I love an event write up, and the main man himself, Richard Barber, asked if I wouldn’t mind covering off the Maximo UK & Ireland Maximo User Group meeting in Dublin this week. So, here goes!
The networking event in The Odeon was one of the most valuable I have attended, once I'd got past the initial, ‘ok let’s go talk to strangers about Maximo!’ Most of your connections and relationships are forged in this informal setting.
A huge thanks to all the sponsors – BPD Zenith, EY, Nucleo, Maxiron, and Cohesive for enabling such an important and valuable event!
The following morning, everyone headed for the main event, which was held at EY’s very lovely Wavespace offices. You spot all the faces you spoke to the night before and continue the peer discussions. We were also joined by a large virtual audience.
Gas Networks Ireland – Asset Information Improvement Solution
Gas Networks Ireland (GNI) operate and maintain the gas network in Ireland, providing 50% of Ireland’s electricity.
GNI implemented Maximo 7.1 in 2010 supporting their safe network, and are currently upgrading to 7.6.1.3 and replacing their mobile and scheduling tools.
In 2020, an audit revealed that 57% of their data was missing due to legacy systems, paper-based systems, and human error. A decision was made to remediate the sites and ensure accurate data was captured by a bespoke mobile app to comply with regulations.
The Asset Improvement Solution (AIIS) was kicked off to ensure a unified approach to data for all assets and classifications. During Phase 1, technicians visited sites to collect the data manually. Phase 2 is about sustaining the data using Service Request workflows to automatically complete actions in Maximo upon approval. Maximo’s configuration tools only were used.
The benefits of GNI implementing this include better asset data, removing human error using Maximo, more efficient PM work, good stakeholder engagement, and less paper-based processes.
I look forward to hearing about the mobile and scheduling journey in due course! Well done Sarah and Abhay, a really interesting presentation.
WIPRO – Optimising Building Performance Leveraging IoT Sensors & Data Analysis
Next up, we had an art of the possible presentation and a loveable example of a live demo gone wrong! WIPRO and Russ Mckay took us through the rigging up of their London HQ with inexpensive and unintrusive sensors. The sensors measured the air quality and room occupancy to support the decision of when to turn the air conditioning on and off. Using Visualise Info’s cool 3d scanning technology, you could navigate around the office space and click into the sensor data. All of this ran on a single-node MAS instance.
The month-long project supported cost avoidance, automation, and sustainability, and realised a 25% cost reduction and improved productivity of staff! Nice one.
IBM Scheduling Dashboard Demo
Pedro Solfa Spadacini joined us all the way from Brazil and was truly a scheduling guru! Pedro spoke to the group about the core scheduling capability now available in MAS Manage, and where the product would be enhanced in the 9 and 9.1 releases. The focus on upcoming releases will be on persona-based dashboards for dispatchers and schedulers. He also spoke about the Optimiser capability. This brain will help solve your problems, ensuring the most efficient use of resources.
We then learned about some IBM programs and links that would provide an opportunity to the users to influence the design process. As a vibrant community, we should use our voice to let IBM know what we want to see next.
I can’t help but wonder though that from a sustainability POV, do we not have a closer product expert?
IBM MAS Roadmap
Tristan O'Gorman gave us one of the most engaging roadmap sessions I have seen for some time - at a crucial time when we all need to be behind the MAS vision and start planning our upgrade journeys and budgets.
Tristan gave us the headlines from the planned 9.0 release in June 2024. To reiterate my point on an earlier blog, MAS 9.0 is not a big platform change but a pragmatic realigning of numbers across the suite. Though there is some new stuff coming!
- Asset Lifecycle Management
- AIP (Asset Investment Planning) – Planning at the asset level and reconciling at the portfolio level to achieve financially optimised assets.
- FSM (Field Service Management) – 9.0 brings a coherent and usable field service management package to aid agility for teams on the ground.
- APM (Asset Performance Management) – Health, Monitor and Predict, performance of assets using IoT data to improve ROI.
- EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) – not to be forgotten! IBM is still very much focused on putting enormous investment into the Manage core with a lot of new AI and UX features.
- Reliability & Safety
IBM has acquired an asset strategy library with FMEA view, FMEA builder, Strategy Composer and Reliability content. This is the first time we have seen Maximo injecting reliability into the capability to start building PM optimisation.
- GenAI
GenAI is an area of extreme interest in MAS 9.0, with IBM doing all the heavy lifting so that the user can find the help they need in the system at the right time, with their data safe and secure.
Integration around WO intelligence will help to specify problem codes and is built into Manage directly via the Operational Dashboard. AI will also help with tickets automation to cut down duplicates. Plus, Maximo agents to chat and coach us.
- Sustainability
- Maximo is the flagship product in IBM’s Sustainability suite – ‘a reliable asset is a sustainable asset’.
- Expect to see a Renewable APM accelerator coming in from another IBM product considering solar assets etc.
- Emissions management is coming with the HSE add on – understand from an asset centric view and manage incidents, thresholds, and actions, and MOC.
- Vegetation management will benefit those in civil infrastructure, rail and utilities industries as it is brough into Maximo workflows and FSM.
- Climate risk – dynamic, flexible operations to make wise decisions.
- User Experience
The user is at the centre of MAS, with a new modern and satisfying UI! The focus here being on the Operational Dashboards (configuration capability coming).
Harbour Energy – Streamlining Safety Assurance with Maximo
It was great to see what other O&G systems are doing as Kelly Morrice spoke about Harbour’s EMS project. Harbour Energy are the UK’s largest O&G organisation, the result of many mergers (Shell, ConocoPhillips). This left the business with multiple systems and processes in place. Harbour needed one way of working to bring Maximo and SAP s/4 HANA together – its digital core, with many peripheral systems.
Kelly then covered off how Harbour and the industry responded to the Piper Alpha safety failures including the use of performance standards, SCE, and assurance tasks carried out alongside routine maintenance – enabling them to quickly identify failures.
Harbour also implemented a Power BI dashboard which has been well received with their management.
Benefits included good behaviour for the technicians, a strong safety culture, keeping offshore safe and the regulators happy.
Table Sessions
A really cool 20 minutes with each presenter until “the twinkles” and everyone ran out of steam. I observed many valuable conversations during these afternoon breakout sessions where the group got the opportunity to ask their questions and share experiences.
A resounding call for more user presentations next time! Oh, and Fingertip 😉
We have the next date for the diary – 4/5 December, the Maximo UK & Ireland is making its way to Drax Power in York. More details to follow from the committee.
If you'd like to know more about the Maximo UK & Ireland User Group you can find out more HERE or for anything else Maximo, feel free to reach out to us for a chat, we'd love to hear from you!
