Haithm Adnan Elsaka has 38 years of field-tested experience in maintenance management, brown field projects management, and shutdown and turnaround execution in the oil & gas industry. Spanning both operating companies and contractors across Qatar and the wider Gulf region, Elsaka has distilled a career’s worth of lessons into his definitive reference work: The Ultimate Guide to Manage Shutdowns: A Roadmap to Successful Execution. Haithm has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering technology from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale [class of 1988]. For more than two decades, Haithm served in the maintenance organizations of the operating companies then In January 2008 he joined the contractors’ world as the Maintenance Services Manager with the largest Oil & Gas contractor in Qatar [Qatar Engineering & Construction Company (Qcon)]. He was able to transform the execution capacity of Qcon from a single shutdown event or two per year to executing 9 shutdowns through 2010 alone. In 2012, Qcon management expanded in the GCC region. In October 2018, Haithm was promoted to General Manager. In February 2022. Qcon mobilized 19,200+ additional personnel and vast machinery resources to successfully execute seven major shutdowns in Qatar—a feat unmatched in scale, complexity, and outcome. Haithm summarized his experience and life-long lessons in 550-page technical playbook, written from the contractor’s perspective for the contractors’ world.