Utilities
IBM Maximo for utilities: gas, electricity and water
Six scorekeepers audit a regulated UK network estate, and each accepts evidence only where it hangs on a named asset and a dated work order. That is what shapes the Maximo configuration.
Where the evidence comes from
The record a jointer makes in a flooded chamber is the record Ofgem reads back to you four years later.
Day-to-day capture is the regulatory submission. The hierarchy is designed backwards from the reporting templates, and the mobile form from what a person can answer with gauntlets on.
Who keeps score
Six scorekeepers, and the evidence each one turns down
The configuration is designed backwards from whichever row this estate finds hardest to satisfy.
| Ref | Scorekeeper | Asks for | Will not accept |
|---|---|---|---|
| U1 | Ofgem, under the RIIO price control | Condition, criticality and monetised risk under the Network Asset Risk Metric, with intervention volumes traceable to the assets they were delivered on. | Risk movement with no dated intervention on a named asset behind it. |
| U2 | Ofwat, through the price review and performance commitments | Asset health across the AMP period, with capital maintenance delivery reconciled to the assets in the plan. | Programme-level completion counts. If the mains replaced cannot be named, the delivery cannot be defended. |
| U3 | The Health and Safety Executive, under the Pipelines Safety Regulations 1996 | Safety-critical inspection done to interval, by a competent person, with the defect closed out. | A completion date with no competency record behind it. |
| U4 | The Drinking Water Inspectorate, for water quality in England and Wales | Traceability from a water quality event to the asset, the work done on it, and the materials used in contact with treated water. | Materials recorded as free text. Regulation 31 approval attaches to the item, not to the storeman. |
| U5 | The NIS competent authority: Ofgem, Defra or the Drinking Water Inspectorate | Access control, patching cadence and incident evidence for the systems supporting essential service delivery. | A shared administrative account. An action nobody can be named for is not a controlled action. |
| U6 | Your own OT cybersecurity function, against the IEC 62443 series | An agreed boundary between the operational network and the corporate domain, with every flow documented by direction. | A direct connection from a corporate application into the control system. |
Codes are stable. Cite U3 or U6 in a scoping paper and we will know the row you mean.
In conversation with Ivan
Ivan Milic
Chief Operating Officer · 20+ years in EAM and IBM Maximo
Ivan on where a network programme is actually settled
- Why does a network operator run this on IBM Maximo?
-
On a network the asset record and the regulatory record are the same object. Ofgem asks about a named asset on a dated work order. The platform has to hold a linear network, point assets, a capital programme and business-as-usual maintenance in one model, and still be standing after two price controls.
- What do you find first when you assess an estate?
-
Four teams holding part of one condition record. GIS owns location, the OT team own operating signal, the crew who last attended own observed condition, investment planning own monetised risk. None is wrong and none is complete, so the reporting period becomes a six-week assembly exercise and the board reads a picture older than the last storm.
- Why start at integration rather than at the screens?
-
Screens are cheap to change and boundaries are not. The question I ask on day one is what the estate looks like on day 1,000. What an operator still lives with then is whether GIS pushes into Maximo or the other way round, and who owns observed condition.
- What will you not promise a network operator?
-
That Monitor pays back on a feeder population modelled inconsistently. The model would be confident and wrong, and your reliability engineers would stop trusting it by month three.
Ivan runs delivery and engineering at MaxIron and spent six years at IBM as a Maximo integration specialist.
The ownership boundary
One owner and one direction for every attribute
Settled on paper before anything is built. Where two of these owners claim the same attribute, the decision goes to someone with authority over both.
| What moves | From | Direction | To | Signed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location and network connectivity | Esri ArcGIS | → | Maximo | GIS data owner |
| Observed condition and defects | Field crew, at the asset | → | Maximo | Head of field operations |
| Operating signal | OT historian | → | Maximo, read only | OT cybersecurity function |
| Monetised risk and intervention volumes | Maximo | ← | Asset investment planning | Head of asset strategy |
| Work order cost, labour and materials | Maximo | ↔ | SAP | Finance systems owner |
What never crosses
- A write path from a corporate application into the control system. Signal is read from the historian (U6).
- A second condition record maintained inside the investment planning tool.
- Asset locations edited in Maximo. Connectivity is corrected in GIS and flows back.
Scope and boundaries
Four conditions we set in the first meeting
Each lands better now than in month nine.
Analytics rest on the asset model beneath them
Monitor and Predict learn from the hierarchy and the failure coding. The first phase goes to Manage, and Monitor follows on the classes where the model holds.
The OT boundary belongs to your security function
Your OT team decide what signal leaves the control environment. We work inside that boundary through the historian and an agreed edge component, as set out on IoT and OT connectivity.
Data ownership is decided inside your organisation
We name the owner of every attribute and design the flows. The decision itself needs authority over GIS, OT and investment planning at once, and the programme paces itself against it.
The submission still carries engineering judgement
A well designed estate makes the reporting period a query. Your engineer decides what the risk movement means, and the regulator is still talking to your people.
Where this runs
The rest of the utilities picture
- Case study UK gas distribution network
Data governance embedded alongside the client team on a live network estate.
- Capability IBM Maximo Monitor for utility networks
Historian signal bound to the asset records behind U1 and U2.
- Capability Renewables across wind, solar and storage
One operating view over a mixed portfolio, raising work into the same Manage instance.
- Service Maximo Mobile for field crews
Offline capture in chambers, and the shift flows crews complete without a laptop.
Maximo for utilities, frequently asked questions
- How do you get Ofgem and Ofwat reporting out of Maximo without a month-end exercise?
- Hierarchy, work order types and failure codes are designed backwards from the reporting templates, so day-to-day capture rolls up without manual reconciliation. Bespoke reporting is rebuilt as model-driven reporting over the Maximo schema.
- Can you integrate IBM Maximo with GIS and SCADA?
- GIS integration is part of almost every network implementation we run. Operational signal is read from the historian rather than from SCADA directly, read only into Maximo, with the boundary agreed by your OT cybersecurity function. See IoT and OT connectivity.
- Is MAS Monitor or Predict appropriate for our network?
- Often, and rarely on day one. Manage comes first, including hierarchy and failure-code consistency, then Monitor on the asset classes where criticality justifies the spend. We will say when an investment will not pay back.
- What do the NIS Regulations 2018 mean for the Maximo estate itself?
- Most UK network operators are designated operators of essential services, with Ofgem, Defra or the Drinking Water Inspectorate as competent authority. That shapes hosting, access control, patching cadence and incident evidence for Maximo itself, not only for the network it records.
Bring one reporting template and one flooded chamber.
Two ends of one chain: the submission you defend, and the job that produces the evidence for it. We walk between them and name where it breaks.
Bring this to the first call
- One regulatory submission template you assemble by hand
- The PM library for one asset class, routines nobody defends included
- A photograph of the worst access point your crews deal with
- Who owns condition data today, even where it is contested