ISO 55001:2014 Asset Management - Clause 7.5: Information Requirements

22 July 2022

ISO 55001:2014 is the International Standard for Asset Management. Assets can be a competitive advantage or can drain your organization’s resources depending on how they are managed. This blog looks into clause 7.5, the Information Requirements within the standard.

Assets come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is for certain all organizations have assets. That’s why it is important to manage your assets effectively and achieving ISO 55001 certification can do just that. ISO 55001 is especially relevant in industries that are capital intensive, have significant physical assets to manage and have high fixed costs. This can include utilities, heavy and light manufacturing, distribution, construction, property management and transportation.

ISO 55001 was published in January 2014 and establishes specific requirements for not only implementing and maintaining an asset, but also improving that asset via an Asset management system. It builds upon PAS55 which had a proven track record specifically in the utilities industries. ISO 55001 aims to apply this approach across other sectors allowing all businesses to benefit from it.

When reading Clause 7.5, information requirements, the organisation may focus on asset information including what asset information is mandatory or optional, the quality of the information, attributes, condition, location and methods for collecting and maintaining the information.

However, there are other areas that the organisation must also consider to be compliant with ISO 55001:2014.

These include the significance of identified risks. The organisation must ensure that risks are clearly categorised in relation to their risk scoring including details of probability and consequence. This would require the organisation to document what is the difference between a probability score of 1 or 5, for example. This would also need to be documented for consequence.

An area that the organisation should consider is the criticality of an asset. For example, an organisation uses a pump and there’re a number located on the site. An assessment could be used to determine the risk of the pump failing. Whilst an separate risk assessment could be carried out for each pump, including FMEA, the alternative would be to establish a criticality rating for each pump. Where a pump which had a stand-by available would be less critical than a pump without and would also be dependent upon the process. Once again, the organisation must establish and document criteria for the criticality rating and how these are applied with associated risks.

It is also important to ensure that the level of information gathering is appropriate to the risk. Whilst information can be gathered on a cohort of assets or asset management activities, what is the cost of gathering and maintaining that information. How will that information be used for decision making purposes? Having gathered this information can it be used to drive improvements in asset and operational activities?

For example, an organisation has a site where staff undertake corrective maintenance (CM) and planned preventive maintenance (PPM). Whilst staff may record activities carried out on critical assets/systems, including work carried out, condition of asset, time and parts used, other activities are carried out around site and on less critical assets that are not recorded to the asset or system such as oil/fluid checks, walk rounds, visual checks, cleaning and vegetation control. In this instance the organisation should consider:

Should information be collected on these activities?
How should the information be collected?
Can these activities be assigned to a particular asset or at site level?
What level of details is required in relation to different work undertaken – Visual inspection, measurement, repair, cleaning etc.
Are staff repeatedly repairing the same issue every time they visit?
In the case where there are multiple sites, such as water distribution, are certain sites being visited more frequency due to its location?
Can the information be used for improvement of the asset management system?

As with many asset intensive organisations a number of systems are used and often integrated including an asset management platform (Maximo, SAP, CaFM), GIS, Financial systems and mobile systems for communicating work orders to staff. When an organisation is looking to change information requirements or add another system careful consideration must be applied to ensure that information is maintained and the systems continue talking to each other.

In this instance the organisation must ensure that Management of Change process are applied and risks are identified and addressed using the organisation’s procedures (Management of change, Clause 8.2).