V/Line needed a more practical and consistent way to understand asset risk and prioritise maintenance, renewals, critical spares analysis, life-cycle modelling, and investment decisions across a diverse regional rail network. Existing approaches did not provide sufficient visibility of consequence, exposure, and operational context to enable transparent, risk-based prioritisation.

To address this, the Asset Reliability team led the development of an updated asset criticality framework designed to better reflect the actual risk profile of assets. The framework incorporates consequence-based lenses including safety, service delivery, customer, regulatory/compliance, environmental, and reputation impacts, together with exposure factors such as age, utilisation, detectability, and restoration time.

As part of this work, the Asset Reliability team engaged SMEs across multiple asset disciplines to define asset functions and align on credible worst-case and most-likely failure modes at the product family level. We also developed a structured survey-based approach to gather consistent ratings and support efficient workshops. The framework is intended to strengthen risk-based planning within the Annual Works Plan and support broader business functions across the asset management lifecycle.

The key benefits of this work are improved consistency in asset prioritisation, better visibility of higher-risk assets, more informed project nominations and investment decisions, improved prioritisation for critical spares and life-cycle analysis, and a stronger link between engineering knowledge and business planning.