A well-designed maintenance programme should reduce the need to do separate condition assessments.
Condition assessments are a form of condition monitoring, so why not include them in your proactive maintenance programme?
They are carried out to determine the current condition of an asset, identify whether remedial work is required, estimate how long the asset will last, and forecast the timing for eventual replacement.
In civil structures like buildings and bridges, these assessments are often called inspections. When timed regularly, they are no different from a condition monitoring task in any proactive maintenance programme. Yet they are often managed differently.
Why that is so does not really matter. What matters is that it can add another programme that must be managed in parallel with the maintenance programme.
Why this matters
Condition assessments should improve decisions. If they sit outside the maintenance system, duplicate work, or ignore what maintainers already know, they can add cost without improving asset strategy, lifecycle planning, or capital confidence.
Inspections, assessments, and maintenance programmes
Some inspections are required by regulation and some are not.
Inspections are often carried out by inspectors who are not generally considered part of the maintenance staff. They may even be contracted, such as engineering firms inspecting bridges.
Managing that is no different from contracting equipment condition monitoring, except that many organisations probably do not use their maintenance management system, CMMS, or EAM to do it.
As asset management slowly becomes more prominent, there is growing awareness of condition assessments.
In the finance world, there is a valid need to forecast future cash flows and financing needs. Replacement timing matters. But that does not need to be the only use for the assessment.
If the assessment is managed as part of the proactive maintenance programme, even with very long task intervals in some cases, it can be useful for more than just finance forecasting.
When condition assessments become expensive duplication
In recent RFPs from government and government-like organisations, including utilities, there are increasing calls for condition assessments on all assets.
These are often driven by finance departments and administrators who are trying to comply with emerging asset management requirements. In Ontario, for example, asset management plans are now required by law.
But some organisations may be spending more on this than needed.
Why waste the money?
If there is already a maintenance programme for physical plant and equipment, and if it is well designed, it should mostly comprise condition monitoring tasks.
If it does not, then that needs attention.
But assuming it does, why not use that condition monitoring to provide the condition assessment and forecasting information the organisation needs?
The risk of forecasting replacement based only on age
Most installed equipment and many systems have undergone some form of maintenance throughout their existence.
A system may be 40 years old, but replacement of parts of it may have made it nearly as good as new. It may not need replacement soon.
If replacement is forecast solely on age, the organisation could be planning to spend far more than it needs to spend.
The maintainers who carried out the work may already know the condition of the asset. If that information had been captured when the work was done, the organisation would already have much of what it needs to decide whether to keep and maintain the system, or replace it.
Structures and assets that maintenance programmes often miss
Inspections of structures are often not included in maintenance programmes.
In my opinion, that is an oversight on the part of those designing the maintenance programmes.
Historically, many have opted to use manufacturers’ recommended maintenance. While I disagree with the practice, that is another topic. More importantly, it misses elements of the physical plant that were not manufactured.
Think of the steel structure holding up equipment bought from manufacturers. The maintenance programme probably misses it entirely. The inspection department, if there is one, may deal with it.
If assets are civil structures, linear assets such as roads, rail beds, and pipelines, or buildings and parking structures, they may not be inspected regularly until problems start to show up.
They could all be part of the maintenance programme.
After all, good maintenance is about sustaining the assets, not fixing them after they break.
The information may already exist
It is quite possible that organisations are not taking advantage of areas where condition monitoring is already included in the maintenance programme.
If the immediate condition is considered only in terms of whether action is needed soon, the organisation may miss the opportunity to use the knowledge of the condition monitoring crew to understand the long-term health of the asset.
Give it some thought.
If the organisation wants to know condition and forecast the need for major future work, such as replacement, it may not be capturing that information when it is being learned during condition monitoring work.
That creates an opportunity for savings and better asset management decision-making without adding cost.
The practical opportunity
If inspections are being managed outside the maintenance programme, there may also be an opportunity to make savings.
Why not use the maintenance management software to trigger those inspections?
That would bring inspection activity closer to the maintenance and asset management system, reduce duplication, and help the organisation capture useful condition information where it can support better decisions.
Board-level takeaway
- Condition assessments are valuable when they improve lifecycle, capital, and asset decisions.
- If condition monitoring already exists, separate assessments may duplicate work unless the information is not being captured properly.
- Better use of maintenance data can improve forecasting, reduce unnecessary replacement planning, and strengthen asset management decisions.