With more than one trillion dollars in new capital expenditures planned per year and potential savings exceeding one percent of lifecycle costs (Uptime, 2012), it is not surprising that operational readiness is receiving a great deal of attention. Moreover, with ISO 55000 slated for release in 2014, companies are likely to see increasing pressure from regulators and customers to have seamless control of asset data throughout the lifecycle. Bruno Storino expanded on DiStefano 2012 with "Capital Projects Operational Readiness and Business Risks: Maximizing Returns on New Assets" (Storino 2012), which provides an overview of a comprehensive program that optimizes the transition from engineering to operations for new assets. This paper adds to that body of work by illustrating how to manage the handover of asset data-the lynchpin of operational readiness for large-scale projects.
In the early days of operations, the lack of detailed asset data and the corresponding lack of documented maintenance strategies inhibited the efficient allocation of plant resources. With business pressure high to generate positive cash flow, personnel are applied to making assets run, and requests for the additional resources needed to catch up on asset data are often denied. Once a plant is operating, the cold hard reality is that the profit and loss statement rules resource decision making. Poor quality asset data, reactive maintenance, and poor profit performance create a self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break.
