For heads of asset management, reliability and asset strategy
Your policy is only real where the system enforces it.
You own the asset management policy, the criticality model and the maintenance strategy. The platform that enforces them, or lets work route around them, reports to somebody else.
Written for: Head of Asset Management · Asset Management Director · Head of Reliability · Asset Strategy Lead
What you are measured on
- Intervention timing
- Replace, refurbish or run on, evidenced a year later by somebody who was not in the room.
- The evidence trail
- ISO 55001, regulator submissions and internal audit ask one question: show the decision and its basis.
- Criticality under pressure
- Whether the model still sets priority in a busy week, or whoever escalates hardest does.
- Investment cases that survive challenge
- A capital ask defended by condition and failure history rather than by seniority.
Two pieces of work
A data cleanse and a data standard are funded separately
Most estates have paid for the first at least once. The second is a design job: classification, domains, validation and the capture flow.
A cleanse
Corrects what is wrong in the register as it stands today.
A standard
A rule enforced where data is created, so the register cannot drift back.
What it produces
A register accurate on the day it is signed off.
A register still accurate in two years, because nothing can be created outside the rule.
Where the effort goes
People working through exception lists in a spreadsheet.
Classification, domains, validation and the daily capture flow.
How it decays
At the rate new assets and new work arrive.
Visibly, because drift arrives as an exception rather than as a discovery.
What an assessor takes from it
You corrected the data once.
You control the data continuously, which is the question ISO 55001 asks.
One record, field by field
What encoding the model changes on a single asset
One pump, before and after the criticality model and the failure coding were expressed in configuration.
Asset PU-4021, sewage transfer pump, Site 12
5 of 6 fields changed
| Field | Before | After | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Criticality | 3, typed in at data load in 2016 | 2, derived from the consequence model | Policy encoded as a Maximo domain, validated on save |
| Classification | PUMP, plus a free-text description | ISO 14224 equipment class, legacy value crosswalked | Standards workshop, signed off by the reliability lead |
| Failure code at close-out | Optional, and mostly skipped | Mandatory for criticality 1 and 2 assets | Work type configuration, enforced at status change |
| Condition source | Inspection contractor PDF, filed outside Maximo | Meter reading against the asset, dated and attributed | Inspection contract varied at renewal. The field work is unchanged |
| Replacement decision | Committee paper, March 2024 | Decision record on the asset: options, evidence, accountable role, date | Governance step added to the asset investment process |
| Asset identifier | PU-4021 | PU-4021 | Held. The hierarchy was extended around it rather than renumbered |
Illustrative of standards work MaxIron runs. Published versions: the ISO 14224 standards engagement and the embedded data lead in a gas distribution network.
Quote these codes in your own paper
Five places the policy and the platform part company
Strategy is written in one place, governed on a committee cycle, executed on a shift pattern.
| Ref | Where it shows up | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| AM1 | The plan, the criticality model and the maintenance strategy are agreed and published, and expressed nowhere daily work has to obey. | Compliance depends on people remembering the policy under time pressure. |
| AM2 | Every asset carries a criticality value, and little downstream behaviour depends on it. | In a busy week priority is set by whoever escalates hardest. |
| AM3 | Condition sits in an inspection report, cost in finance, failure history in the work management system, and the decision in a committee paper. | A fortnight of senior time per request, across three different asset identifiers. |
| AM4 | Capital, replacement and maintenance plans meet at one asset and one outage window, under three owners. | The conflict surfaces in the planning meeting rather than weeks before it. |
| AM5 | Sustainability figures are collected a second time, by hand, into a parallel spreadsheet. | Two versions of the same data, two version histories, neither auditable. |
The estate pays twice: for the parallel effort that assembles evidence the system should hold, and again when a sound investment case is deferred because it could not be evidenced in time. Addressed by business process optimisation, MaxIron Blueprint and Maximo Health Check and Heal.
Run this against one decision
Five statements about one intervention decision from last year
Take a real decision, read down, and stop at the first statement that is false.
- 1
The asset carries one identifier in condition, in cost and in failure history.
- 2
The criticality that set the priority is derived from the model, not typed in at data load.
- 3
The failure history is coded to a standard, so it rolls up to the asset class.
- 4
The options considered, and the evidence available at the time, sit on the asset.
- 5
The accountable role and the date sit there too, so the trail survives the people.
Where you stopped
The policy is advisory from that statement onward, and that is where the next piece of configuration belongs. Knowing which statement failed is most of the scoping.
If all five held
Next year the same assessor request is a query rather than a project, and Health and Predict are the sensible next spend.
Scope and boundaries
Three boundaries on an asset management programme
Each one carries more weight here than on a general platform engagement.
The asset management policy is authored by you
We challenge it and say where it cannot be enforced in configuration as written. What risk the organisation carries is decided by the people accountable for carrying it.
Condition data comes from inspection in the field
Where inspection or monitoring is not yet happening, closing that gap costs money and time in the field. We name it in week one and price it as its own workstream.
ISO 55001 certification rests on your management system
The system holds the evidence and enforces the model. The management system, the competence framework and the leadership commitment sit with you, and an assessor reads those first. The insight on what certification really means is deliberately blunt about the split.
Where each part of this is written up
Ten pages, routed by what is costing you time
- Product MaxIron AI Smart Data
Classification and failure-code structure proposed in bulk, with a person confirming every change.
- Service Decision-ready data for AI
What the register has to look like before analytical work on top of it is worth funding.
-
Why a cleanse returns, and what enforcing the standard at the point of capture involves.
-
Producing the figures from work already recorded rather than from a second collection exercise.
- MAS application IBM Maximo Health
Condition and criticality scoring across the estate, once the history can be scored against.
- MAS application IBM Maximo Predict
For asset classes carrying enough failure history to learn from, sequenced after Manage is sound.
- Service Enterprise AI condition insight
Condition signals turned into an intervention a planner can act on, with the reasoning attached.
- Sector IBM Maximo for utilities
Where the periodic review cycle sets the evidence bar for every intervention decision.
- Sector IBM Maximo for oil and gas
Safety-critical evidence, turnaround scope and reliability data that has to survive an audit.
-
Where the capture problem sits with the people closing the jobs rather than with the model.
Asset management leadership, questions we are asked first
- Where do we start if the criticality model itself is contested?
- Trace three real decisions rather than re-run the model workshop. A contested model usually means two groups are optimising for different consequences, and that argument is shorter once you can see which decisions the current model actually changed. Encoding follows agreement and cannot substitute for it.
- Is this an ISO 55001 project?
- It is the part an assessor asks the system for: the data model, the enforcement of the policy, and decision records with the evidence attached. The management system, competence framework and leadership commitment stay with you. The insight on what certification really means sets out that split.
- Do we need MAS Health and Predict for this?
- Health earns its place once hierarchy, criticality and history are sound enough to score against, and Predict once an asset class has failure history worth learning from. Sequenced before the underlying record is reliable, both produce confident output resting on a weak base.
- How does this connect to what maintenance is doing day to day?
- The model is only as good as the completion data feeding it, which is created at close-out on a shift. Run the two programmes together. The maintenance leadership page covers that half of it.
- Can sustainability reporting come out of the same data?
- Where the underlying work is already recorded, usually yes, and the figures are then produced from what happened rather than from a parallel collection. The integration guide sets out what has to be true first.
Bring one decision you had to defend.
Send one intervention decision from the last year. We trace it through your system in front of you: how far it explains itself without a person, and where the trace goes cold.
Bring this to the first conversation
- Your asset management plan, or whatever currently stands in for it
- The criticality model, including the version in daily use
- One intervention decision from the last year and the evidence behind it
- The assessor or regulator request you least enjoy answering