FAQs

We love what we do – teaching and helping people apply what we teach to improve their businesses.

• Frequent equipment breakdowns and reactive maintenance
• High costs: labor, parts, contractors, overtime
• Poor planning, shutdown delays, and deferred work
• Low productivity, morale, and skills alignment
• Excessive inventory but missing critical spares
• Weak integration of planning and supply chain

• 20–30% reduction in maintenance costs with corresponding proportional reduction in operating costs (less labor and material wastage).
• Higher workforce efficiency, less overtime and contracting.
• Reduced investment in spare parts inventories and higher “turns”.
• Fewer breakdowns, higher production capacity.
• Major financial impact—examples:
  • Saved $90M annually for a mining client.
  • Prevented $100M plant expansion cost.
  • Unlocked $800M in production capacity.

• Consulting: Reliability, maintenance, asset management, supply chain management in industrial operations.
  • Executive advisory
  • Assessments, improvement road mapping, detailed planning, support to execution
  • Training, coaching and mentoring
• Training: Online, virtual, and in-person courses tailored to client needs.
• Expert witness
• Industries served: Mining (extraction and ore processing), energy, oil & gas, manufacturing, utilities, transportation (road, air, ship, rail), defense, healthcare, food, pulp and paper, lumber, building materials, and more.

• Primarily North America, with projects across Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia, South America, and Australasia.

• Over 500 collective years of consulting experience (10–50 years each).
• Specialists in reliability and maintenance since 2004.
• Often engaged by large firms for deep expertise.
• Broad range of industries, all dependent on their physical assets.
• World wide customers in all continents but one.

• Our clients are mostly private sector companies with a few public sector organizations. They are all dependent on their physical assets for production and / or services delivery. Most are large companies or operations belonging to larger companies including leaders in their industries.
• For a listing of clients, please click here.

• Reputation, referrals, and repeat business.
• Known as subject matter experts: Publishing books, blogs, and speaking at industry conferences.
• Consultative selling approach builds trust.
• Retention through measurable results—often long-term partnerships.

• Yes.
• We have teamed with several of the big consulting firms.
  • Many of our consultants have worked in those big firms.
• We also team with engineering and other specialized boutique firms.

• Legal name: Conscious Group Inc. (Ontario, Canada).
• Owners: James & Aileen Reyes-Picknell.
• Team: 2 permanent staff, 2 part-time, 2 outsourced.
• Global network of 50+ expert consultants across multiple industries.

• Diverse, flexible, collegial, results-focused.
• Small core team + global expert network.
• Consultants are highly experienced professionals, not junior staff.

• Specialists in reliability, maintenance, and supply chain—our only focus. 
• Authors of widely used industry books and references. Others learn from us.
• Trusted experts, even by large consulting firms. Several are clients.
• Over 20 years in business with a proven global track record.

Yes we are professionals.

• Our principal is a Professional Engineer, a Certified Management Consultant, and a Certified Asset Management Assessor.
• Our consultants hold various professional designations in addition to their educational credentials. 
• Consulting is our career choice:
  • We are NOT people who were just laid off or retired looking for a few extra bucks or to fill a gap between jobs.

As consultants we:

• Learn the nuances of your business over time.

• Understand unspoken dynamics (e.g., company politics, cultural sensitivities).

• Ask probing, strategic questions that reveal hidden issues you might not know to bring up.

AI lacks intuition and contextual depth, especially for:

• Long-term strategy.

• Organizational change.

• Complex stakeholder dynamics.

We provide human interaction so trust can develop and grow:

• Consultants build personal relationships, crucial in high-stakes decisions.

• Leaders often need someone to challenge them, offer coaching, or help them process ambiguity—things that are hard to replicate with AI.

Judgment, Ethics & Nuance

• Consultants can provide ethical guidance and judgment calls where the answer isn’t clear-cut.

• AI can provide information, but can’t  weigh emotional, reputational, or moral factors with full human maturity.

Implementation & Execution

• Consultants don’t just give advice—they often help execute change:

  • Running workshops

  • Aligning teams

  • Navigating resistance

• AI can suggest solutions, but it won’t facilitate a tense stakeholder meeting or mediate a conflict.

Innovation and original thought

• High-end consultants bring cross-industry insights and original thinking from past projects.

• We offer provocative ideas and frameworks tailored to your exact situation.

• AI can synthesize existing ideas, but rarely brings genuinely new perspectives.

Accountability

• Consultants can be held responsible for outcomes.

• They work under contracts, project timelines, and deliverables.

• AI gives you suggestions, but if something goes wrong, you own the decision.

AI is often better when:

• Fast answers, summaries, or analysis.

• Tasks that are data-heavy, repetitive, or technical.

• Exploring ideas and brainstorming when you are early in your thinking  about just what direction to take.

• Budget is limited.

• Case-by-case: fixed price, results-based, or time & materials.
• Training online: See our training academy website: Click here.
• Face-to-face or synchronous online training pricing is priced case by case.
• Our rates are a bit higher than average.
  • If you are looking for a low rate, then  please look elsewhere.
• Our customers find that our overall pricing is usually low when compared with serious competitors.
  • They benefit from lower total costs, high ROI and truthful advice due to our experience, expertise and efficiency.
• If you are looking for solutions to problems that actually deliver results, not just promises, then please talk to us.

• 📧 info@consciousasset.com
• 📞 +1 647 490 0094 | Mobile: +1 705 727 7436
• 🌐 www.consciousasset.com

• Our standard is Canadian dollars.
  • Rates fluctuate but usually that works out to nearly 30% less than USD, 40% less than EUROs and 50% less than GB Pounds.
• We are willing to price in your standard or local currency if requested.

• Yes. We will ask you some questions and give you an honest initial appraisal based on your answers.
  • We want to understand your problem before offering a solution. 
• If we can help we will say so. If we can’t, we will say so, and offer ideas of where to turn if we cannot help ourselves.
• If it is possible in that first call, we’ll give you a rough idea of the business case you may have for change, and the costs to achieve it. Sometimes we can do that in the first call. Sometimes we’ll need to wait for some initial numbers from you do it. Regardless, that first evaluation is free. 
• We will not sugar-coat. We tell you honestly what we believe you need to know, not what we think you want to hear. 
• You can reach us by email, use our “contact us” page, or book an appointment directly here.