Operational readiness for new assets: methods, standards and the CMMS build
Commissioning proves a new asset can run. Operational readiness proves you can keep running it. The checklist, methods, standards and CMMS build that get a plant, fleet or rail line ready to operate and maintain from handover, and what gets skipped when they are left late.
Key takeaways
- Operational readiness is the work that makes a new asset safe to operate and practical to maintain from handover: people, procedures, approvals, spares, data, strategies and systems, each proven with evidence.
- It starts at feasibility, not commissioning. The data, spares and strategies it depends on come from vendors during procurement, where asking costs a contract clause and reconstructing later costs months.
- Criticality rations the effort. It decides which systems get full RCM or FMECA, which spares are held on site and which equipment is monitored from day one.
- The CMMS is built in dependency order, with maintenance plans loaded last and their start dates staggered, or the first cycle of work lands in one impossible week.
- Readiness is measured by closed gates and evidence rather than percentage complete, and it continues through ramp-up until strategies have been checked against real failure data.
Operational readiness is everything that has to be true for a new or modified asset to be operated safely and maintained properly from the day it is handed over. Competent people, approved procedures, the right approvals, spares on the shelf, accurate data in the CMMS and maintenance strategies that suit the asset's real duty. Maintenance readiness is the part of that concerned with keeping the asset running.
Projects are measured on delivering an asset. Operations are measured on running it. Readiness lives in the gap between the two, and it is the part of the schedule that gets compressed when the project runs late.
The pattern is familiar across mining, rail and process plants. The plant is commissioned, the project team demobilises, and the maintenance organisation spends the first year catching up on work that should have been finished before handover. This guide covers what readiness includes, when each piece belongs in the project, the methods and standards that do the heavy lifting, how to build the CMMS in the right order, and how to tell whether you are actually ready.
Operational readiness, maintenance readiness and commissioning
The three terms get used as if they were one milestone. They answer different questions, they are owned by different people, and they produce different evidence. Treating them as the same thing is how a plant passes commissioning on a Friday and cannot raise a correct work order on the Monday.
Commissioning is about the equipment. Operational readiness is about the organisation that will run it. Maintenance readiness is the part of operational readiness that decides whether the asset stays available once the novelty wears off.
| Milestone | The question it answers | Typical evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commissioning | Does the asset work as designed? | Pre-commissioning and commissioning test records, performance tests, commissioning certificates. |
| Operational readiness | Can we operate it safely, legally and to plan from day one? | Approved operating procedures, competent operators, approvals in place, safety reviews closed, the operating model staffed. |
| Maintenance readiness | Can we keep it running? | Hierarchy and master data live in the CMMS, strategies and job plans approved, critical spares on hand, maintainers competent, warranties registered. |
| Ramp-up | Is it producing to the business case? | Output against the ramp-up curve, early failures analysed, strategies adjusted against real data. |
A commissioning certificate says the pump turned. It says nothing about whether anyone can find its seal kit at 2am.
Start at feasibility, not at commissioning
Most of the information readiness depends on is created during the project, by designers, vendors and contractors. Equipment lists, data sheets, recommended spares, maintenance manuals and drawings all pass through procurement. Asking for them in a usable form at that point costs a clause in a contract. Reconstructing them after handover costs months of someone's time, and some of it never comes back.
That is why readiness belongs in the project from the early study phases, with an operations and maintenance representative who has real authority over design reviews and handover criteria. Whatever stage-gate model the owner uses, the readiness workload grows through each phase and peaks just before handover.
| Project phase | Readiness work that belongs here |
|---|---|
| Concept and pre-feasibility | Operating and maintenance philosophy, owner's team structure, and readiness scope and budget carried in the estimate. |
| Feasibility and definition | Readiness plan and gates, system-level criticality, maintainability and access reviews of the design, and data and spares requirements written into procurement and contracts. |
| Execution | Asset hierarchy built from engineering data, analysis for critical systems, bills of materials and spares lists from vendors, job plans, procedures, recruitment and training. |
| Commissioning | Operators and maintainers take part in commissioning, the CMMS goes live system by system, punch items are managed, safety reviews are completed and warranty start dates recorded. |
| Handover | Readiness gates closed with evidence, outstanding items owned and dated, and care, custody and control formally transferred. |
| Ramp-up and early operation | Early failures investigated, defects eliminated, warranty claims made and strategies reviewed against the first months of real data. |
The operational readiness checklist
A usable checklist is organised by workstream, and each line says what ready means and what proves it. Percentages are not evidence. A workstream is ready when the proof exists and the person who will live with the result has accepted it.
Adapt the list to the asset. A rail line adds rolling stock and signalling interfaces, a processing plant adds reagents and metallurgical accounting, and a mobile fleet adds component change-out logistics. The skeleton stays the same.
| Workstream | Ready means | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation and roles | Operating and maintenance roles defined, filled and inducted before commissioning. | Organisation chart, position descriptions, start dates met. |
| Training and competency | The people who will operate and maintain the asset are assessed as competent on it, not just trained. | Competency records per person and per critical task. |
| Operating procedures | Start-up, shutdown, normal, abnormal and emergency procedures written, tested during commissioning and approved. | Controlled procedures signed off by operations. |
| Safety and regulatory | Required safety reviews, approvals and registrations complete for the jurisdiction and asset type. | Closed review actions, approval letters, registrations. |
| Asset hierarchy and master data | Every maintainable item exists in the CMMS on the agreed taxonomy, with attributes and criticality. | Data loads validated against engineering lists, exceptions closed. |
| Maintenance strategies | Critical systems have analysed strategies. Everything else has a justified template strategy. | Approved strategy records and analysis worksheets. |
| Job plans and work instructions | Recurring tasks have job plans with trades, durations, materials, permits and isolations. | Job plans loaded and linked to maintenance plans. |
| Spares and bills of materials | Critical spares catalogued, stocked and linked to the equipment they serve. | Stock on hand, BOMs linked, reorder settings in place. |
| CMMS configuration | Work order types, failure codes, request workflow and maintenance plans configured and tested. | Test work orders raised, planned, closed and reported. |
| Contracts and support | Service contracts, OEM support and specialist maintenance agreements active from handover. | Signed agreements with call-out details. |
| Warranties | Warranty terms, start dates and the claim process known to the people who raise the work. | Warranty register linked to equipment records. |
| Information handover | Drawings, manuals, data sheets and certificates delivered, checked and findable, with the data in systems rather than only in documents. | Complete document register, spot checks passed. |
| Budgets and measures | Operating and maintenance budgets approved and baseline measures agreed for ramp-up. | Approved budget and agreed KPI definitions. |
If a checklist line cannot be proven with something you could hand an auditor, it is a hope, not a gate.
Criticality decides where the effort goes
No readiness program has the time or budget to give every item the same depth. A new processing plant can carry thousands of maintainable items, and full failure analysis on all of them is neither affordable nor useful. Criticality is how the effort gets rationed honestly.
An asset criticality assessment scores the consequence of a functional failure against its likelihood, in the asset's real operating context. Consequence bands need anchors in actual outcomes for safety, environment, production and cost, rather than adjectives. The owner's corporate risk matrix is the natural starting point, and published schemes such as the consequence classification in NORSOK Z-008 are a useful benchmark for the maintenance-specific detail.
On a new asset the assessment runs on design information instead of failure history, so it starts at system level and is pushed down to equipment as the engineering matures. The resulting bands drive the readiness decisions that matter.
- Which systems get a full RCM or FMECA analysis, and which get a template strategy.
- Which spares are held on site, and which can be sourced on lead time.
- Which equipment carries condition monitoring from day one.
- Where commissioning and handover inspections are most thorough.
- Which items come first in the data build, so the critical parts of the CMMS are right before the rest.
Maintenance strategies before there is any failure history
A new asset has no work order history, so its first strategies come from analysis, experience with similar equipment and the manufacturer's recommendations. The manual is a starting point, not a strategy. It is written for a generic duty and a generic environment, it rarely reflects your consequences of failure, and it leans towards fixed-interval replacement because that is the easiest thing to warrant.
Match the method to the criticality band. Full analysis goes on the systems that carry the risk, a lighter method everywhere else, with a clear rule for which is which. Template strategies for common equipment classes are worth maintaining centrally, as part of an asset strategy program, so each new project starts from reviewed content rather than a blank page.
| Method | Best used for | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability centred maintenance (RCM) | The highest criticality systems, where failure consequences justify the effort. SAE JA1011 sets out the criteria a process must meet to be called RCM. | Functions, functional failures, failure modes and a consequence-driven task for each. |
| FMECA | Critical equipment where failure modes need ranking, often as the analytical core of an RCM study. IEC 60812 describes the method. | Ranked failure modes with effects, causes and detection. |
| Template strategies | Common equipment classes such as pumps, motors, conveyors and gearboxes at medium or low criticality. | A reviewed standard task set, applied consistently and adjusted for duty. |
| Condition monitoring tasks | Failure modes that give warning, where the P-F interval is long enough to act on. ISO 17359 is a useful program reference. | Monitoring technique, frequency and alarm limits per failure mode. |
| Risk based inspection | Static equipment such as pressure vessels, piping and tanks, commonly planned with API RP 580. | Inspection scope and intervals set by the probability and consequence of loss of containment. |
| Statutory and safety tasks | Pressure and lifting equipment, fire systems and safety instrumented functions. | Mandatory inspections and proof tests at their legal or design intervals. |
The CMMS build, in the right order
Whichever system the site runs, the build follows the same dependency order. Load a layer before the one it depends on and you get records that point at nothing, or maintenance plans that generate work nobody can plan. SAP S/4HANA Asset Management, IBM Maximo Application Suite, Hitachi Energy's Ellipse EAM, Octave Attune EAM (formerly HxGN EAM), IFS Cloud, Pragma On Key and MEX all hold the same underlying objects under different names and with different depths of configuration.
The hierarchy deserves the most care, because every work order, cost and failure record attaches to it. Build it from the engineering tag lists on a taxonomy the operation will keep using, whether that is an internal standard, ISO 14224 or a blend, and keep tags consistent with drawings and control systems. IEC 81346 is a sound reference for that structuring. The master data article covers the downstream damage when this layer is wrong.
| Concept | SAP S/4HANA Asset Management | IBM Maximo | What to get right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where work happens | Functional location | Location | One agreed taxonomy that matches drawings and control system tags. |
| The physical item | Equipment | Asset | Installed at the right position, with model, serial number and criticality. |
| Reusable task | Task list (equipment, functional location or general) | Job plan | Real durations, trades, materials, isolations and permits. |
| Scheduled work | Maintenance plan and maintenance item | Preventive maintenance (PM) record | Realistic frequencies and staggered start dates. |
| Usage and condition readings | Measuring point or counter | Meter | Units and reading sources defined before go-live. |
| Failure history | Catalog profile with code groups for damage, cause and object part | Failure class hierarchy of problem, cause and remedy | Codes short and specific enough that technicians use them correctly. |
- Reference data and configuration first: sites, work centres or crafts, work order types, priorities, criticality scales, classifications and failure code structures.
- The functional location or location hierarchy, built from engineering tag lists.
- Equipment or asset records installed at those positions, with attributes and criticality.
- Catalogue items and bills of materials, linked to the equipment they serve.
- Measuring points or meters for run hours, counters and condition readings.
- Job plans or task lists with operations, trades, durations, materials and safety requirements.
- Maintenance plans last, activated only once everything they call exists, and validated against the engineering source before go-live: counts by system, orphan records, duplicate tags, and equipment without criticality.
Load every maintenance plan with the same start date and the CMMS will faithfully schedule the whole first cycle into one week.
Spares: what to hold, and what must be in place before handover
Spares decisions for a new asset are made with the least information and the most pressure. The vendor recommends a list, procurement wants to limit inventory, and nobody yet knows how the equipment behaves on your ore, your duty cycle or your climate. Criticality and lead time turn that into a defensible position.
Projects typically buy spares in three groups: commissioning spares consumed while systems are proven, operating spares for the early years, and insurance spares held against rare, high consequence failures. Three questions settle most individual items. What happens if this part fails and there is no spare? How long does a replacement take to reach site? How often is it likely to be needed? A long lead, high consequence part with low usage is a classic insurance spare, held for the day it is needed rather than because it turns over. Life cycle costing, of the kind ISO 15663 describes, helps compare holding a spare against redundancy or a faster supply agreement.
- Catalogue before you stock. A spare with a vague description and no link to the equipment it serves is invisible at 2am, which is the only time it matters.
- Link every critical spare to a bill of materials, so planners can kit a job from the equipment record rather than from memory.
- Standardise across the new asset and the existing site where you can. Fewer part numbers mean less to hold and faster recognition in the store.
- Preserve what you hold. Motors, gearboxes and bearings stored for months during construction need preservation routines, or the insurance spare fails its first inspection.
- Set reorder points and minimum holdings before handover, so the first issue from stock does not quietly become the last.
People, procedures and competency
The people who will maintain the asset should be on the payroll before it is commissioned, not after. A maintenance superintendent, planner and reliability engineer who join during execution can review the design for maintainability, shape the data build, witness commissioning and learn the equipment while the vendors are still on site. Hiring them at handover means paying for the same knowledge twice, once in the project and again in the first year of breakdowns.
Vendor training is necessary and not sufficient. It shows people how the equipment works. Competency means someone has been assessed doing the critical tasks safely on this asset, with this site's isolation and permit processes. Record both, and gate handover on competency rather than attendance.
Procedures follow the same logic. Operating procedures are best written by the people who will use them and tested during commissioning, when mistakes are cheap. Maintenance procedures and job plans need the site's own isolation points, permits and access requirements, which a generic vendor procedure will never contain.
Safety and regulatory readiness
A pre-startup safety review is the formal check, before hazardous materials or energy are introduced, that the asset was built to its design, that safety, operating, maintenance and emergency procedures are in place and adequate, that hazard review recommendations are resolved and that people are trained. In the United States it is a required element of OSHA's process safety management rule for covered new and significantly modified facilities, and the CCPS guidelines on pre-startup safety reviews are used well beyond that jurisdiction.
Management of change does not pause for commissioning. Field design changes, set point changes and temporary bypasses need the same control they would in operation, and each one can invalidate a procedure, a spare or a data record prepared months earlier. Safety instrumented functions arrive with proof test intervals set in design, and under IEC 61511 those tests are part of operating and maintaining the system. They belong in the CMMS as maintenance plans before start-up, not in a design document nobody schedules from.
In Australia the approvals depend on the asset and the jurisdiction, and several run on timelines the project does not control. Under the model WHS Regulations, a facility holding hazardous chemicals above threshold quantities can be determined a major hazard facility, which brings safety case and safety management system obligations, and some states regulate these facilities under their own legislation. ONRSR notes that major railway projects generally require an operator to vary or obtain accreditation under the Rail Safety National Law. Offshore, NOPSEMA requires a safety case revision when a significant change to a facility is not covered by the safety case in force. Mine sites answer to their state regulator and its notification requirements.
Regulator timelines are not in the project's control. Put them on the readiness plan the day they are known.
Handover: gates, punch items and evidence
On process and energy projects, completion usually moves system by system through recognised milestones. Mechanical completion marks construction finished and pre-commissioning checks done, commissioning follows, and ready for start-up is the declaration that a system can safely receive process material. Each milestone is certified per system rather than for the plant as a whole, which is exactly the granularity readiness should use too.
Outstanding items are managed on a punch list, categorised by whether they must close before the next milestone or can be carried past it. Readiness gaps deserve the same discipline. An item carried past handover needs a named owner in operations, a date and an agreed interim control, not a line in a close-out report.
Information handover is where much of the value leaks. Documents usually arrive, and the data inside them often does not. Specifications such as CFIHOS in oil and gas, and information requirements under ISO 19650 on infrastructure, exist to define the structured data a contractor must deliver. Where the owner has no such specification, write one early and put it in the contracts.
| Milestone | Meaning | Readiness evidence to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanical completion | Construction and pre-commissioning checks complete for a system. | Equipment records created for the system, tags validated against the as-built. |
| Commissioning complete | The system is proven to work as designed. | Operators and maintainers involved, test data captured, early defects logged. |
| Ready for start-up | The system can safely receive process material or energy. | Safety review closed, operating procedures approved, critical spares on hand, maintenance plans active. |
| Handover to operations | Care, custody and control pass to the operating owner. | Readiness gates closed with evidence, outstanding items owned and dated, warranties registered. |
| Final acceptance | Contractual obligations complete, often at the end of the defects liability period. | Warranty claims resolved, punch list closed, lessons learned recorded. |
Standards and reference points
There is no single operational readiness standard. Owners assemble readiness from their own internal standards and a set of published references that each cover one part of the problem. The list below is a map of the ones that come up most, as options to draw on where they suit the asset rather than a set to comply with.
| Reference | What it covers | Where it helps readiness |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 55001 and ISO 55002 | Requirements and guidance for an asset management system. | A new asset joins the existing asset management plan, roles and governance instead of running beside them. |
| ISO 14224 | Equipment taxonomy and reliability and maintenance data, from the petroleum and gas industries. | A hierarchy and failure coding structure that makes data comparable from day one. |
| IEC 81346-1 | Structuring principles and reference designations for industrial systems. | Consistent tags and locations across drawings, control systems and the CMMS. |
| ISO 8000-110 | Quality requirements for exchanging master data. | Catalogue and supplier data that arrives in a form the store and CMMS can use. |
| CFIHOS | IOGP specification for the structured information handed over on capital projects. | A ready-made definition of the equipment data contractors deliver, and its shape. |
| ISO 19650-3 | Information management in the operational phase of assets. | Defining asset information requirements before handover, common on infrastructure and rail. |
| SAE JA1011 and JA1012 | Criteria a process must meet to be called RCM, and guidance on applying them. | A benchmark for strategy development on the highest criticality systems. |
| IEC 60812 | FMEA and FMECA. | Consistent failure mode analysis on critical equipment. |
| NORSOK Z-008 | Consequence classification and risk based maintenance. | A worked scheme for equipment consequence classes and task selection. |
| ISO 31000 | Risk management principles and process. | The frame most corporate risk matrices sit under, which criticality scoring should align with. |
| ISO 17359 | Condition monitoring and diagnostics of machines. | Selecting monitoring techniques and alarm limits for failure modes that give warning. |
| API RP 580 | Risk based inspection. | Inspection planning for vessels, piping and other static equipment. |
| IEC 61511 | Functional safety of safety instrumented systems in the process industry. | Proof testing and SIS maintenance that must be in the CMMS before start-up. |
| ISO 15663 | Life cycle costing in the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries. | Comparing spares, redundancy and maintainability options on whole-of-life cost. |
Measuring readiness
Readiness reported as a single percentage hides exactly the items that matter. Measure it by workstream, weighted towards critical equipment, with indicators that show gaps rather than activity. After handover, the maintenance metrics published by bodies such as SMRP give a consistent way to track whether ramp-up is being run or merely survived.
| Indicator | Stage | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Critical equipment with an approved strategy | Before handover | Whether analysis is keeping pace with the design. |
| Critical spares catalogued, stocked and linked to a BOM | Before handover | Whether a critical failure in week one can be repaired from stock. |
| Maintainable items loaded and validated in the CMMS | Before handover | Whether work can be raised, planned and costed against the right record. |
| Recurring tasks with an approved job plan | Before handover | Whether the first cycle of planned work can be executed at all. |
| People assessed as competent on critical tasks | Before handover | Whether the crew can maintain the asset without the vendor on site. |
| Planned maintenance compliance | After handover | Whether the maintenance plans are being executed. |
| Reactive work as a share of all work | After handover | Whether the asset is being maintained or chased. |
| Schedule compliance and break-in | After handover | Whether planning holds up under real operating pressure. |
| Early failures investigated and closed | After handover | Whether defects are being eliminated or just repaired. |
| Output against the ramp-up curve | After handover | Whether the asset is delivering the case it was approved on. |
Ramp-up and the first year
Readiness does not stop at handover. The first months of operation are when early life failures appear, when installation and commissioning defects surface, and when strategies built from analysis meet real conditions for the first time.
Plan for that explicitly. Investigate early failures properly rather than just repairing them, because a defect found in month two would otherwise recur for the life of the asset. Claim warranty on failures inside the warranty period, which only happens if the people raising the work know what is covered. Once enough history exists, review the strategies for critical systems against actual failure and condition data, and adjust intervals in both directions. MTBF and MTTR give the first honest read on reliability and repair performance.
Put a number on what an unprepared ramp-up costs, because that is the argument that protects readiness budgets on the next project. The Cost of Downtime Calculator turns lost hours into lost production and standby labour. Then close the loop with a lessons learned register that records what readiness missed and what it cost, which is the cheapest improvement available for the next asset the organisation builds.
Ramp-up is the one period where the whole business is watching maintenance. Readiness decides what they see.
Why readiness fails
The failure modes are consistent across mining, rail, process plants and energy, and almost all of them are organisational rather than technical. The operational readiness case study shows how an engagement is shaped to design against them.
- Readiness scope and budget are the first things cut when the project schedule slips, which is exactly when they are needed most.
- The contractor builds the asset data to their own standard, and the site inherits a hierarchy nobody can report against.
- The vendor manual is loaded as the maintenance strategy, unchanged.
- Operations has a representative on the project but no authority over design reviews or handover criteria.
- Spares are purchased but never catalogued, stocked in a known location or linked to equipment.
- Every maintenance plan is loaded with the same start date, so the first cycle of work lands in one week.
- Gates are signed off on percentage complete rather than evidence.
- Training is delivered after handover, on equipment already in service.
- Documents are handed over, but the data inside them never reaches the systems people use.
A readiness program, end to end
Plan and gate
Readiness plan, gates and owners set at feasibility, with data and spares requirements written into contracts.
Assess criticality
System-level criticality from design information, pushed down to equipment as engineering matures.
Build the asset data
Hierarchy, equipment, BOMs and job plans loaded in dependency order on an agreed taxonomy.
Strategies and spares
Analysed strategies for critical systems, templates elsewhere, spares set from criticality and lead time.
People and approvals
Competency assessed, procedures tested in commissioning, safety reviews and approvals closed.
Hand over and ramp up
Gates closed with evidence, then early failures investigated and strategies checked against real data.
Plan and gate
Readiness plan, gates and owners set at feasibility, with data and spares requirements written into contracts.
Assess criticality
System-level criticality from design information, pushed down to equipment as engineering matures.
Build the asset data
Hierarchy, equipment, BOMs and job plans loaded in dependency order on an agreed taxonomy.
Strategies and spares
Analysed strategies for critical systems, templates elsewhere, spares set from criticality and lead time.
People and approvals
Competency assessed, procedures tested in commissioning, safety reviews and approvals closed.
Hand over and ramp up
Gates closed with evidence, then early failures investigated and strategies checked against real data.
Common questions
What is operational readiness?
Operational readiness is the work that makes a new or modified asset safe to operate and practical to maintain from handover. It covers organisation and competency, operating and maintenance procedures, safety reviews and regulatory approvals, spares, asset data in the CMMS, maintenance strategies, contracts and warranties, each verified with evidence before the project team leaves.
What is the difference between operational readiness and maintenance readiness?
Operational readiness is the whole question of whether the organisation can run the asset safely and to plan. Maintenance readiness is the part concerned with keeping it running: the hierarchy and master data, maintenance strategies and job plans, critical spares and bills of materials, and maintainers who are competent on the equipment.
How is operational readiness different from commissioning?
Commissioning proves the equipment works as designed. Operational readiness proves the organisation can operate and maintain it. An asset can pass every commissioning test and still not be ready, for example when spares are not catalogued, the CMMS has no maintenance plans, or operators have not been assessed as competent.
When should operational readiness start on a project?
At the feasibility or definition stage, not at commissioning. The readiness plan, handover criteria and requirements for vendor data and spares need to be in procurement documents and contracts, because that information is created during the project and is expensive to reconstruct after handover. The workload then builds through execution and peaks just before handover.
What should an operational readiness checklist include?
Organisation and roles, training and competency, operating procedures, safety reviews and regulatory approvals, asset hierarchy and master data, maintenance strategies, job plans, critical spares and bills of materials, CMMS configuration, service contracts, warranties, information handover, and operating budgets and measures. Each line should state what ready means and what evidence proves it.
Which standards are relevant to operational readiness?
There is no single operational readiness standard. Common reference points include ISO 55001 for the asset management system, ISO 14224 and IEC 81346 for hierarchy and tagging, SAE JA1011 and IEC 60812 for strategy development, ISO 17359 for condition monitoring, IEC 61511 for safety instrumented systems, and CFIHOS or ISO 19650 for information handover. Most owners blend these with their own internal standards.
How do you set up a CMMS for a new asset?
Build it in dependency order: reference data and code structures, then the functional location or location hierarchy, equipment or asset records, catalogue items and bills of materials, measuring points or meters, job plans or task lists, and finally maintenance plans with staggered start dates. Validate each load against the engineering source before moving to the next.
What is a pre-startup safety review?
A pre-startup safety review, or PSSR, is a formal check before hazardous materials or energy are introduced that the asset was built to its design, that operating, maintenance and emergency procedures are in place, that hazard review recommendations are resolved and that people are trained. It is a required element of process safety management in some jurisdictions and sound practice everywhere else.
How do you measure operational readiness?
By workstream, weighted to critical equipment, using evidence rather than percentage complete. Before handover, track critical equipment with approved strategies, critical spares stocked and linked, CMMS data validated, job plans approved and people assessed as competent. After handover, track planned maintenance compliance, reactive work, early failure investigations and output against the ramp-up curve.
Key terms
Plain-language definitions from our glossary for the concepts this article leans on.
Standards and further reading
- ISO 55001:2024 Asset management system requirements (ISO)
- ISO 55002:2018 Guidelines for the application of ISO 55001 (ISO)
- ISO 14224:2016 Collection and exchange of reliability and maintenance data for equipment (ISO)
- IEC 81346-1:2022 Structuring principles and reference designations, basic rules (IEC)
- ISO 8000-110:2021 Data quality, master data exchange (ISO)
- CFIHOS, Capital Facilities Information Handover Specification (IOGP)
- ISO 19650-3:2020 Information management, operational phase of assets (ISO)
- SAE JA1011 Evaluation criteria for RCM processes (2024 revision) (SAE International)
- SAE JA1012 A guide to the RCM standard (SAE International)
- IEC 60812:2018 Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA and FMECA) (IEC)
- NORSOK Z-008:2017 Risk based maintenance and consequence classification (Standards Norway)
- ISO 31000:2018 Risk management guidelines (ISO)
- ISO 17359:2018 Condition monitoring and diagnostics of machines (ISO)
- IEC 61511-1:2016+AMD1:2017 Functional safety, safety instrumented systems for the process industry (IEC)
- ISO 15663:2021 Life cycle costing (ISO)
- Guidelines for performing effective pre-startup safety reviews (AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety)
- 29 CFR 1910.119 Process safety management of highly hazardous chemicals (US OSHA)
- Guide for major hazard facilities, safety management systems (Safe Work Australia)
- Major rail projects (ONRSR)
- Safety cases and validation (NOPSEMA)
- The Asset Management Landscape, third edition (GFMAM)
- Best practices metrics (SMRP)
Related case studies and tools
- Operational readiness for a new plant asset (case study)
- Rebuilding asset hierarchies and maintenance master data (case study)
- Reliability engineering and asset strategy program (case study)
- Cost of Downtime Calculator (tool)
- MTBF / MTTR Calculator (tool)
Related reading
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