ISO 55000 Asset Management Standard Update

Communiqué on the 5th meeting of ISO/PC 251 Asset management,
29 April to 3 May 2013, Calgary, Canada

ISO/PC 251 had held its fourth meeting in June 2012. Following that meeting Draft International Standard (DIS) versions of its three standards had been released for ballot; each had been approved by a significant majority, allowing ISO/PC 251 to enter the Confirmation Stage.

 5th meeting of ISO/PC 251 Asset management,29 April to 3 May 2013, Calgary, Canada

ISO/DIS 55000 Asset management – Overview, principles and terminology received approximately 515 individual comments; ISO/DIS 55001 Asset management – Management systems – Requirements received approximately 300 individual comments; and ISO/DIS 55002 Asset management – Management systems - Guidelines on the application of ISO 55001 received approximately 320 comments. Overall this reflected a similar number of comments to those raised on the DIS documents, however, the proportions of comments had moved from ISO 55001 to the other two standards, reflecting the increasing maturity of the Requirements document, and allowing greater focus on developing the guidance material. This shift of comments is aligned with expectations at this stage of the development.

The primary purpose of the 5th meeting was to revise the drafts and to improve the texts to a point where they would be ready for ballot as Final Draft International Standards (FDISs).

The Chairman, Rhys Davies, opened the meeting on the Monday (at the Delta Bow Hotel) by noting that attendance at the PC's meetings had grown from approximately 70 delegates at the last meeting to about 80 at this one. 17 new delegates were attending for the first time, including representatives from several member bodies which had recently become P-members to the PC. He was pleased to note the growing level of participation, and welcomed the new members. He advised that a brief meeting had been held the day before, to introduce the new delegates to the PC's work, and to avoid re-opening discussions on matters that had been previously agreed. He stressed that the PC's role is to promote the field of asset management, as well as the development of the standards; consequently it was essential for the new delegates to be integrated into the Working Groups and to participate fully in their activities, so that they would be able to communicate the PC's achievements following the meeting.

The Chairman praised the work that the Conveners, Task Group Leaders and Working Group (WG) Experts had done in preparation for the meeting, including pre-analysis of all the received comments as well as proposing drafting solutions. This had been carried out by the holding of numerous webinars and conference calls as well as the exchange of emails. The WGs would start their activities by reviewing the work that had been done, to ensure that there was consensus among their members.

While he was very pleased to note the high level of approval for each of the DISs, there were still a number of critical items that the comments had highlighted, which concerned all three standards. Consequently an Open Forum session would be held immediately after the Opening Plenary to address these items, to enable all delegates to contribute to the discussions.

During the Opening Plenary an additional report was received from Mr Scott Morris (USA), Convener of ISO/CASCO/WG 39, concerning the development of ISO/IEC TS 17021-5 Conformity assessment - Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems - Part 5 Competence requirements for auditing and certification of asset management systems. Mr Morris stated that WG 39 had been established following the recommendation of PC 251 for the need for such competency requirements. Mr Alan Tait (South Africa) had led an Ad Hoc Group from PC 251 to develop an outline draft. The draft had been circulated as a new work item proposal in ISO/CASCO (ISO's Policy Committee for Conformity Assessment) and had been approved in December. Regrettably Mr Tait had withdrawn from PC 251 activities earlier in the year, so could not continue as Convener. Mr Morris had been volunteered as Convener (for life) by the PC's Secretariat, at short notice, to replace Mr Tait, and this had been agreed by ISO/CASCO. WG39 had met in ISO's office in Geneva in February and had made very good progress in the development of the Draft Technical Specification (DTS). The Secretary of ISO/CASCO, Mr MacCurtain, had attended the meeting along with several members of PC 251. Mr MacCurtain reviewed the final output from the meeting and considered that the DTS was mature enough not to need for it to be issued for a round of commenting prior to it being circulated for ballot; however he had agreed to delay the ballot so that the DTS could be circulated to the national standards bodies in parallel with the expected ballots for the FDISs of the ISO 5500x standards. The DTS was considerably reduced in size and content compared to the initial draft a) due to the realization that many of the included items were already covered by ISO/IEC 17021 Conformity assessment — Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems and b) due to the realization that many of the initial requirements concerned information gathering issues that would be dealt with during a "Stage 1" audit. Finally Mr Morris advised that the DTS would be balloted among the members of ISO/CASCO, and not by ISO/PC 251, and recommended that members should contact their national mirror committees to ISO/CASCO to influence their votes.

During the Open Forum, presentations were received on the following topics: 
• The relationship between the various “Planning/Strategy/Policy” elements (particularly in ISO 55001)
• The use of diagrams in the three standards
• The differences between Asset Management and an Asset Management System
• The approach to “Risk” in the standards

It was agreed to establish a number of ad hoc task groups to examine these issues before the Open Forum closed to allow the WGs to get started on their activities.

Good progress was made in the work over the next few days. Drafts of the standards were circulated to all delegates to review each night, as well as on the Friday morning, so that there would be full transparency about the texts that would be proposed as the FDISs. 

On the Friday afternoon the PC moved its meetings to the City of Calgary Water Centre, and an Open Forum session was called to receive the closing reports from the Working Groups.

WG1 reported that its activities had been based around the key issues of:
• A consistent treatment of ‘risk’ 
• Asset Management versus Asset Management System – resulting in definitions being slightly revised 
• The use of diagrams – three diagrams had been developed, two for ISO 55000 and one for ISO 55002 
• The terms "Asset Life" versus "Life Cycle" – with their definitions being revised 
• The Asset management principles – which had been updated to address the received comments 

The members of WG 1 had agreed to promote the revised draft of ISO 55000 to the FDIS stage.

The Open Forum was happy to accept most of these items without detailed discussion. On the topic of diagrams however, there was a great deal of concern expressed, as these had only just been proposed in the Friday morning drafts and had not been included in the earlier drafts or the DISs. 

The Chairman noted that there was good acceptance of the text of the draft FDISs, and that only the issue of the diagrams had to be resolved. He considered that the first diagram for ISO 55000 was generally accepted, but that the second diagram (and two alternate proposals for it) required a decision to be made as to which version should be used. 

The Chairman asked delegates to indicate their preference for a) having no diagrams, or b) their choice of the secondary diagram, by moving to one of the corners of the room. There was no support for having no diagrams, and the delegates split between choosing the second diagram that was already included in the Friday morning draft, versus one of the alternatives; there was no support for the second alternative. A head count showed a 36 to 29 majority for the Friday morning draft version. The Secretary was concerned about the level of consensus that this indicated, but given the urgency of the need to make a decision, agreed to accept the majority position.

WG2 reported that its activities had been based around the key issues of:
• The treatment of ‘risk’, particularly in ISO 55001 
• The clarification of financial versus technical issues for asset management
• The re-focussing of ISO 55002 to give better guidance (not just a restatement of the ISO 55001 requirement in expanded language), and for it to be simplified.
• The inclusion of the diagram from the WG1 Task Group

While WG 2's members were willing to support both ISO 55001 and ISO 55002 being formally moved to the FDIS stage, ISO 55002 still required final editing to refine the language. The WG therefore proposed that a process similar to that which had been used following the Prague meeting should be invoked, to allow the WG's members to vote on the final edited version prior to it being sent to ISO for the FDIS ballot.

There was some confusion following this suggestion, as comments about the diagram were made in parallel with requests for information about the post-meeting editing and voting process.

The Chairman asked for several "show of hands" to decide each of the following issues:
a) if the diagram should be included
b) to move the diagram from the main body of text to an informative annex
c) to follow the post-meeting editing and voting process
For each issue there was a majority for acceptance.

It was stressed that the diagram in ISO 55002 would need to be absolutely consistent with the second diagram in ISO 55000.

The Closing Plenary session followed on from the Open Forum, and agreed the circulation of all 3 drafts as FDISs for ballot. 

In addition, a resolution was adopted to ask ISO to initiate the process for the conversion of the Project Committee (PC) into a full ISO Technical Committee, if suitable new work item proposals (NWIPs) are received prior to the publication of the ISO 5500x standards. If no NWIPs are received, then the PC will be disbanded on publication of the standards.

On the Saturday 4th May following the close of the PC's meeting, a workshop was held to share asset management experiences from different country perspectives. This was well attended by members of the PC and other Canadian participants, and some excellent presentations were given. Several members commented that it was one of the best asset management conferences they had attended, and thanked the speakers for their invaluable contributions, and especially thanked Mr Duncan Ellison (Canada) for organizing it.

Overall, the PC's meeting achieved its aim of producing the Final Draft International Standards, following the resolution of some very difficult issues, through some exceptional hard work by the delegates.

This would not have been possible without the magnificent support we received from our hosts, the Standards Council of Canada and the City of Calgary, and their sponsors: CH2M-Hill; Trans Canada; Riva Modelling; OPUS; Infrastructure Strategies & Research (I.S.R.); CNAM; GHD; Stantec; Associated Engineering; KPMG; Alberta Infrastructure; Asset Performance Group (APG); and for the wonderful social events they provided.

Specific thanks are owed to Duncan Ellison, Steve Wyton, Cindy McNeil and Luis Moura, for their exceptional efforts in planning, organizing, and supporting the meeting.


Charles Corrie
For the BSI Secretariat of
ISO/PC 251

What are the Uptime Awards?

Uptime® Magazine is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to asset management, reliability, predictive maintenance and machine condition monitoring. Part of our mission is to promote and acknowledge best practices.

We have created the Uptime Magazine Best Maintenance Reliability Awards to provide positive exposure and acknowledgment for maintenance reliability professionals from around the world.

The Uptime Awards were established in 2006 to:

• Acknowledge organizations and individuals who have achieved high levels of performance in maintenance reliability
• Provide a venue for Uptime Award winners to share information about their journey to high performance reliability
• Encourage other organizations and people to adopt the practices of these high performance programs
• Share a powerful self-assessment based on Uptime Elements — A Reliability System for Asset Performance Management

What are the benefits of participating in the Uptime Awards evaluation process?

Find out the benefits reported by previous Uptime Award participants here

Integrity: Without It Reliability Does Not Work

It is an honor to lead the team that creates each issue of Uptime magazine. There is a great deal of research, effort, recruiting, planning, writing, proofing, editing, more editing, graphic design, artistic layout, deadlines, digitizing and the final setting of ink to paper that goes into each issue.

The team creates much of its result through integrity - keeping its' word and honoring its' word by cleaning up any mess when it cannot keep its' word.    In a world of deadlines and creativity - giving your word with responsibility is a BIG factor for success.

I have been fortunate to be part of this extraordinary Uptime team and they continue to teach me by creating a powerful change in the world through their inspired work.  The team also creates result by working with a laser-like focus on the mission and vision

You may be surprised to learn that the mission we work to has nothing to do with magazines or web sites or conferences. Our mission is to make the people we serve safer and more successful.

Everyone on the Uptime team understands the mission and everyone works toward its fulfillment. The mission establishes our focus and our goals. It aims to answer the “what about me” and the “why” of our company and the work we do. The mission is aimed at being inclusive for everyone the organization touches in one way or another, even our competitors.

Our vision is to deliver ideas that make a difference in the areas of maintenance reliability and asset management.

This vision is an open invitation for all the people on our team, our contributors, our readers, our partners, our sponsors, our contractors and our suppliers to create ideas and events that correlate and support its framework.

Speaking our vision out loud creates a possibility to transform. From the moment it is spoken, the “real world” becomes “possibility” and barriers to the realization of the vision dissolve. When you speak the vision that ideas can make a difference in maintenance reliability and asset management – they do!

Our vision articulates the possibilities for us and we hope it will for you as well. It does not intend to aim at a point in the future or the past. It is available now.  Our vision includes you. In fact we invite you to “borrow” our vision.

It is also an honor to serve the audience that reads Uptime magazine and attend Reliabilityweb.com conferences, especially when they share stories of how they have used what they learn to make improvements.   That is one of our highest purposes.

If you already have a great mission statement or a great vision, will you please share it with me?  I would love to learn and be inspired by you! 

You are invited to read this issue of Uptime cover to cover to e let us know if we lived up to our mission and if you share our vision as well.

Warmest regards,

Terrence O'Hanlon, CMRP

CEO/Publisher

Linkedin.com/in/reliabilityweb 

New Day For Asset Performance Management

Bentley’s Acquisition of Ivara Redefines Asset Performance Management: Integrating OPEX with CAPEX!

Uniquely Enables Owner-Operators to Improve the Performance, Reliability, and Safety of Infrastructure Assets Through Information Mobility Between Engineering and Operations

EXTON, Pa., U.S.A. – Sept. 18, 2012 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced that it has acquired Ontario, Canada-based Ivara Corporation, a leading provider of asset performance management (APM) software solutions for organizations in asset-intensive industries, including mining and metals, power generation and utilities, oil and gas, and petrochemical. 

The IvaraEXP solution – a core system mission critical to operations and maintenance, combined with a proven implementation methodology and the Aladon Network’s seasoned reliability practitioners – helps owner-operators to obtain the best performance, reliability, and safety from their assets. APM software supplements and leverages value in transaction-oriented enterprise asset management systems such as IBM Maximo and SAP EAM by helping to build and implement asset-specific reliability strategies.Ivara is an IBM Member-Level Partner with Certified Ready for Tivoli integration as well as an SAP Software Solution Partner with SAP Certified - Powered by NetWeaver integration.

Business benefits of Ivara EXP include maximized availability and utilization; reduced operational costs; extended asset life; structured compliance with safety, environmental, and other regulations; and the systematic capture and application of asset performance knowledge and industry best practices.Ivara EXP also provides dashboards for asset health monitoring, allows organizations to understand and manage the risks associated with equipment failures, and turns the volumes of operational data into actionable information, enabling timely and accurate maintenance decisions.

With this acquisition, Bentley uniquely extends its AssetWise asset lifecycle information management software and services to comprehensively improve asset performance, providing new value-adding opportunities not only for owner-operators, but also for the engineering/procurement/construction firms who design, build, and commission their infrastructure. The compelling ROI driver of enhanced performance for existing assets is underscored by the Bentley Infrastructure 500 tabulation of Top Owners – whose net infrastructure investment is cumulatively valued at over 14 trillion dollars!

Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said, “When I first visited Ivara and, of course, took notice of the “Work Smart” logo in their offices, I soon realized that this was not just words and graphics, but a touchstone of the company culture – consistent with Ivara’s heritage, since 1996, of growth and success. Now all of us as colleagues are enthusiastic to share our Bentley Systems’ objective of ‘Working Smarter, Together’ – with each other, our users, and with innovative technologies – to enable infrastructure to perform better and more safely for constituents, now especially through operational excellence and reliability.”

This marks Bentley’s second acquisition in the operations arena this year, the first being InspectTechfor transportation asset management. InspectTech software-as-a-service, the market leader in inspection and bridge safety, helps owner-operators to plan, collect, and manage inspection results, and to meet asset management mandates.

Greg Bentley continued, “The Ivara acquisition may be our most significant in years, because it creates an unprecedented opportunity for us to leverage information mobility – not only within but between CAPEX and OPEX, by way of our ProjectWise and now-expanded AssetWise platforms, with shared services for asset lifecycle information management. Although increasing proportions of owners’ expenditures have been applied towards respectively accumulating engineering, and operations, information, to date this investment has yielded limited returns due to what we might call ‘information mortality’: data stranded in place until it becomes useless. But with Ivara and our resulting APM focus we are today accelerating information mobility – in terms of the amounts and types of information productively reused – by software innovations ranging from interactive inspections to health modeling, which apply consumer-driven technology advances to ‘industrialized’ projects and environments.

“The asset performance management opportunities created by information mobility pertain equally tointegrated-project engineers whose information modeling deliverables and expertise can contribute in new and innovative ways to operating reliability and safety – as also to teams in operations and maintenance, where lifecycle reliability experience data, such as failure modes and effects analysis, can be structured to drive better designs. Working smarter, together, we can now make the world more productive and safer by ensuring with integrity that the right information is securely accessible at the right time, for the right purpose, throughout the design, construction, operations, and maintenance ofintelligent infrastructure.”

Paul Marshall, formerly CEO of Ivara and now Bentley vice president, asset performance, said, “All of us at Ivara look forward to working with our new colleagues at Bentley to redefine the scope of asset performance management. Through Ivara EXP, AssetWise will now be able to uniquely link as-designed, as-built, and as-operated information models. Advantages to owners will include new capabilities to transform engineering data into actionable reliability strategies that better control and operate equipment as intended and as learned, and to take full advantage of information mobility through immersive and interactive 3D models in safer training, inspections, and maintenance. EPCs will benefit by virtue of more valuably leveraged ‘hands-on’ commissioning deliverables, and ultimately through the feedback of APM operations intelligence, in turn.

“Ivara users and prospects will benefit in particular because Bentley’s unmatched global coverage and resources include access to in-country experts to facilitate worldwide implementation of our unique APM solutions. Finally, Bentley’s broad reach to owners across all domains of infrastructure can now bring the best practices of APM from owner-operators of the largest and most mission critical plants to all types of infrastructure assets of every scale, for new levels of operational excellence.”

Andy Chatha, president and CEO, ARC Advisory Group, said, “In today’s increasingly competitive landscape, owner-operators are faced with a number of complex challenges. Chief among them are improving performance and reducing costs while preserving the environment and plant safety under constrained financial and human resources. Bentley’s acquisition of Ivara is a very positive step towards enhancing owner-operators’ returns on their investments and further incentivizing them to make additional investments in infrastructure to help sustain long-term economic growth around the world.”

Paula Hollywood, senior analyst, ARC Advisory Group, said, “Asset performance management has many dimensions including proactive maintenance, risk mitigation, environmental, health and safety concerns, and reliability. Achieving these goals requires a collaborative information exchange in order to manage critical issues and constraints while simultaneously improving asset availability and utilization. To be effective, they need an asset information management system that can deliver complete, accurate, timely, and most importantly actionable information for all APM stakeholders, internal or external to the organization. The acquisition of Ivara, a leading APM vendor, by Bentley Systems demonstrates that Bentley fully understands the challenges facing the infrastructure community at large. Moreover, it uniquely positions Bentley to deliver solutions that enable owners of capital-intensive assets to design reliability into systems.”

Redefining APM: Representative Opportunities

Among many application areas that will be catalyzed by information mobility spanning engineering and operations/maintenance, initial priorities for AssetWise APM software development include:

• (beyond inspection): “interactive inspection” – to revolutionize labor and information productivity in this essential activity, where to date IT hasn’t progressed much beyond capturing in “blobs” the same unsearchable text that static paper workflows required, resulting in the same wasteful “information mortality.” Rather, each interactive inspection assignment can and should be APM-guided to efficiently identify salient and structured observations specific to the location, recent and historical conditions, knowledge of failure modes, and risk assessment of each unique instance of equipment and structure. Interactive inspection will increasingly take advantage of immersive information mobility technologies combining, as appropriate, smart mobile devices; dynamic forms; as-maintained 3D “hypermodels” to navigate via interactive callouts in context for design and construction drawings, specifications and maintenance instructions, safety animations, and more; and convenient capture of 3D point-cloud imagery for trend differencing. Intrinsic “hands-on” positioning and authentication technologies will assure efficient routing and safe access, confirm accurate tag and location identification, and dynamically index inspection observations to the correct asset lifecycle information records – for compliance reporting and configuration management.

• (beyond asset health monitoring): “health modeling” – to enable design engineers to participate in prescribing and interpreting the otherwise often overwhelming extent of “real-time” asset health monitoring data streams. To dramatically expand upon a current Ivara EXP use case of vulnerable process piping configurations – where corrosion and wear unpredictably change not only flow characteristics but also structural strength – the pipe stress analysis from design can, to start with, be used by engineers to recommend the most effective sensor locations. Then the resulting regularly sampled observations – of, for example, sectional deflections and strains – can be compared within the design engineers’ pipe stress analysis model to “inversely” solve for the re-calibrated as-operated (deteriorated) structural parameters of each pipe section. Finally, the design engineers can regularly re-analyze the as-calibrated parameters, again reusing their design model, to assure that safety margins are never compromised.

What Users and Industry Experts Are Saying

Marius Basson, vice president, Global Reliability Services, CH2M HILL, said, “As a reliability practitioner, my goal is to optimize performance of assets and mitigate the risk of consequence of failure. To be able to instantly trace back to a failure mode in Ivara EXP and further back to the design in Bentley’s information modeling software means I can make fast and accurate decisions that affect the bottom line – and I will have the data I need for regulatory compliance to demonstrate we are doing all the right things.”

Gino Palarchio, general manager, Manufacturing Services, ArcelorMittal Dofasco, said, “I am pleased to see that Ivara EXP asset performance management is now part of the Bentley Systems software portfolio. With the acquisition of Ivara, Bentley can ensure continued innovation of critical software systems we use to manage important assets throughout the entire lifecycle, helping us ensure our sustainability.”

Jim Porter, formerly chief engineer and vice president of engineering and operations for DuPont, currently founder and president, Sustainable Operations Solutions, LLC, and member of the National Academy of Engineering, said, “I regard reliability-centered maintenance as a key strategy for those cases in which I’ve helped investigate industrial losses and incidents. It was very clear to me that having a systematic asset performance management approach, such as that provided by Ivara EXP, would have been a very good investment. I’ve said many times, investments by manufacturers in safety are wise financial decisions. As I’m now familiar with Bentley’s AssetWise offering, I think this is going to be a tremendous and unique enabler for plant operators to proactively improve their safe operations.”

About Ivara EXP

Ivara EXP provides a cohesive and integrated approach to develop, implement, and manage a living equipment reliability program. It’s the complete end-to-end solution for operational excellence that eliminates unexpected downtime, reduces operational costs, increases availability and asset utilization, ensures compliance with industry regulations and guidelines, meets safety, quality and operational targets, and eliminates islands of data.

For additional information about Bentley’s AssetWise asset lifecycle information management offerings, visit www.bentley.com/AssetWise. For additional information about Bentley’s new IvaraEXP asset performance management solution, visit www.bentley.com/Ivara.

About Bentley Systems, Incorporated

Bentley is the global leader dedicated to providing architects, engineers, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. Bentley Systems applies information mobility to improve asset performance by leveraging information modeling through integrated projects for intelligent infrastructure. Its solutions encompass theMicroStation platform for infrastructure design and modeling, the ProjectWise platform for infrastructure project team collaboration and work sharing, and the AssetWise platform for infrastructure asset operations – all supporting a broad portfolio of interoperable applications and complemented by worldwide professional services. Founded in 1984, Bentley has grown to nearly 3,000 colleagues in more than 45 countries and over $500 million in annual revenues. Since 2003, the company has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions.

Additional information about Bentley is available at www.bentley.com and in Bentley’s annual report. For Bentley news as it happens, subscribe to an RSS feed of Bentley press releases and news alerts. Toview a searchable collection of innovative infrastructure projects from the annual Be Inspired Awards, access Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure publications. To access a professional networking site that enables members of the infrastructure community to connect, communicate, and learn from each other, visit Be Communities.

To download the Bentley Infrastructure 500 Top Owners ranking, a unique global compendium of the top public- and private-sector owners of infrastructure based on the value of their cumulative infrastructure investments, visit www.bentley.com/500.

Empty The Ocean: What Can One Person Do To Create a Reliability Transformation?

by Terrence O'Hanlon, Publisher and CEO Reliabilityweb.com and Uptime Magazine

The journey from a typical reactive maintenance context to a proactive reliability based context is a long difficult journey.

Resistance seems to exist in every corner of the organization ranging from the maintenance team, the operators, the plant manager to top company management who are the fiduciaries of the plant assets and do not fully understand or are not willing to support the journey.

So what can one person do?  

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.~Margaret Mead

• Find others who think like you do and cement the commitment to proactive reliability actions. 
• Make a declaration to yourself and others that you will apply proactive reliability strategies and techniques where ever and whenever possible.  Your word and declaration hold great power.
•  Use specific words consistently so others will follow your example.   Misuse of words creates misunderstanding.  The last thing you need is a muddled story.
•  You can ask others who have made the journey what they did (meet them at online discussion groups, focused conferences, etc…).  Learning from others experience is powerful leverage and this is a sharing community.
•  Educate yourself on proactive reliability – the more you know – the more you can do. 
•  Read more than one book about proactive reliability.  There is NO one way to do things.
•  Tell stories to your co-workers and managers about what you are learning…OFTEN.  Stories have been around since caveman time and are a powerful change tool.  Make it a goal to hear others retelling the stories you told.

Remember that the Reliability Transformation journey takes place one step at a time, and you can surely make some steps all by yourself.  Hopefully your steps will gain momentum and others will join you to build on that momentum and create sustainability.

One person may not be able to change everything single-handedly, however one person can start a Reliability Transformation by changing how others think, the words they use and then, then way they act.

Think John Adams, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi.  Your job should even be easier than theirs because you are not trying to change the world, only your small part of it!

New Capital Asset Management: Just Like Burning Money

by Terrence O'Hanlon, Publisher and CEO Reliabilityweb.com and Uptime Magazine 

I just finished re-reading Operational Readiness: Bridging the Gap Between Construction and Operations for New Capital Assets by Bob DiStefano with Co-Authors Will Goetz and Bruno Storino in the June/July 2012 issue of Uptime^® Magazine.

They use the term Value Leakage as a euphemism for the way companies wastefully burn money during capital projects.

This article is one the best I have read on the subject however I must disclose that I am the CEO and Publisher of Uptime Magazine and a friend of Bob DiStefano, but I stand by my statement in spite if my obvious bias.

The authors point out huge short-term consequences of company/management decisions and actions by the capital construction team on operations and maintenance (you can do the math to multiply the long term impacts).

Examples of some of the reason so much “value” is leaked include:

• The new plant has been “tossed over the fence” to the operations and maintenance organizations from the capital construction people.
• The operations and maintenance people were not given the opportunity to contribute to the design or equipment selections.
• The plant is being commissioned later than scheduled because of construction delays, and now the company is pressuring operations to make up the lost time.
• The project came in over budget and at the end of the construction phase, options to facilitate maintenance and reliability (e.g., instrument packages) were sacrificed in favor of saved time and cost.
• Voluminous operations and maintenance documentation is delivered coincident with commissioning in the disparate formats that the engineering and procurement contractor firm, construction contractors and equipment suppliers elected to use (usually inconsistent and not readily transferable into the enterprise asset management (EAM) system).
• Some of the equipment selections were based on the value of lowest initial cost and not on the basis of total lifecycle cost or reliability/maintainability.
• No consideration was given to make and model of already installed assets, resulting in no standardization, a need for overstocking of spare parts, and a requirement for operations and maintenance to become familiar with every brand and model under the sun.
• Abundant spare parts have been procured and delivered, usually at great capital cost, in anticipation of the frequent equipment failures that likely will occur given the operations and maintenance organizations’ unfamiliarity and lack of experience with the new equipment.
• The EAM system has not been loaded with asset and spare parts master data or maintenance procedures representing the new assets.
• Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) maintenance recommendations are contained only in the OEM hardcopy manuals and are largely time-based preventive maintenance with heavy reliance on parts replacements and little use of predictive maintenance or condition-monitoring technologies.
• Little was done to perform acceptance testing (e.g., predictive maintenance baselines) and ensure proper installation and readiness for mission prior to releasing the contractor(s), leaving the operations and maintenance organizations to fix the mistakes of the contractor(s).
• The first year of operations is very stressful, with significant unexpected downtime due to the operators and maintainers trying to learn the new plant on the fly, not having had time to prepare, train and be ready for the operations phase.

Do any of those sound familiar to you?

The authors state that list can go on and on, but the point is hopefully made.

There is currently a lot of noise about what role maintenance reliability leaders play in asset management with European and Australian organizations doing their best to avoid having the M word (maintenance) associated with Asset Management.  The fact is that in almost every “Asset Management” case study with significant financial results, M not only means Money it means Maintenance.

There are huge opportunities awaiting maintenance reliability leaders who push their way into playing a more important role in project life cycle decisions.  Career making opportunities.

I urge you to read this well written and relevant article if you are an Uptime Magazine subscriber.  If not, it is also published online at Reliabilityweb.com here.  Please leave your comments online as well as I am sure the authors would value any feedback you can share.

A special thank you to Bob DiStefano and the entire MRG team for sharing their knowledge and experience with Uptime Magazine and Reliabilityweb.com readers.