Lord Consulting

Lord Consulting has been active in power system asset condition monitoring for over 10 years. A good knowledge of the failure mechanisms that can impact assets as they age, together with keeping abreast of present day state-of-the-art in both off-line and on-line asset condition monitoring practices and system worldwide, has positioned the company well for assisting asset owners with the current movement toward raising the quality level of power infrastructure management.

The European PAS55 initiative represents a credible and timely addition to the field of physical asset management. Lead by the UK Institute of Asset Management (IAM) in conjunction with a consortium of major European assets owners and other interested parties, this “publicly available specification” is currently supported by the British Standard Institution (BSI) and came into effect on April 30, 2004.

PAS55 has won converts for the systematic and pragmatic way it has addressed the complex issues asset management organisations grapple with striving to manage aging public infrastructure while also sustainably meeting increasingly strict stakeholder expectations.

PAS55 is currently a generic specification, looking at all the factors that impact the quality of asset management. It takes a risk-centric view, balancing the high expectations of users with the reality of maintaining large essential service networks (such as power systems, railways, water services, roading, freight, etc). It covers both the management of the physical assets, together with the management issues from an organisational viewpoint.

Lord Consulting takes a low key, practical and constructive approach to assisting with introducing an organisation to the PAS55 philosophy. This would start with a review of the organisation’s operational and maintenance practices for all asset classes, looking at relevant combinations of asset information registers, maintenance schedules, intervention intervals and maintenance procedures, condition maintenance criteria, test results recording and trend analysis, spares, aged profiles, handling of known issues, and the status of emergency response plans and an ability to execute them.

This would then be followed with a gap analysis, looking taking the information gathered about maintenance practices and comparing this against best industry practice for this asset type. This would typically be independently peer reviewed to ensure the resulting advice was as timely and robust as possible. From this gap analysis would follow recommendations or suggested actions as to how the gap may be systematically reduced to a practical minimum, given the specific circumstances of the assets and organisation concerned.

The organisational “work flow” can also be studied and commented on as required. Typically, asset management incorporates three interconnected management work loops:

1. the operational/maintenance (or “business as usual”) work loop;
   
2. the issue resolution ( of “risk assessment and mitigation”) work loop;
   
3. the planning (“growth and/or replacement”) work loop

Lord Consulting can also review, update or create from scratch a full Asset Management Plan (AMP) taking all the above information into account and aligning this with the organisations corporate goals and objectives. This may involve running strategic planning workshops, which Lord Consulting can design and lead as required to help identify the issues facing the organisation and how the management feel these should be handled.

The ability of an organisation to implement their AMP can depend on the organisational structure and its effectiveness. Sometimes the existing structure is unsuited to managing assets collectively in a risk-centric manner, and if this is the case suggestions can be crafted as to how the management structure might be improved for a more cohesive and sustainable outcome.

Organisations can inadvertently become overly dependent on external contractors, outsourcing more of their core intellectual property (IP) than would normally be prudent. This is a potentially dangerous long term situation, and this can be identified and plans draw up for restoring an appropriate internal/external balance.

The PAS55 asset management review methodology can be specifically designed and applied to permit the same management processes to be applied across a number of different asset classes. This can lead to considerable economies of scale in planning, monitoring, risk register maintenance and other generic activities common to all asset types.

Lord Consulting has a strategic working alliance with the Woodhouse Partnership in the UK, leaders in the field of assisting asset owners and operators in this area. Mr John Woodhouse was the project chairman of the coordinating and drafting group responsible for bringing together the PAS55 specification.

Asset management is a complex and demanding discipline, difficult for any organisation to do in isolation. This applies equally to public and private operators of high-voltage power systems, any of whom can benefit from benchmarking themselves against industry best practice. Given the increasingly high dependence society now has on the smooth and trouble-free operation of large, aging power networks, and the increasing pressure to have independent audits undertaken of how well they are being managed, the benefits of applying the PAS55 philosophy are considerable.