For the past few years I have been writing a lot for anumber of magazines, conferences, seminars and websites. (As well as my books, this blog and other areas)

I would like to introduce you to my regular column at Plant Services.com at present this is a monthly contribution but we are currently talking about ways to make this a bi-weekly column and possibly even into its own newsletter. So stay tuned!

Within the next few months I also hope to have the third of my books out in the marketplace. I wrote Asset Resource Planning in order to address what I saw as being a lack of information regarding how to get maximum efficiency in asset intensive industries. (E.g all of those that have a need for some form of Plant Maintenance activities)

Although written under different circumstances to my last book The Maintenance Scorecard this book is the second in a series of books I have been working on that try to address the issues related to fourth generation asset management.

To be more precise, we are now past the point where Asset Management is getting more important, and we are one of the great beneficiaries of technological advances... So how do we take the best advantage of all of these - more in later posts.


Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

(Format shamelessly stolen from Guy Kawasaki’s Blog “How to Change the World”, check it out!)

Okay, so there not dirty big “lies”, more like the white untruths, miscalculations, obfuscations and poor judgements that companies (we’ll call them “clients”) generally say just before starting on a large scale reliability or maintenance initiative.

If you have ever been involved in an EAM system implementation, an RCM, RCA or RBI rollout or any other sort of project with a big organizational impact (As a consultant or a client) then it is likely that you have either heard or used these at one time or another.

1. Yes, we will make sure that all of the technical documents are ready for when you arrive

Like most of these “lies” this one is very well intentioned; just wrong. The people making these statements have often never seen the technical documents, nor do they have any idea if they even exist, neither would they know where to find them if they needed to.

The people who do know where they are often would not make these claims because they were lost years ago, or they are spread out in several peoples desks and offices or they have never been seen since commissioning!

Sometimes companies do have good technical libraries, but this is beside the point. Don’t take any assumptions about this one. If the project is planning to have these and doesn’t, it can upset the entire timeline!

2. Providing office space and admin resources for the team will be no problem at all.

Correction, this will probably be the hardest thing you will have to do!

There is almost never any free space, or if there is it is in an isolated part of the company’s estates that nobody has seen since the entire division was downsized. (And even then it will be a fight!)

This is a good example of how project sponsors or managers tend to over estimate the importance of their project. (The operations, plant and maintenance managers)
And when admin assistance is needed it is often some poor overworked clerical assistant or secretary who cannot possibly meet all the demands of the project and her day job!

Get commitment first, and then work out how to deal with this one! It is easier to deal with this problem before you get a room filled with egotistical consultants and megalomaniacal project managers.

3. We will take care of the communications issues.

Well intentioned and probably something that you thought you could do. My experience ahs been that when this is run wholly internally, meaning by the client alone without assistance from the consultancy, it often ends in tears.

Why? Because of one small miscalculation, the people carrying out the communications and trying to change the culture of the company’s employees are often the same people that they have been working alongside for many years.

So they have the same workplace culture anyway, they are familiar with each other and know each others faults and histories (not always great).

Also there is a need to get very serious about this. The project is often in the millions, sometimes even in the tens of millions, and you want to entrust the change of workplace culture (and communications of these changes) to an ex-plant manager who worked through a couple of big projects like this before.

Okay, sometimes it works but we should be realistic. This can’t be amateur week if you are spending that kind of money. Cultural change is the bedrock that will ensure the success or failure of the initiative over the long term.

Understand what the challenges are (really understand it) check out your options and if necessary spend the money to get it right the first time!

4. Don’t worry, if we tell them to be there for training they will be there!

Um...no, they probably won’t.

This is a standard sort of line that project sponsors and managers give. Why? Several reasons, they overestimate their ability to get things done (this is after all probably a big step both for the company and for this person specifically) or they have underestimated the workload that the sites and departments that have to implement this are already facing.

Organizing training is a pretty intensive and difficult thing to do! What about:

• Turnaround schedules and when people are likely to be busy doing other things?
• Heavy vacation periods? (August and December for example?)
• Other initiatives that are on the go at present?
• Work rosters?
• Current workloads and the ability or otherwise of the department to spare that person for one to three days of training?
• Resources for training and their availability? (Rooms, projectors, flipcharts etc)
• Are they even interested? (The people or the plants / departments?)

Face it, they probably won’t be there unless you organise for them to be there beforehand. (Project pre-planning) Doing it after making the commitment (as in 99.9% of projects) means some of the best resources or a large number of ordinary ones, will not get to be involved.

5. This is important to us; we will make sure you have a dedicated team of top level resources to implement this.

The guy making this statement often doesn’t “know” this, but he does believe it! Again, do we really believe this project is so important that the key resources that should be “at the coal face” are going to be taken offline to do it for an extended period?

The reality is often somewhere between a range of possible outcomes.

One, this has happened to me sadly, the guys you get are the people that the company is intending to elbow out once the project is over. Great motivational symbol that one!

Two, you do get a small core of disciplined and seasoned professionals who are overwhelmed by the workload they have to do to get this done for the entire corporation, often leading to frustration and resignations.

Three, you get the people who can be spared. More likely than not this will be the guy who is often quoted as a “hard worker” but everyone realises they are not really very sharp. But, “he deserves a break!”, so they give him to you to ruin your project.

Four, they give you good core resources, supported by a good network of satellite resources, and once the project ends they go back to what they were originally doing. Conclusion, some small gains followed by business as usual.

Five, you get nobody, but have to get the work done anyway.

This last alternative is sadly the way that many projects are done today in our field believe it or not. Meaning that there is absolutely no chance of realistic knowledge transfer or of the entire thing becoming permanent in any way at all.

6. We want this to be a knowledge transfer process so that we take over the implementation during the handover period.

He is right, he does want this, his company wants this, and sometimes they actually get it. But most times the time allowed for transferring a lifetimes worth of knowledge to somebody who has been running operationally for their entire career is nowhere near enough.

More to the point often the program for realistic knowledge transfer, including post training mentoring, skill audits, reviews and updates of training as well as the role support mechanisms are often not even considered.

Sometimes there will be one or two “knock-em-down-drag-em-out” types who will get the bit between their teeth and take this on as a personal mission, regardless of the support they do or don’t have. But these people are the exceptions, those who will get the most out of the training and then embark on their own personal self improvement to get the rest of the information they believe they need.

But most times it all ends in tears with the client being left with a half implemented initiative, moderate to useless resources to continue the implementation, and a rapid downward spiral of interest once the baton has been handed to their own people.

7. We will make sure you get full access to our existing RCM (EAM/RCA/PdM) system for any data you need.

Unless the guy telling you this is the head of IT and can change their policies regarding information, data and its manipulation then this step will be like pulling teeth!

Data, its management, storage and use is the realm of the all seeing, all powerful IT department. And they see themselves as the guardians of the company’s future in many cases. If you want to get access to something as privileged as asset data in an asset-intensive company; then prepare to be met with restrictions, difficulties and outright refusal.

While this can be done through diplomacy, horse-trading and other not-so-enjoyable activities; it is far easier to include them in the project planning and execution from the very initial stages.

8. We have full management support for this

Wrong, wrong, wrong! You don’t have management support; you have their authorization to spend money!

Management support is a whole different thing. Thinking that you can crowbar this into the organization just because you have “the big guy” standing behind you giving out threatening looks is never going to work in the long run.

What it will do is get you compliance, but not acceptance. Think about what you are doing here. Taking something from the centre of the company and pushing it out into all of the departments, sites, plants or companies that are associated with it.

What do you think they were doing before you and your project turned up? Waiting for you?

No! They were making do, building their own systems, finding their own solutions and applying hard-earned experience to take care of the headaches of their day to day operations. Sometimes they have done a great job at this, oftentimes it could be better. But it’s theirs! It wasn’t imposed on them by somebody they have never even seen (but have read their names on flyers).

So they are going to view the project with suspicion. Worse, if you haven’t got the communications right at the beginning they will be hearing rumbles in the distance, feel threatened, and raise the defences.

If management really supports what you are planning then “the big guy” will be out there selling (not pushing) the project to the department heads, plant managers or company presidents. There will be financial linkages for them to the success or failure of the project, and once they are convinced they will also start to evangelize their senior management and decision makers.

If you are going to spend several millions of dollars changing the way that the company works, then platitudes, strongarm tactics and sheer bloody-mindedness is not going to cut it. There needs to be a sense of mission and everybody needs be on it!

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

New York 22nd July – Streets reopen after devastating steam pipe rupture killing one person

Some of the streets near Grand Central Station were reopened on Saturday as officials work through the process of repairing the damage and returning the streets to normal.

The blast was caused by the rupture of an 83 year old steam pipe last Wednesday during the evening rush hour in Manhattan. This caused steam vapour, debris and asbestos to fly through the air and left a large crater in its wake.

New York is the home of the worlds largest steam system piping vapour through to businesses and homes across the city, the more you look at this incident the more it seems that it was fortunate to occur where it did and not under more populous areas.
It all begs the question; what is going on with the infrastructure of the USA?

Reuters carries a story today about the intention of the New York City Council to grill Consolidated Edison on the incident, with some pretty accusatory statements regarding this utilities past performance. This company also managed assets responsible for an explosion in 1989 which killed three people.

While explosions like this and the blackout of 2003 tend to focus public attention, it underlines an even greater risk to public health and well being. New York is very publicly facing what many other cities with aging infrastructure have been trying to deal with.

“When do we replace our assets?”

New York, like many other of the world’s capitals, is facing the facts that their infrastructure assets are quickly approaching, or have already passed, their 100th anniversary. Water pipes, steam pipes, wastewater networks and rail infrastructure are all things that we take for granted. But these as these assets continue to age and the level of use they are subject to continues to raise, issues like asset management start to become issues relating directly to public health, welfare and economic stability of the city.

Thames Water, asset manager for the London water and wastewater networks, endured a 24% reduction in profit during the last quarter of 2006, partly due to the need for it to spend millions of pounds on relining 1000’s of miles of Victorian era water pipes throughout London.

In the United Kingdom under the financially regulated utilities markets that exist there, the science of monitoring asset condition and modelling asset life is a central element in the business planning and strategies of the companies who are responsible for managing these assets. It also occupies the government bodies that have been set up to regulate these industries.

This issue has spawned many asset management standards and efforts such as the PAS-55 and the recent efforts by UKWIR to and the Office of the Rail Regulator to set out criteria for judging the accuracy of asset performance plans.

This is obviously of great national importance to that country but also to the United States. The costs of pipe replacement and relining need to be borne by somebody, and the consumer seems to be the most likely target unfortunately. OFWAT, the water regulator of the UK, has deemed that water rates will be allowed to rise an estimated 18% above inflation until 2010 in part to cover new assets and replacement and refurbishment programs.

So what is the condition of assets within the USA generally? Does anybody really know and what is being done to make sure that the infrastructure of US cities are able to continue to manage the growing populations there? Particularly as these assets are now nearing one hundred years old or more in some cases?

The challenge for asset managers in these industries is huge. How do they minimise capital expenditure while ensuring that serviceability continues at it existing levels or better? If recent European examples are anything to go by then this will take some pretty intensive thinking.

First, where possible new technologies will need to be found and deployed as cost effectively as possible. Second, modelling techniques will need to be found that can take into account different operating plans and strategies, current usage and condition data, and use this to confidently predict windows when these assets will need to be replaced. And last, there will need to be a focussed effort on the asset economics side of things.

This means understanding when the best time to replace is to replace or refurbish assets. During weekends, holidays, prior to expected price hikes? What about spares? Can lower cost spares be found for obsolete assets via modern technologies? Will this enable you to extend the end-of-life dates for the asset sections? What about small redesigns? Could this be used to delay capital spending? Or are the consequences associated with the failure dramatic enough for you to consider early replacement, regardless of early capital expenditure?

This is an issue that will plague the infrastructure management of many of the world’s centres during the next ten to fifteen years, but the main issue will always be – who pays!

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Sneaking under the radar in last week's press releases was an announcement by a IFS Defence in the UK defence sector that it had purchased a company called International Science Consultants. (ISC)

IFS Defence is a joint venture by IFS AB and BAE systems and focusses on technology and services for the asset management of the UK's Defence forces.

The announcement is significant for those involved in the international reliability community because it highlights the last word in the disintegration of the Reliability-centered maintenance consultancy and brand forged by the late John Moubray.

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Despite the many variations of RCM that are out in the marketplace (both compliant and non-compliant) RCM2 remains one of the highest profile and John Moubray possibly the highest profile of all the methodologies proponents.

ISC is the company that originally developed the RCM toolkit used by RCM2 practitioners throughout the world. It was staffed by several RCM2 practitioners whose members had played an active role in some of the developments behind the methodology.


Aladon, the company he formed, has since passsed to Ivara and is now being tightly integrated into their suite of products and services, and IFS Defence now has one of the worlds leading RCM software programs. Which, despite its very simple architecture and structure, remains one of the easier to use and practical systems in todays marketplace.

The questions are many; will the Ivara RCM2 practitioners still have access to the RCM Toolkit - or do they even want to have access to it? Will the RCM Toolkit and the other RCM tools, RCS etcetera, find their way into the IFS suite of systems? And what will be the future of the Aladon network, a collection of franchise consultancies encompassing some of the worlds leading companies in the field of asset reliability services?

Without the ubiquitous John Moubray at the helm both of these brands have lost a great and very visible advocate. Not known for his user-friendly nature, John managed to dominate the discussion on RCM until his passing.

It is a timely reminder to those out there building asset reliability consultancies about brand management. Moubray was the brand, not RCM2, not Aladon and not the RCM Toolkit. His shadow has continued the work stream to a number of his franchisees but with the lack of an authoritive voice, which John filled rightly or wrongly, the industry is about to become even more competitive than it presently is.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

London - 18th July Metronet Announces that it will voluntarily go into Administration

Metronet was the asset management organization that was created to manage two thirds of the London Undergrounds' physical asset base, it was a joint venture between WS Atkins, Thames Water, Bombadier, Electricite de France (EDF) and Balfour Beatty - all giants in the arena of asset management.

Chris Bolt, the Arbiter from the Office of the Rail Regulator, rejected their please for an additional $1.6 billion (USD) in funding to cover over spending on replacement and improvement programs. With banks withdrawing credit facilities, and the JV partners refusing to risk any further capital, Metronet was left with little choice.

The contracts outsourcing the maintenance and asset management of the assets of the London Underground was part of a broader government initiative to reduce government spending, transfer costs to the private sector, and to revamp the citys' underground rail infrastructure.

Great concept, unfortunately it has all ended in tears with british taxpayers set to foot the bill, the size of which is not fully known, and LUL faced with a politically charge decision over the future of the management of large swathes of their network. (The British PM has already indicated no change in course)

But did it all have to end this way? For those watching this issue the signs have been clear for a long time, particularly when comparing the failed Metronet to its smaller counterpart - Tubelines.

Tubelines has been a relative success story in the area of outsourced maintenance contracts. from the beginning of the controversial rail PFI (Publicly funded initiative) project Tubelines has been head and shoulders over its much larger sibling. In contrast to metronet it now appears as an example of well managed refurbishment plans, tightly controlled project and operational spending, disciplined operational management and fiscal responsibility.

Even the head of metronet has accepted that Tubelines use of the dispute resolution process is something that they should have adopted.

In hindsight there were a lot of indicators pointing to possible mismanagement within the colossus. The implementation of the companies enterprise asset management system was way overbudget and over time and delivered dubious results, whereas Tubelines bought in their project for far less cost and appear to be getting better returns from it.

While Tubelines subcontracted out their project work, rarely to the partners in it's JV, work for Metronet was perrformed by members of the consortium, a locked door to competition that has raised questions about excessive costs and a flawed strategy from the start. (Even with the collapse of Metronet its JV partners are still widely tipped to keep the multi-billion GBP contracts that for asset replacement and refurbishment.)




But the asset owner, LUL, must bear some responsibility in this mess also. They had the job of overseeing the PPP contracts, and making sure that everybody deal. So what happened? Why were the mechanisms for rigorous review, cancelation and other punitive measures not put into place?

Time will reveal all, particularly with the british media hot on the trail.

So is outsourcing dead for the rail industry? Despite disasters like the compulsory insourcing of Network Rails maintenance contracts and the metronet catastrophe - not likely.

But for other asset managers there are a lot of potential lessons in this cautionary tale:

1. Asset managers using a consortium approach, where competition is restricted to those within the consortium is a flawed strategy; and one that reduces the competitive nature of executing asset management contracts.
2. Asset Owners need to be far more proactive in managing compliance to their agreed contracts, rather than taking a back seat and letting things develop. (Particularly given the potential for risk to life of these particular assets)
3. Good basic skills of administration, control, financial accountability and project management will always win over overblown beauracracies

Bu tthe great warning to come out of this is about how the company itself was managed. Metronet itself has been claiming all along, and media commentators seem to be agreeing, that it had been very customer focussed in meeting LUL's demands; while Tubelines rigorously used the dispute resolution procedures in place.

Basic stuff really, follow the contract and make sure that your message is "the customer is always right provided he stays within the boundaries of the agreement"

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.