How does Monitor sit alongside SCADA on a regulated network?

SCADA controls the network, inside the operational zone, under the operating licence. Monitor consumes a copy of operational signal, usually from the historian, and turns it into condition context against the asset records in Manage that Ofgem and Ofwat evidence is drawn from. SCADA stays where it is, owned by OT. Our position on the boundary is in OT cybersecurity is now an asset management problem.

What happens if our tags cannot be bound cleanly to assets?

Then the binding is the first project. Tag to asset mapping is master data: it needs an owner, a documented rule and change control, and on several network estates it has been the longest task in the plan. We scope it as its own phase rather than delivering dashboards that point at plant nobody can identify.

How does Monitor help with an Ofgem RIIO or Ofwat AMP submission?

It produces operational evidence against the asset record: anomalies raised, conditions trended, work triggered, and each decision recorded with the engineer who took it. That strengthens the network risk and asset health argument behind the submission, which your own accountable team still authors.

Which asset classes are the strongest first candidates?

Classes where historian signal is already good and an unplanned outage is expensive: substation primary plant, pumping stations and critical pressure reduction stations. A well instrumented population of 40 to 400 units beats the whole network at once, and the order of the wider programme is argued in sequencing Monitor and Predict after Manage.

Utilities, Monitor

Network signal that ends up as a work order on the asset the regulator audits

Three artefacts decide what IBM Maximo Monitor is worth on a gas, electricity or water network: the schedule of tags leaving the operational zone, the ledger of who signed for that path, and the binding from each tag to an asset record in Manage. This page walks all three. The general capability sits on our Monitor page, and the sector on Maximo for utilities.

Book a Monitor readiness call Back to utilities

The feed, issued as a document

What leaves the operational zone, and how often

DOC-MON-OT-01

A first phase on primary plant reads five things. The schedule is agreed with the OT cyber security function and cited from your change record before a tag moves, because a path out of the control environment needs a stronger case than a maintenance requirement.

Field	Source	Target	Frequency	Owner
TOP_OIL_TEMP	PI historian, grid supply point	MAS Monitor	5 min	Substation asset engineer
DGA_H2_PPM	Online dissolved gas monitor, via historian	MAS Monitor	Daily	Plant condition engineer
PRV_OUTLET_PRESSURE	Aggregated SCADA, pressure reduction station	MAS Monitor	1 min	Gas network control liaison
PUMP_RUN_HOURS	Historian counter, pumping station	MAS Monitor	On change	Water operations planner
ASSETNUM	IBM Maximo Manage asset register	Monitor tag register	Nightly	Your asset data owner

Direction and signature

What crosses the boundary, which way, and who signs for it

One conduit, designed to IEC 62443 zones and conduits and signed on both sides before onboarding starts. Network operators are designated operators of essential services under the NIS Regulations 2018 and assessed against the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework, so the security function reads this ledger before any asset engineer does.

What moves	From	Direction	To	Signed by
Historian values for the agreed tags	OT historian, operational zone	→	MAS Monitor	Your OT cyber security lead
Asset number, hierarchy and criticality	Maximo Manage	→	Monitor tag register	Your asset data owner
An accepted anomaly, as a work order	MAS Monitor	→	Maximo Manage	The asset engineer who accepted it
A change to a tag binding	Change record in Manage	→	Monitor tag register	Your change manager

What the conduit will not carry

Setpoints, commands and switching instructions. Monitor holds no write path into the control system.
Control room alarming, which stays inside SCADA on the thresholds the operating licence set.
A connection opened from the corporate zone towards the operational zone.
A work order raised by a model. An anomaly stays a proposal until a named engineer accepts it.

Prerequisites

What standing Monitor up on a network requires

The data path

Feed: Historian, or aggregated SCADA, read through a one-way edge or DMZ component
Design standard: IEC 62443 zones and conduits, agreed with your OT cyber security function
Signed before build: Document DOC-MON-OT-01 above, cited from your change record
Latency it supports: Condition trending across days and weeks, at asset management timescales

The asset record

Binding: Every tag mapped to an ASSETNUM, under change control, with a named owner
First phase we most often scope: One asset class, 40 to 400 units, 6 to 12 weeks
Failure classes: The classes your network reporting already uses
Where the register is thin: Asset data remediation runs first, scoped and priced separately

The run state

Platform: MAS on Red Hat OpenShift, run as MaxIron-managed hosting
Envelope tuning: Asset engineers, with no control system change involved
Anomaly review: A named control engineer and asset engineer, weekly
Evidence retained: Trend, judgement, decision and outcome, against the asset record

Unit counts and durations describe first phases scoped on GB network estates.

Boundaries

Three boundaries on Monitor in a regulated network

Each one changes what a first phase should contain, so each is stated before scoping.

Monitor reads the network and stays outside control

Where a signal calls for an operational action, a person takes that action in the systems licensed for it, under the same authorisations as always.

The binding comes from your asset register

Where a tag cannot be traced to a specific asset, asset data is the first phase and dashboards follow. On some network estates that phase runs longer than the Monitor build, and we say so before scoping. Our position on the boundary itself is in OT cybersecurity is now an asset management problem.

Your accountable team authors the submission

A RIIO or AMP submission is built by the people accountable for it. Monitor gives them an operational record that agrees with the asset record, which is the contribution we claim.

IBM Maximo Monitor for utilities, questions we are asked first

How does Monitor sit alongside SCADA on a regulated network?: SCADA controls the network, inside the operational zone, under the operating licence. Monitor consumes a copy of operational signal, usually from the historian, and turns it into condition context against the asset records in Manage that Ofgem and Ofwat evidence is drawn from. SCADA stays where it is, owned by OT. Our position on the boundary is in OT cybersecurity is now an asset management problem.
What happens if our tags cannot be bound cleanly to assets?: Then the binding is the first project. Tag to asset mapping is master data: it needs an owner, a documented rule and change control, and on several network estates it has been the longest task in the plan. We scope it as its own phase rather than delivering dashboards that point at plant nobody can identify.
How does Monitor help with an Ofgem RIIO or Ofwat AMP submission?: It produces operational evidence against the asset record: anomalies raised, conditions trended, work triggered, and each decision recorded with the engineer who took it. That strengthens the network risk and asset health argument behind the submission, which your own accountable team still authors.
Which asset classes are the strongest first candidates?: Classes where historian signal is already good and an unplanned outage is expensive: substation primary plant, pumping stations and critical pressure reduction stations. A well instrumented population of 40 to 400 units beats the whole network at once, and the order of the wider programme is argued in sequencing Monitor and Predict after Manage.

Where this sits

Bring one asset class and one untidy tag list.

We walk DOC-MON-OT-01 against your own plant: what the historian already records for that class, whether those tags bind to asset records you would put in front of a regulator, and what your OT cyber security function would have to sign.

Bring this to the first call

The asset class costing you unplanned intervention, and how many units you run
A sample of historian tag names for that class, however inconsistent
Who in the OT cyber security function signs the data path
The part of your last network risk submission that was hardest to evidence

Book a Monitor readiness call How we deliver Monitor generally