will learn
The SD400 Introduction to Shutdown Management course gives you a practical overview of the entire shutdown lifecycle. If you’re struggling with shutdown management or managing outages without a structured framework, this course demonstrates exactly the approach that works and why most shutdowns fail on a massive scale.
You’ll learn the common pitfalls, the best practices, and the strategic mindset you need to deliver high-quality shutdowns to protect your plant, your budget, and your team’s safety.
Most capital-heavy organisations struggle with shutdowns plagued by safety incidents, schedule overruns, and budget blowouts. You’ll learn the disciplined framework that eliminates these failures and turns shutdown investments into improved revenue, not debilitating expenses.
You’ll learn how to set up the oversight and management structure — including the Shutdown Review Board (SRB) — define roles for full-time and part-time members, and coordinate in-house and outsourced workforces.
You’ll learn how to craft a strategy aligned with business goals, define the work list (scope), prioritise critical work, and protect it from non-essential creep that derails almost every shutdown that fails.
You’ll learn that intensive planning done early in the project lifecycle is both practical and transformational. You’ll see how investing upfront mitigates risk, prevents expensive last-minute changes, and addresses critical issues when they’re 100 times cheaper to fix.
You’ll learn proven models like the Integrated Planning & Optimisation Workshop (IPOP) to simulate the shutdown, identify conflicts, and resolve them before they occur.
You’ll learn the critical checks that guarantee a smooth transition from preparation to execution — regulatory compliance, documents, materials, equipment, safety protocols, and proper transfer of plant custodianship.
You will learn to manage high-priority tasks aggressively, track progress, and handle emergency work effectively, so your team remains on target and on time during the high-pressure execution phase.
You will learn how to conduct a thorough and impartial after-action review that captures lessons learned and systematically upgrades your process for every future shutdown.
Plus much more — from managing stakeholder expectations, to understanding the critical metrics that separate flawless shutdowns from problematic ones.
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Curriculum
This online, self-paced course delivers 9 essential lessons in approximately 3 hours of pre-recorded video. You can work through the lessons at your own pace, anytime, anywhere without disrupting your schedule. Once you have completed all lessons and passed the final exam, you will receive your Certificate of Completion.
We’ll walk you through the course design and what you’re expected to learn. You’ll also meet Erik Hupjé and hear about his two decades of hands-on experience managing complex industrial shutdowns around the world — the universal applicability that forms the backbone of this training.
Most industrial shutdowns struggle to deliver on time and within budget. In this lesson, we’ll define the performance gap that plagues capital-heavy industries and identify the 3 critical areas of failure: safety incidents, schedule overruns, and budget overruns. You’ll see the context for why a disciplined shutdown management process is the only guaranteed solution that protects your organisation from the effects of poorly planned overhauls.
This lesson covers the proven, repeatable 6-step Shutdown Management Process and introduces Front End Loading (FEL) — why it matters, how it works, and why it’s the heart and soul of our framework. By the end of this lesson, you’ll understand how to deliver safe, efficient, and cost-effective shutdowns every time.
In this lesson, we’ll dive into the 5 essential steps in crafting a shutdown strategy that’s fully aligned with business goals. You’ll also learn how to organise your cross-functional shutdown team and establish clarity on objectives, accountability, risk mitigation, and key performance indicators.
Lesson 5 is all about defining the shutdown scope. What work needs to be done? When? Who’s responsible? Scope definition is a critical task and so is protecting it. You’ll learn the best practices for creating work lists, prioritising critical tasks, managing stakeholder involvement, and refining work requests.
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to create comprehensive workpacks, develop execution and functional plans, and conduct dry-runs to identify scheduling conflicts or resource problems before they occur. A solid plan keeps your team safe, coordinated, flexible, and keeps you calm even when pressure mounts.
In this lesson, we’ll train you how to get the site and your team 100% ready before the shutdown clock starts. You’ll learn the 4 critical elements: preparation, staging, final readiness checks, and transfer of site ownership.
Lesson 8 is where the plan becomes reality. You’ll learn how to ensure the plant is safely shut down, de-energised, and that all safety protocols are in place before work begins. We’ll train you how to manage critical path activities aggressively, incorporate contingency plans for surprises, and monitor progress in real-time.
In this final lesson, we’ll empower your drive for continuous improvement by capturing lessons learned, conducting thorough, impartial after-action reviews, comparing actual performance against targets, and finding root causes of problems.
Included
Meet your teacher
My passion is for continuous improvement and keeping things simple. Through the Reliability Academy, I help Maintenance & Reliability professionals around the globe – people like yourself – improve their plant’s reliability and their organisation’s bottom line.
I am a Certified Maintenance & Reliability Practitioner (CMRP), Certified Reliability Leader (CRL), Certified Asset Management Assessor (CAMA) and a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng).
But those are just credentials, it is my industry experience and practical approach to the topics I teach that our students and clients appreciate the most.
Pricing
Payment plan
$169/mo
3 payments spread over 3 months
Enrol nowFull payment
$495
One time payment. Quick, easy and best value
Enrol nowEnrol your team
Volume discounts for teams: 10% off for 3+ participants, 20% off for 10+, up to 50% for large teams.
Enrol your teamFree previews
SD400 FREE COURSE VIDEO #1
In this lesson, we introduce the fundamentals of managing shutdowns, outages, and turnarounds. You’ll learn why shutdowns are critical for managing industrial assets, why so many of them run over schedule, over budget, and suffer HSE incidents, and what typically goes wrong. We also introduce the concept of a best-in-class Shutdown Management process and explain how it helps reduce risk, duration, and cost.
SD400 FREE COURSE VIDEO #2
In this lesson, we provide an overview of a best-practice, repeatable Shutdown Management process. You’ll learn why investing time and effort early in the shutdown lifecycle is critical, how Front-End Loading helps prevent cost overruns and delays, and how the six phases of shutdown management — Strategy, Scope, Plan, Pre-Execute, Execute, and Review — work together to deliver safer, shorter, and more predictable shutdowns.
SD400 FREE COURSE VIDEO #3
In this lesson, we break down how to develop a Shutdown Strategy — the foundation for everything that follows. You’ll learn why strategy matters so much, how to align it with your organisation’s business goals, and the five steps that make the Strategy phase repeatable and effective. We cover governance through the Shutdown Review Board, setting up the shutdown organisation, defining objectives and shutdown drivers, running a strategy workshop, and getting formal approval so the shutdown is set up for success long before execution begins.
Proof
Worth every penny
“An excellent course worth every single penny. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all practitioners, beginners and mature maintenance or operations managers alike, as everyone can benefit from it.”
Andrej AndrojnaQuantum Consulting, SloveniaA breath of fresh air
“His newly created Maintenance and Scheduling course was a breath of fresh air…The content he provides is very comprehensive and easy to understand.”
Martijn HaddersManager Global Maintenance & Asset Management at HenkelFAQs
The course is provided by Reliability Academy, which was an Approved Education Provider accredited by the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals. Unfortunately, the SMRP discontinued their Approved Education provider program in 2020. The course continues to offer the same high-quality content. The course can still be used for credit hours towards ongoing professional development and maintaining your CMRP status.
Yes, you do. You get immediate access to all 9 lessons after purchase. We recommend you progress sequentially because the course follows the shutdown lifecycle chronologically, but you control the pace. You can complete it during your downtime between shutdowns or accelerate through it before a major event.
No. The SD400 is designed to be concise and focused. There is no mandatory homework or assignments. You will have 3 short quizzes throughout the lessons to help you retain the most important information.
Yes. Once you’ve completed all lessons and quizzes, you’ll take a final, online, multiple-choice exam. You have a maximum of 3 attempts and must achieve at least 80% to receive your Certificate of Completion.
Immediately. As soon as you purchase the course, you can start learning. You’ll have lifetime access, so you can revisit lessons anytime — even during an active shutdown cycle when you need a quick reference.
Yes. After you complete all lessons and pass the final exam, you’ll automatically receive a Certificate of Completion (PDF) that you can download and share immediately.
Support is provided in a few ways. First, there’s an exclusive forum accessible only to course students. You can ask questions about the content and discuss topics with fellow students. Second, we hold regular Office Hours where you can dial in live and ask questions. If time zones make that difficult, email your questions in and listen to the replay afterward — it’s stored in the student-only area. Third, we offer dedicated coaching programs called Reliability Sprints where we train and coach your team on implementing the processes we teach.
Lifetime access. Once you enrol, you can learn at your own pace, anytime, anywhere. Even 5 to 10 years from now, you’ll still have access to revisit lessons and prepare for your next major shutdown.
Absolutely, not a problem. Simply drop me an email at team@reliabilityacademy.com with your full details and the number of people you want to enrol and I can get a quotation off to you.
We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, you can ask for a refund as long as: (1) you have completed the first 3 modules; (2) you have not completed the course; (3) you request the refund within 30 days of purchase. We also offer a 24-month turnover guarantee: if someone we have trained leaves your company within 24 months of starting our training, we will train their replacement free of charge.
No. The course is delivered through a web-based Learning Management System. All you need is a modern web browser like Chrome, Edge, or Safari, and a reasonably reliable internet connection. You can access the course on desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
The course is currently available in English only. We are evaluating French, Spanish, Arabic, and Italian translations for late-decade launch. If you purchase today, your lifetime access automatically includes future language versions at no extra cost.
Yes, we have a standard discount table which is applied when companies purchase the course for multiple students. The best option is to schedule a call with me and we can talk through the options.
Yes, we offer a licensing option. This gives you the right to rebrand the training, modify it to suit your organisation’s practices, and host it in your own Learning Management System. You do not obtain derivative rights or the right to re-sell the course. Schedule a call with me if you want to learn more.
P.S. Shutdowns don’t have to be catastrophic. With a proven framework, they become controlled operations that deliver predictable results — safe, on time, and on budget. You also gain control: a move from reactive to proactive planning, where your team knows what to expect and stakeholders can rely on the plan. Give this course 3 hours of your time and we’ll give you the blueprint to shutdown management that saves your organisation time and money.
