Reliability engineering and asset strategy program

The challenge

Maintenance strategies commonly accumulate rather than get designed. Tasks are added after incidents, carried across from vendor manuals and inherited from sites that ran different equipment, and they are rarely removed. Many are invasive enough to introduce as much failure risk as they prevent, and the link between a task and the failure mode it manages is often long lost.

Failure history usually exists but is coded inconsistently, so the data cannot settle which strategies are working and the argument falls back to opinion. Reliability and maintenance personnel require a defensible, repeatable basis for deciding what each asset deserves, and a review loop that keeps those decisions current as the operating context changes.

When it's time to act

The signs we commonly see when this initiative is due.

• The PM program has only ever grown, and nobody can say what half the tasks prevent.
• Invasive overhauls running on equipment whose failures are not age related.
• Failure history exists but is coded too inconsistently to answer anything.
• The same failures recur on critical systems despite full PM compliance.
• Strategy debates settled by the loudest opinion in the room.

Our approach

• Understand the failures driving cost, downtime and risk, working through them with the people who repair them rather than from the register alone.
• Assess current strategy maturity against your own asset management framework and, where relevant, published practice, so the program starts from an agreed picture of where the gaps are.
• Rank systems by safety and production consequence so analysis effort lands where failure actually hurts.
• Sort out failure coding first, because strategy decisions are only as good as the event data behind them. That means a consistent taxonomy, whether the client's own or a published one such as ISO 14224.
• Run FMECA on critical systems and apply structured RCM decision logic: every retained task answers a specific failure mode, and every failure mode gets a deliberate decision, including run-to-failure where that is the honest answer. The SAE JA1011 criteria are a useful benchmark for whether a process genuinely qualifies as RCM.
• Use age-to-failure analysis where the data supports it, so intervals are set on evidence rather than habit.
• Deploy strategies to the CMMS as complete, executable plans and stand up a governance loop with defined review triggers: incidents, context changes and time.

Tools and methods

The value it creates

• The PM program gets rationalised: duplicates removed, invasive low-value tasks eliminated, and real gaps on genuine failure modes closed.
• Maintenance effort moves to the failure modes that drive downtime and risk, which is where availability improvements come from.
• Strategy decisions become documented and auditable, and the review loop keeps them current instead of frozen at whenever the last incident happened.

What changes

Where these initiatives fail

The failure modes we design against.

• Analysing everything: full RCM across a whole plant becomes a program that outlives its sponsor.
• Skipping failure coding, so the analysis stands on data that cannot support it.
• Producing strategies that never reach the CMMS as executable, kitted plans.
• No review loop, which returns the program to inherited tasks within a few years.

Common questions

Key terms

Plain-language definitions from our glossary for the concepts this page leans on.

Standards and further reading

Reference points we draw on where they suit the work. We also work to client internal standards and established site practice.

• SAE JA1011 Evaluation criteria for RCM processes (SAE International)
• ISO 14224:2016 Collection and exchange of reliability and maintenance data for equipment (ISO)
• ISO 55001:2024 Asset management system requirements (ISO)
• The Asset Management Landscape, third edition (GFMAM)
• Best practices, metrics and guidelines for maintenance and reliability (SMRP)
• Asset Management Council, Australian asset management community (Asset Management Council)

Further reading

Articles and calculators on the methods behind this work.

• MTBF / MTTR Calculator (tool)
• Cost of Downtime Calculator (tool)
• The asset management plan, and the strategy it comes from (article)
• FMECA: how to run a failure modes, effects and criticality analysis (article)
• Condition monitoring: techniques, intervals and building a program that works (article)
• Running an asset criticality assessment that holds up (article)
• Reliability centred maintenance, and when criticality-led beats it (article)
• Operational readiness for new assets: methods, standards and the CMMS build (article)
• Criticality Matrix Calculator (tool)
• Mining solutions (solution)
• Oil and gas solutions (solution)

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