Asset Criticality Assessment

We will work with your organisation to extract the asset hierarchy from your asset management information system (SAP, MAXIMO, MAINPAC, MEX etc).  The first step is a hierarchical deconstruction of the system into its component assets.  Assets may refer to physical plant, control systems, software and the like. It is useful to employ simple block diagrams to illustrate this decomposition. A simpler alternative for the management of large systems is a treeview where parent items can be broken out into branches of children items.

We use our own Asset Criticality Assessment software that is aligned with AS/NZS ISO 31000, Risk management – Principles and guidelines and NORSOK Standard Z-008,Criticality analysis for maintenance purposes. We have implemented and improved our software on hundreds of projects over the last 15+ years and are committed to providing a service that is streamlined, high quality and low cost to you. We will import your asset hierarchy data into the software and configure the software for the criticality assessment process. We will also configure the software to be aligned with your risk assessment policy and risk assessment matrix.

We have the capability to quickly and effectively analyse your work history in your asset management information system and provide asset reliability analysis that will inform the asset criticality assessment process. This will allow us to pre-populate the likelihood of failure for your assets based on historical information.

The asset criticality assessment is undertaken in a facilitated workshop. We use our software and experienced facilitators to provide an efficient workshop process. The asset criticality assessment is carried out in collaboration with your experienced people from operations, maintenance, engineering and finance. These people represent the knowledge of your organisation and are crucial in providing the operational, cost, safety and other context and consequence as well as the likelihood of failure and reliability of your assets.

In the workshops, the analysis starts with choosing the appropriate lowest level of elements in the asset hierarchy. This will generally be at a proactively maintainable asset level, typically the level at which proactive actions will be applied. Your risk matrix is then used to assign likelihood of failure of the asset and the consequence of such a failure. The facilitator will workshop scenarios with the attendees and assign the most suitable likelihood and consequences. Our software speeds up the process as assets of the same type in the same or similar operational context can be multi assigned and do not have to be individually assessed.

A number of outcomes are sought:

• A consistent ranking of the significance of the assets delivering and supporting the business objectives
• Rankings which allow prioritisation of subsequent analysis, for example FMEA.
• Banding of ranking scores to define minimum maintenance strategies and condition monitoring.
• Identification of “Classified” plant and reference for each asset

Asset criticality ranking has multiple benefits:

• In the first instance, it will identify where a conservative approach to the maintenance strategy is necessary to observe safety or manage down risk, and it will specify where the cost of the PMs can be relaxed since the risks being managed are not high;
• The results govern the level of surveillance from in situ condition monitoring, to routine condition monitoring to simple inspections. Asset criticality will govern what condition data needs to be managed over the longer term and will feed 5 and 10 year capital plans; and
• The results will be used in reliability reporting to advise on risk. For example, a solution may look like the following:
  • High risk issues on high criticality plant must be addressed immediately and they need to be expedited to senior executive. The leadership has to explain why they allowed these issues to develop;
  • Low risk issues on high criticality plant must be reviewed by the management who will show judgement on what level of risk they tolerate – this is a trade-off between budget and risk;
  • High risk issues on low criticality plant represent high priority maintenance which will be scheduled to be done and represents business as usual; and
  • Low risk issues on low criticality plant need to be monitored and intervention is only justified when budget allows or to avoid growth in the risk.

We will export the asset criticality ranking data, for upload by your IT department. In past projects, we work with the IT department and their bulk upload tools or spreadsheets and export the data to fit with their existing processes. Covaris has experience with most contemporary EAM, CMMS, ERP systems (e.g. MAXIMO, SAP, MAINPAC, MEX) and can also assist in the upload if required.