Category Archives: Blog

Why Failure is an Asset, Not a Liability

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For former fighter pilot and U.S. Marine, David Wilbur, failure is something that should be at odds with his very nature. But, David believes embracing failure can actually be an asset and a key tool for improving operational reliability. David will be presenting at Mainstream Conference 2021 on “admitting human error in the workplace – maximizing asset reliability with human factors”. Here he explains how failure is not exactly black and white, and why allowing for some types of failure is a critical element of building a high-thriving organisation. Time to Embrace Human Failure In most organisations there are three primary domains of asset integrity: Asset reliabilityProcess reliabilityHuman reliability Most leaders who want to create a high performing asset base believe if they focus on the first two aspects, then the human reliability piece will fall into place. It will simply do what it’s supposed to do and people will make good choices. The problem is we often have a reductionist view of our assets: if X happens then Y. But people aren’t necessarily bound by science. We’re human. And an integral part of the human condition is that we’re equally prone to failure as we are to innovation and discovery. There’s research showing organisations who allow for failure see far more economic benefits than those who don’t. We’ve done our own research that has yielded similar results. Our own body of research has proven environments where people feel connected to the purpose, feel well-led, are in a psychologically safe … Continue reading →

When Life Hands you a Pandemic: How to Turn Chaos into Change

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The economic and societal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented. Yes, we’ve lived through traumatic events like 9-11 or the death of Robert of President Kennedy. These tend to be acute, horrific, and over quickly. We’ve also experienced chronic events that are extended of a period of time like economic downturns. These tend not to be as acute but still create a great deal of stress and loss. But COVID-19, and the resulting economic impact, has been both acute and chronic. It’s been a slow-motion train wreck that just won’t quit. We’ve seen thousands of companies shut down forever, tens of millions of people around the world laid off, and over 2 million people who have lost their lives because of this pandemic. Many of us couldn’t wait to see the backend of 2020. And while we’re starting to see things turning in a positive direction, there’s still no end in sight. But, there is an upside. Crises as a catalyst for change Sun Tzu said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” And he was absolutely right. We all know on a personal level that the greatest challenge to change is breaking out of the status quo. Crises have the unique ability to jar us out of complacency and into action. And that’s what’s happening now in organisations around the world. They’re being forced out of their complacency and asked to pinpoint and confront the things that matter most to them. In 2020 we’ve seen … Continue reading →

4 Steps to Protect your Most Valuable Asset (No, it’s not your Machinery)

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Do you often hear people asking “how exactly is this done?” or “what’s the next step in this process?” Or maybe you’ve been on the receiving end, fielding a seemingly endless stream of questions about how work gets done in your organisation. If any of this sounds familiar, you may have a knowledge transfer problem, says Time Investment Expert and Best-Selling Author, Kate Christie. Kate’s speaking at the upcoming Mainstream Conference, a three-day event for Asset, Reliability and Maintenance professionals that celebrates the people, technology and ideas transforming asset management. Here she shares with us why documenting the accumulated knowledge in your organisation is crucial, how it can boost both productivity and efficiency, and four steps you can take to prevent critical information from walking out your company’s door. The true cost of IP loss Do you have a few key players within your company who are the gatekeepers of your knowledge? These “fonts of knowledge” know every step of the process inside out, it feels like they could do it in their sleep. Your intellectual property (IP) is one of your most valuable assets, and if you haven’t yet documented the knowledge that’s sitting in people’s heads, you’re exposing your organisation to risk. Risk of rework, risk of duplication of effort, and ultimately the risk of that knowledge one day walking out the door. Finding a way to get specialist ‘know how’, processes, ideas and information out of people’s heads and onto paper seems like a huge task. It … Continue reading →

The Greatest Challenges in Asset Management have this One Common Factor

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of Mainstream Conference. Cliff Williams dives into this year’s research report to provide his perspective on the main themes and shows how they all tie into one common factor. I’ve been involved in the Mainstream community for many years. Every year I enjoy reading their annual research report to find out the biggest challenges facing asset management professionals. There’s one theme I’ve noticed that links most of these challenges together – and that’s change. For every one of the concerns to be addressed, something needs to change. This may sound overly simple, but in my experience, change is always the biggest stumbling block in any improvement journey. Here’s my take on three of the key themes from the 2021 Mainstream Research Report and my thoughts on how they relate to change. Theme 1: Putting People at the Centre of Asset Management Since the introduction of ISO 55000 our focus has shifted from the physical asset to the one asset that is essential for deriving value for the organisation – people. Everybody has heard the cliches around “our people are our greatest asset” but very few manage their people as assets. It was mostly just a catchy phrase. If we look at the human aspect of asset management, when we try to put this in the centre of all things, we can see this is a huge change. So many organisations are challenged by this because ultimately it means culture change. A lot of organizations … Continue reading →

Mainstream Community Snapshot 2021

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This snapshot presents a finger-on-the-pulse view for the Australian asset management community. Insights in this report are based on extensive research with maintenance and asset management professionals across industry in Australia. The impact of COVID-19 has affected different sectors in many ways. Those tasked with maintaining essential services during 2020 have had to work out how to keep delivering, while operating safely and efficiently during a time of high stress, while other businesses have been impacted by a decline in demand for their services or product. Regardless of which camp you find yourself in, areas that have been dialed up due the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic include: Workforce health and wellbeing Leadership and alignment Supply Chain disruptions Managing a remote workforce Download the Mainstream Research Report 2021 for a comprehensive view of innovation in asset management. … Continue reading →

Risk Management is Boring: Brain Hacks to Protect Your Business

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One challenge for many businesses is the wonderfully unsexy world of risk management. Due to the overwhelming optimism of entrepreneurs, stopping the bad things happening can often be overlooked. However, when you let people rip you off, exploit your weaknesses or you just leave a small door open to be manipulated, it can be fatal, says Daniel Murray CEO of Empathic Consulting. Daniel gave the keynote address to over 400 people at Mainstream Conference 2019 in Melbourne, demonstrating the incredible power that empathy has to build business relationships in our digitally focused but disconnected age. In this article he gives us a different way to look at risk management and shares some ways to encourage people to engage their “moral compass” in order to self-regulate risk. It Turns Out We’re All Cheaters There were a number of interesting experiments conducted by professor Dan Ariely from MIT regarding cheating. They asked people to complete a challenging test, then they give them the answers to self-mark their effort, walk to the front of the room and shred their paper before telling the administrator the number of correct answers they correctly answered. They then receive payment for each correct answer. So, do people cheat? What was interesting was not that some people cheated, but that all people consistently cheated. Ariely had tampered with the shredder so they could check and indeed, almost all people cheated, not by a lot, but on average they increased the number of correct answers from 3 to 4 … Continue reading →

Mainstream Conference 2019 Highlights

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2019 has been an exciting year for asset management. Technology implementations have hit their stride with many companies successfully striking the balance between human effort and technological innovations. Strategy is being underpinned by a strong asset management mindset, elevating the important work we do to the board level. And it’s all being tied together by the human element. As ever, without alignment of our people, nothing will cut through. These were some key themes we heard during the presentations at this year’s Mainstream Conference, a unique event for maintenance, reliability and asset management professionals. The annual event, which has been running for 24 years, brought together over 400 asset management professionals from 140 companies to hear the latest in asset management strategy, innovation and technology. Here is a summary of key themes and session highlights from Mainstream Conference 2019. Strategy Goes Deeper than Asset Management Our Mainstream community were eager to hear how companies are fostering an Asset Management mindset within their organisations and aligning this with their overall company objectives. We heard from several leaders in this area who shared their strategies for transformation. Anna Wiley, BHP’s Head of Asset Management, gave us a view inside their global Maintenance Centre of Excellence (MCoE), an initiative which has successfully moved BHP from 40 separate maintenance organisations to one globally connected community. “The MCoE represents a fundamentally new approach to maintenance for BHP,” Anna said. The  emphasis has been on concentrating efforts, applying standardised and repeatable processes, employing mathematical and data … Continue reading →

AGL’s Energy Efficiency Journey: Why Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

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AGL were unknowingly losing $20m per year on fuel costs by operating with many feedwater heaters out of service. For years individuals had attempted to get them back into service because they felt it was the right thing to do. But consistency brewed complacency. AGL used human-centred design techniques to identify the root cause – we’re not talking technical root cause, rather behavioural root cause. Then they started on an ambitious journey to change the culture. Sarah Hannah, Head of Asset Systems (Acting) at AGL Energy will be outlining the astonishing results achieved in her session at Mainstream Conference 2019. Here she tells us why you should be focusing on culture transformation instead of initiatives, and outlines how they have engaged AGLs leadership to come on their transformation journey. Why Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast How many initiatives have we seen started in our companies which seemingly evaporate with no real value delivered. As asset management professionals, we are continually delivering initiatives to improve our asset management systems, our asset performance, our maintenance strategies… the list goes on. How much of the time that we spend delivering these initiatives do we focus on ‘how’ we are delivering rather than ‘what’ we are delivering? And do we know ‘why’ we are delivering it? “People are our most important asset and bringing them along on the asset management journey is not an option, it’s essential.” The phrase ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ talks to the fact that if you aren’t identifying the … Continue reading →

Realising the Benefits of Asset Optimisation

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The field of asset management and asset investment has moved into the spotlight. No longer on the fringes of business awareness, it has become a top strategic objective for organisations of all sizes. A key driver of this change is the spreading belief that optimising asset investment plans will deliver tangible benefits to organisations as well as the adoption of ISO 55000 across the globe. However, these drivers also create the challenge of living up to expectations as new, risk-based asset management practices are implemented and then supporting technologies to achieve the standards. Companies can meet that challenge by forecasting two futures, one based on how the organisation used to make decisions, and one based on the principles of advanced asset management. Push Toward ISO 55000 Compliance ISO 55000 stakes out two primary areas of benefit, financial performance and stakeholder value. Some of these benefits have direct dollar impacts, while others such as reputation and social responsibility are harder to quantify, though they clearly link to asset management activities. Most of the benefits are reliant on the hypothesis that an organisation can make better decisions by using risk as the basis for optimisation. This includes balancing short- and long-term goals, managing risk, improving sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness. All these benefits require an investment in process, data and software. The list of benefits from ISO 55000 may be long and seem obvious to asset managers, but eventually the investment in processes, people and technology will have to be justified to executives … Continue reading →

Sydney Water’s Data Strategy Makes the Insights Flow

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For Sydney Water’s five million customers, quality and satisfaction can simply mean pouring a clean glass of drinking water. But behind this seemingly basic concept, there’s a complex network of assets that are all underpinned by one thing: Data. Ahead of her session at Mainstream Conference, Tammy Falconer, Head of Asset Knowledge at Sydney Water, outlines the key steps they have taken to build a trusted data strategy and the benefits that are flowing onto their valued customers. Drowning in Data? Not at Sydney Water It’s easy to take for granted that Sydney-siders have access to some of the highest quality drinking water in the world, and that our wastewater disappears, just like that. Behind the scenes, there’s a huge number of assets delivering these services. We’ve been building and maintaining these assets for over 130 years to help make Sydney a liveable city and we’re passionate and proud of our role in shaping the lifestyle of Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra for generations to come. With a long history, our older assets can provide unique challenges, particularly our underground assets where we don’t have easy access to the asset to verify the accuracy of the data. We need to take a targeted and cost-effective approach to improve the data quality of existing assets and at the same time ensure that any new data meets the standards we require. Focusing on Data Foundations We’ve taken a business capability approach to maximising the value of our data focusing on … Continue reading →