6.04 Management of Change

Increased extreme weather phenomenon - intense forest fires, heavy rain, severe flooding, and record high temperatures continues to be a concern worldwide, causing disruptions and affecting people and critical assets. This panel focuses on how industries and governments prepare for climate resiliency and adaptation.

The City of Winnipeg faced challenges with the condition of their Return Activated Sludge (RAS) piping within the North End Sewage Treatment Plant. Non-destructive and destructive condition assessment techniques were used to determine that the critical process piping was life expired, and required replacement or rehabilitation to maintain process level of service until the plant is upgraded. Replacement of a RAS piping system is akin to major heart surgery on a sewage treatment plant. To manage the process risk, in situ structural renewal using an engineered Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) external wrap system to encapsulate the original carbon steel piping was chosen. Selection of the rehabilitation method reduced the schedule by two years compared to the replacement option and minimized operational risk, as process outages were reduced to a few short-term events. Offline testing of mock-ups and emphasis on environmental and quality control further managed the risks associated with CFRP installation. The project faced unique challenges due to the complex configuration of the RAS piping, which was located inside a congested plant gallery with surrounding equipment, piping, and electrical services in continuous operation. To effectively convey information during planning, design, tender, and construction, a digital 3D model was developed using laser scanning to capture the detailed configuration of the piping and surrounding physical constraints. The 3D model was embedded with data to define the rehabilitation scope, locations of existing pipe leaks requiring immediate repair, rework of pipe supports to accommodate the CFRP installation, and other aspects relevant to the work. This model was a highly effective tool used for collaborative review by all project team members throughout design and construction, leading to successful completion of the RAS piping rehabilitation.

The Regional Municipality of Durham is a community that makes up the east end of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which comprises multiple cities and townships. The region provides a multitude of services to approximately 745,000 residents and maintains $17.85 billion in assets and infrastructure. The region was using several disconnected applications and business processes to manage these services, many of which had limited functionality, reporting, and analytics, as well as a lack of integrations to other systems. In an effort to standardize and streamline these services, the region amalgamated all of the tracking of regional assets, maintenance management, and business technology processes. The region began the process of requirements gathering in 2013; at this time, a steering committee was created to govern the project, and project leads and business subject matter experts were engaged to ensure the product selected met business requirements. In 2015, the region began the procurement process: request for proposal, evaluation, vendor presentation, and negotiations. Maximo was the selected enterprise maintenance management system. Durham used a multi-phased implementation plan—including Planning, Design, Execution, and Closing—which consisted of three go-live dates. This multi-phased approach would span over the course of three years. The initial phase of the project included detailed design, organizational impact analysis, future business process design, future role modifications and development, and multiple-tiered information sessions. The organization identified current operational gaps and business process changes were required. It followed Use Case business processes with some adaptation for operational responsiveness and consistency within the To-Be roles. The business was able to retain current operational practices as much as possible but built in a structured and disciplined approach to maintaining assets. This will influence and impact the quality of analytics and reporting. Through its approach, the region was able to implement a centralized maintenance management system across multiple divisions. This implementation impacted 800 end users across 13 divisions and multiple third-party system integrations. It also performed a readiness assessment of departments, divisions, and areas and organizational, process, and technology criteria. It created a go-live and system support strategy, and monitored system, sustainability, and performance throughout the implementation process.

In service providing organizations, coordinating resources to minimize redundancy, manage cost to serve and combat employee disengagement becomes a differentiator. For larger organizations this can further support streamlined captial and operational investments such as facilities, speciality tooling and training. Within the maintenance industry we project that 35% of our trades persons time is actually on the tools (module 6), this is an alarming statistic that resonates with many professionals. Organizing resources intentionally, creating the customer experience while managing these investments can be achieved in a network strategy.  The network organizes resources between generalists and specialists and capitalizes on placing services that require specialization in labour markets that have depth. Organizing is only part of the equation,  having a comprehensive & fluid S&OP process and a mechanism (ex: a control tower) to bring real time visibility into capacity increases productivity and reduces overall cost to serve. At my organization, we have done just that. Beginning in 2019, we designed a hub and spoke model that would support a long term vision of creating capacity through strategic efficiency. This transformational pivot required considerable foresight, change management and Since the MRO articlehttps://www.mromagazine.com/digital-archives/september-2020/ (page 12) in 2020,  the focus on capturing internal & external demand signals to support the maturity of our capacity and capability (S&OP) planning,  we have been able to grow niche market shares by 300% in under 2 years. THe planning coupled with the increased/real time visbility through our contol tower has supported sustainable growth in an ever shifting economic climate.     

Within our toolbox of best practices, the concept of Operational Readiness (OR) has been discussed, strategized, budgeted, and engaged, to prepare the asset(s) in transition from OEM to start-up, whether for the construction of a single asset such as a mine haul truck, or unique piece of manufacturing equipment, or for multiple assets within an infrastructure such as a hospital, or rail transit line to create the smoothest, "turn key" process for the newly acquired asset, prior to deployment into operations.Through the many global industries, we have been blessed with a very holistic view of what Operational Readiness should look like. However, the process can be seen as a high level strategy, which fails to incorporate the depth and breadth required to ensure all steps of the plan will engage tactics which align with corporate vision and mission, supporting critical aspects of readiness; the tracking platform, communications, and follow up methods used to ensure we engage stakeholders as "partners" in our journey, rather than captives in a process to ensure the asset is truly "Operationally Ready", before we sign off with the asset owners.As a result, tactics used are many time absence of an accurate tracking process to ensure the highest level of QA/QC. What better time to achieve this accuracy then at the inception of the new asset, just like we do when we welcome a new baby into our family. But can we honestly say we plan everything for our new addition? Definitely not.  We can agree, that we are not all aligned in how or what we will feed our child when they turn 2 years old, rather we commit to the short term plan and move forward.Why? Simply put, it takes a lot of effort to "sweat the small stuff", however the tactics used for Operational Readiness, it is critical we "sweat the small stuff" as we build a platform that will support the process, while focusing on reduction of the 7 + 1 types of waste, and by making the process simple and attractive to the ones responsible for getting the process steps completed in our journey.An OR report study from Deloitte (2012) revealed that if a company can achieve OR process effectively, they would have an opportunity to reduce the risk of loosing 30% of their capital value. In addition, the severe detrimental impact on Capex and initial operational capacity, ongoing operations and maintenance costs over an asset’s lifecycle are typically 1 – 2% higher, year-on-year and for the entire life of the asset, where operational readiness was not sufficiently achieved at the outset.  And then there is value add for safety and employee morale.Everyone’s best intentions are traditionally met with the reality of how many small, yet critical alignment steps there are to truly set up the asset to be resilient and sustainable within the lifecycle and within the desired Asset Management Landscape within your organization.Chaos usually rears its ugly head at a period after the asset has been commissioned and signed off with the asset owner. Normally the front end of design for reliability, need vs. want, master maintenance plans, parts and operations, maintenance and training strategies are set well.  However, are they truly measured by the organization, in a way that supports the quality of work to manage QA/QC performance and excellence of each process step?  Many stakeholders will have touch points in the process; either one time, or many times well past the commissioning stage, right to the end of asset life; retire, restore or renewal process, which is all part of the OR.  In this presentation for the Operational Readiness (OR) Global Approach to Asset Management Landscape & Best Practices, the information will address how Agnico Eagle Mining Ltd., has taken the opportunity within the Nunavut Division,  Asset Management group to enhance the tracking performance and following up with every stakeholder to ensure the actual work is being performed, at the right time, for the right reasons and the completion of each of the hundreds of secondary and tertiary steps are properly aligning with the timing to bring the asset into operational state.The presentation will discuss the practice and "out of the box" applications readily available using the Microsoft 365 suite of programs, such as SharePoint and the supporting applications available, without engaging in complex processes, spreadsheets or software tracking, workflow, and communication platforms.  It is challenging to keep everything tracked and packaged in one system available to everyone when having to apply multiple CMMS, EAM, ERP, or other 3rd party application systems help to support the management of assets. 

Business improvements require changes. In reliability and maintenance, some of the change factors are within our control, but many are not. If we stick with small changes, they can often happen but they often fail to achieve their full potential. Why? The short answer is that there are many factors we can’t control and usually we have limited influence. Some of those are related to people and are dealt with by “change management”, but others are related to how our businesses are structured and organized. If we want to make big changes we need to get past that! This presentation will give you something to think about and share with your senior management. If they want miracles from you, then they will need to make it possible!

Asset intensive companies continue to rapidly advance their thinking regarding Enterprise Asset Management – including through the influence of connected assets and remote condition monitoring. These advancements, among others, have shifted focus from reactive to predictive maintenance practices based on real time failure data. Yet, despite the direct impact that spare part availability has on timely maintenance and Asset Health, the approach to spare part management has often lagged in asset heavy industries. The disconnect between asset decisions and supporting spare parts (MRO) inventory through the Asset Management Lifecycle contributes to stock outs, obsolescence, and unplanned downtime. The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of the MRO Lifecycle as a complementary framework to the lifecycle management of assets. And to explore how actions and decisions made at each stage of the MRO Lifecycle correlates and contributes to more robust decisions throughout the Asset Management Lifecycle. The session will also introduce how software solutions are helping uncover and drive improvements in MRO Inventory Management to enhance the quality of Asset Management decisions, encompassing spare parts and the role that availability plays in improving overall Asset Health. Drawing from more than 20 years of industry experience and leveraging examples across sectors such as food & beverage, automotive and mining, Xtivity will share approaches, solutions and results from global industry.

Let us look at an ordinary omnipresent part of Asset Management: bolting and fastening the machinery or structure. This single vital activity turns out to be remarkably neglected with undesirable consequences for reliability. Motion Amplification®, a new technology has the capacity to show machinery and structural movements, and so naturally brings out looseness or unnatural behaviors. Fastening errors seem to be one of the most prevalent occurrences and it is therefore important to look at what we can learn and how the technology can drive improvements and uses of best practices. A variety of problems are shown, such as forgotten difficult to access bolts, rusted/corroded fasteners, improper tension, improper washers, bolt grade or size and custom modifications such as a bunch of small shims. Some of the issues can be attributed to design errors, some to lack of asset information provided, some to installation errors, lack of training and proper tools or a culture of installation and maintenance excellence. Sometimes and improvement push comes with the integration of more advanced tools, for example tools exist where the torque can be properly managed. This requires that many other items come into place, such as the missing information, correct parts, training and cultural to get the job done properly.

Studies have shown that asset performance is negatively impacted by the lack of an integrated operational readiness approach during the asset acquisition phase (or project). The resulting delays in reaching sustainable operating performance and anticipated service levels impact start-up dates, capital costs, operational revenues, lifecycle costs, customer satisfaction, organizational morale, and overall project NPV. These impacts often require large additional cost and labour injections to correct for the lack of an integrated operational readiness approach. There are a number of operational readiness asset management objectives to be focused on in parallel with the execution of a project—a must to enable any new asset, facility, or venture to meet business lifecycle targets. These prime focuses can be summarized as follows: develop capable people to safely operate, maintain, and support the project outcomes; ensure asset capability is developed and maintained in line with business requirements; implement and configure required supporting systems and business process; seamlessly manage the transition from project to operations; and ensure the engagement and alignment of the organization and all business stakeholders. This presentation will look at a number of mining, manufacturing, and public infrastructure case studies and show the benefits of using a structured approach to operational readiness during the acquisition phase of the asset lifecycle.

As the influence of the asset management approach continues to expand within Nova Scotia Power, we need a structured approach to ensure we continue to seek opportunities to optimize maintenance strategies. In a new installation, techniques such as failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and reliability centred maintenance (RCM) can be used to develop an optimized maintenance strategy from the start, in a top-down approach. However, the vast majority of Nova Scotia Power’s equipment was in place long before the asset management office—and, therefore, the asset management approach—existed. The result of that is a collection of value-added, but developed after-the-fact maintenance strategies. Each maintenance strategy has components of operator surveillance (rounds), testing, predictive pattern recognition (also known as advanced pattern recognition, APR), predictive maintenance (condition-based monitoring and risk-based inspections), online monitoring, and preventative maintenance. While efforts had been made to “baseline” the equipment processes when maintenance strategies were developed (i.e., “clean out” existing activities), the organic growth of the approach and the distributed nature of assets and personnel have made this difficult to maintain. Therefore, we needed an approach to optimize existing maintenance strategies, without recreating them. Nova Scotia Power has therefore undertaken an effort known as maintenance strategy optimization, and has made this activity a core accountability for the asset management team, which recognizes the need to seek continuous improvement (vs. a one-time exercise). With a focus on digitization wherever appropriate, Nova Scotia Power has asked a number of questions to streamline, standardize, and optimize its maintenance strategies. Is there opportunity to reduce PM frequency? Is there opportunity to collect more information such that we can strengthen our APR models? Can our in-house standards be revalidated to sustainably reduce operating and maintenance costs? Nova Scotia Power is answering yes to these questions, and more, and pursuing opportunities to optimize its maintenance strategies—from the bottom up!