Project overview
Scottish Water had a requirement to evaluate Reliability Maturity and overall, how the organisation managed operations and maintenance with regards to asset health. Scottish Water see the benefit in developing their maintenance strategy towards a condition based, preventative and predictive model.
By carrying out a maturity assessment, areas of strength and opportunities to improve are identified, which support the change in direction and move towards a more strategic, reliability-based operations and maintenance-based strategy.
Scottish Water appointed the Binnies asset management team to complete a maturity assessment designed to understand and benchmark performance against key activities that enable any organisation to proactively manage asset health.
- Assessment revealed opportunities for improvement
- Organisational support
- Roadmap developed
- Senior leader appointed to sponsor asset health improvements
Our role
The assessment was carried out over a 12-week period and had several essential inputs to gather all facts and information about the organisation.
Reliability maturity assessment process
- Maturity assessment
- Plant tour
- Professional dicussions
- System review
- Document review
- Maturity assessment
The initial step was to carry out a document and system review
Documentation pertaining to operations and maintenance, strategies, processes and standards were assessed. Key indicators of quality, availability, use and governance of the documentation was recorded and stored to support the findings of the maturity assessment. Company systems were assessed to understand use, function and overall service to the organisation. Evidence was gathered on overall system maturity, integration and use competency to support the findings of the project.
Professional discussions with stakeholders
Following on from these activities, a series of professional discussions were held with stakeholders from various parts of the organisation. The purpose of these discussions was to gather specific pieces of information related to defined areas of criteria contained within the maturity assessment framework. An example of this is a professional discussion held with Scottish Water’s principal mechanical engineer.
Key pieces of information were gathered through this discussion to identify engineering standards in place, how reliability-centred design was incorporated, and how preventative maintenance work was identified and managed. All evidence gathered through these processes was assessed against defined criteria, which provided an overall maturity score. In areas where low maturity scores were returned, improvement opportunities were presented, which were highlighted through the delivery of an improvement roadmap. The roadmap set out a series of activities and actions tailored to address the shortfall and improve Scottish Water’s overall asset management and asset health systems.
Following the series of recommendations made, the Binnies team remained engaged with Scottish Water, a strategy was developed and a series of engagements were undertaken, including field team briefings, senior leadership engagement and operational knowledge shares.
Over two years, shop floor initiatives demonstrated the benefit and plausibility of a new way of working and led to the set-up of a strategic programme. The Binnies team remains engaged and supportive across the organisation.