MAS suite · Health
One capital line, three submissions, one scoring basis
IBM Maximo Health puts every asset on the same basis: criticality in the current operating configuration, condition from data you already hold, and consequence agreed beyond engineering. This page starts with where the money goes, then runs one capital decision through the scoring.
Where the money goes
Five places the maintenance and capital pound goes, and what decides each one
Health does not enlarge the budget or reduce the governance. It changes what the argument is made of, which is the available lever when the money is fixed.
Share of a maintenance and capital plan on a heavy asset estate, deferred work included
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Routine calendar maintenance
34%
Decided today by: intervals set at commissioning, rarely revisited against what the inspections found
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Reactive breakdown work
26%
Decided today by: whatever stopped first, with the plan rewritten around it
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Capital replacement
24%
Decided today by: competing submissions argued at a review on scoring sheets that are not comparable
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Condition surveys and inspection contracts
9%
Decided today by: whichever class has budget and an available contractor this year
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Work deferred into next year
7%
Decided today by: one deferral at a time, each defensible alone, with nobody holding the accumulation
Each of the five is decided by a different group, in a different month, on a different basis. Health puts all five on one.
Shares are illustrative of the estates we work on rather than measured across a population. The column that carries the argument is what decides each line today.
One line item, three cases
A capital review with room for one replacement
Three submissions, scored on the same three criteria. Read the rank column last.
| Case | Condition | Consequence of failure | Redundancy | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substation transformer Rising oil test results across two years, presented with a clear degradation trend. | Deteriorating, with a measurable trajectory | Partial loss of supply, tolerable for a fortnight | Partial, through reconfiguration | Second |
| Pump set Two failures in eighteen months, and the case with the most recent pain behind it. | Known poor, under repeat repair | Local process interruption, absorbed | Yes, a spare on site | Third |
| Conveyor No case submitted. It has never failed, so nobody wrote one. | No adverse findings, little inspection history | Stops five production lines | None, and no bypass | First |
The conveyor ranks first because consequence and absent redundancy outweigh a clean inspection record. It was the one asset in the room with no advocate.
A composite of the argument as it runs on utilities, manufacturing and transport estates. The assets and the outcome are illustrative; the scoring basis is the one we configure.
Terms as we use them
Four inputs decide whether the score means anything
- Criticality
- What the asset matters to in its current operating configuration. The same pump in two plants scores differently. Health reads it from Manage and we calibrate it to the operation.
- Often read as a fixed property of the equipment, set once at commissioning and inherited ever since.
- Condition
- What the asset is doing now, from inspection records, work history and, where Monitor is in place, live operating signal.
- Often read as a survey. Where a class has never been inspected, the score carries low confidence and says so.
- Consequence
- What failure costs across safety, environmental, production, regulatory and financial dimensions, on one scale agreed with operations, safety and finance.
- Often read as a field an engineer filled in, which produces one person’s opinion with a number attached.
- Risk
- The three combined, expressed so an executive committee, a regulator and an engineer read the same figure. This is what makes risk-based maintenance defensible under ISO 55001.
The decision boundary
One capital line, settled in four beats
Health ranks. The head of asset management decides, in the meeting, and the record follows the decision.
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Beat 1
The ranked list reaches the review with the scoring basis attached.
Written The basis, the inputs on the day, and the register version used.
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Beat 2
The head of asset management challenges the conveyor consequence score out loud.
Written The challenge and who raised it, against the conveyor asset record.
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Beat 3
Operations confirms there is no bypass route, and the score holds.
Written The confirmation, with the operations manager named.
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Beat 4
The conveyor replacement is funded. The transformer and the pump set keep their scores.
Written The decision against all three assets, with the deferred pair scored on the same basis.
Eleven months later that record is also the answer to an auditor asking how capital decisions are made.
Conditions and boundaries
Four things Health depends on you having agreed
It cannot score assets missing from the register
An incomplete or duplicated register produces a confident ranking of the wrong estate. We quantify remediation before the engagement, not during it.
It does not agree your consequence scale
Consequence is an agreement between engineering, operations, safety and finance. We facilitate that session in days and cannot substitute for it.
It is not a condition survey
Where a class has never been inspected, the output is a low-confidence score plus a recommendation to gather data, rather than a number implying knowledge nobody has.
It will not survive being run once
A score set at go-live and never revisited becomes the spreadsheet it replaced. Recalibration and challenge belong to the run-state, and somebody has to own them.
IBM Maximo Health, frequently asked questions
- What does IBM Maximo Health do?
- Health scores assets across the estate on criticality, condition and consequence, using data already held in Maximo Manage plus signal from Monitor where it exists. The output is a ranked estate the maintenance plan, the capital plan and the audit trail can all cite.
- When does Health earn its licence?
- When the register in Manage is complete enough to rank, and a real decision is waiting: a capital submission being built, an audit being prepared, a maintenance budget being challenged. Without a waiting decision, Health produces a score and not much action.
- How does Health relate to ISO 55001?
- Auditors look for evidence that maintenance and capital decisions are made on a basis that can be explained and reproduced. Health provides that basis and records it against the assets. ISO 55001 asset management: what it really means sets out our position.
- How is this different from criticality scoring we already do?
- Most operators hold a static criticality score in a spreadsheet. Health combines criticality with condition data, work history and operating signal, and updates as those change. Asset criticality assessment frameworks covers how the two relate.
- What if our engineers disagree with the ranking?
- That is a useful outcome and we design for it. The initial ranking is tested against the assets your engineers already believe are the worst in the estate. Where the score disagrees, either an input is wrong or local knowledge was never written down.
- Do we need Monitor in place before Health?
- No. Health operates on the data already in Manage. Monitor turns the condition input from a snapshot into a stream, which is why we commonly sequence the two on the same asset class.
Related capabilities
Related capabilities and components
Bring the three assets your engineers argue about.
Name the decision the score has to support, then bring the assets competing for the same money. We say whether your register can rank them today, what the consequence session involves, and what we would fix first.
Bring this to the first call
- The decision and its date: the submission, the audit, the review
- Three or four assets that compete for the same budget line
- Your current criticality scoring, however old, and who set it
- A register export for those classes, hierarchy included
- Who in finance and operations can agree a consequence scale