The next decade brings with it the greatest workforce challenge we’ve ever faced. Machines and automation are replacing and augmenting human tasks. As we strategise for autonomous workers and the decarbonisation and electrification of everything, we need to think very carefully about how we build the foundation for this future workforce.

To match the ever-increasing speed of technology development it is more important than ever that we increase the rate at which we innovate too. As Asset Management leaders we must create a culture that enables rapid innovation through co-creation and collaboration.

• the role technology could play in helping maintenance and reliability functions evolve
• the importance of people and partnerships
• the importance of a culture willing to embrace change
• creating of solid ecosystems
• soft skills are as important as technical skills

Maintenance Superintendent at Rio Tinto, then GM of Strategy at MMG, Michelle went on to be Chief Innovation Officer for Barrick Gold. In 2019, Michelle won the Technology Innovator of the Year Award by Mines and Technology. She serves as Chair of the Global Mining Guidelines Group (GMG), is also on the board or advisory board of several start-ups.

Decarbonisation will frame the operating context of so many asset classes and sectors over the next decade. Itis disrupting previous lifecycle plans, investment and reinvestment decisions, asset management strategies and tactics, and the physical asset manager's role.

• The complex challenges with older assets in emission reduction
• Simple and practical strategies by improving equipment reliability (extending tyre life, managing compressed air leaks, reducing electrical I2R losses, managing fugitive emissions losses, etc.)
• Reallocation and reskilling of labour
• Using asset data and AI to manage environmental risk, optimize asset performance and drive decarbonization
• The requirement for a fundamental shift in education (Tafe and Universities)
• Managing and coming to grips with Scope 3
• Working with regulators
• The capacity and resource challenge with all our companies relying on the same suppliers and resources to decarb at the same time

Asset Engineers have been analysing asset data in the pursuit of high value outcomes for only about 2500 years. With the advent of machine learning and cloud computing infrastructure, our industry became convinced that a completely novel approach was required, and the direction should be provided by the banking industry, because this industry is leading the world in modern data analytics capabilities. Our experience indicates that nothing could be further from the truth and the formula that works best for Assets is about evolving traditional Asset Engineering capabilities rather than revolutionising the entire sector.

In this presentation we will explore two vastly different approaches to building a modern Engineering Analytics capability specifically geared for an Asset Intensive company. We will look at the positives and negatives of each model and deep dive how each model works. We will try to debunk a few myths including AI, Big Data and cloud infrastructure requirements and clear the air in terms that an Asset Engineering team can understand and use.

We’ll also present a case study from our adopted Engineering Analytics model such that we can see the value of success and understand the reduced cost to achieve these outcomes sustainably.

A fascinating seven-year study, exploring the lived experiences of women working in manual trades in heavy industry.  Fieldwork was conducted in a remote mining town in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Time was spent working alongside maintenance teams from both an iron ore and an oil and gas company.

The work investigates the conundrum surrounding women’s enduring low representation in skilled manual trades.  Although the impetus of the work was to understand the working life of a female maintainer, what emerged is a rich understanding of the lived experiences of both male and female maintainers and the impact of gendered practices on social change in multiple facets of modern life.

Bonita has a bachelor’s degree and First Class Honours in Sociology and Anthropology. She has just completed her work as a doctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia and has submitted her PhD for assessment.  Her thesis bridges the fields of Sociology and Engineering as she explores the lived experiences of women in manual trades.  Bonita is passionate about influencing the development of positive social transformation, smart diversity and inclusion initiatives and achieving gender parity.

One of the most complex challenges that asset managers face is driving strategic change from a partially empowered position within an organisation. This involves both managing upwards towards executive management and downwards through the mid-level and shop floor, without having all the levers to jockey. How do we define the value of Asset Management, ROIC (return on invested capital), get the CFO’s attention, work with consultants and advisors, find quick wins, and use ISO 55000 as a framework?

Most of our companies understand the value of asset management and reliability, and are structured to monitor assets and drive continuous improvement on a large scale.

This discussion will explore the benefits, challenges, and keys to successfully establishing an enterprise-wide culture of reliability. Join us for an interactive discussion exploring:

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• Typical challenges companies face on embarking on an Asset Management journey
• Key considerations to consider before embedding a Corporate Asset Management group within a company
• What success looks like for a corporate asset management function
• What are the main challenges are for Asset Management?

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Reliability is the characteristic of a process, system, or physical asset to continuously perform what it is designed to do. Around the turn of the last century, broader industry started adopting the concept of Reliability Engineering that had been nurtured in High Reliability Organisations (HRO’s) over the previous five decades.

However, the need for Reliability Engineering in HRO’s is clear: to avoid catastrophes in an environment where normal accidents can be expected due to risk factors and complexity. The consequence of poor reliability in HRO’s is severe.

In other industries this need is less obvious, so business leaders are challenged with finding the correct level of investment in reliability. Unlike HRO’s other businesses may not be inherently structured for reliability, so there are challenges on how to organise the role to meet business expectations and improve Reliability Engineer job satisfaction levels. In addition, business reliability objectives are often confused with tactical maintenance and engineering objectives, resulting in goal dissonance.

Reliability Engineering is field that lends itself to analysis, modelling, conceptualising, and abstract thought rather than absolutes and tangibles. So, it generally attracts intelligent and intuitive Engineers with personality traits that can make them difficult to manage in a traditional organisation. While they’re high in IQ, they’re often low in EQ and most have very little organisational awareness. They tend to be perfectionists; feel they need to have all the answers and are often opinionated.

In this session, Mike will share his experiences of how to recognise and address the organisational, work role and personality challenges that make up the reliability engineering dilemma within an organisational behavioural framework. He will also provide the Reliability Engineers in the room with tips and tricks to recognise their strengths and improvement opportunities, and ways to cope in an often strange organisational environment where interactions with people don’t fit deterministic or even probabilistic models.

The ability to accumulate data has increased over recent years due to advances in digital technology, improved monitoring capability and ever-expanding fields within Asset Management systems and data bases.  

Often data is collected from multiple sources and varying management systems.  Some is automated production and process information; some is entered manually, and other information is updated based on activity.  While all information retrieved can be justified, often much of it is never referred to.  

The challenge is to ensure that the important information is readily available to the right people, and this will vary across the different layers and functions within any business. Technical subject matter experts will be interested in details of operations while senior managers are interested in high level information. Procurement people are interested in stock movements, Asset Technicians are interested in failure rates, Operators are interested in day-to-day production performance, and Accountants are interested in financial performance.

• How to structure information
• Aligning data based on critical business processes and risk (safety, production, efficiency, reliability, costs etc)
• How to present data to drive decisions and better business outcomes
• Who should manage, govern, and own the data?  
• How to best enable data transfer from capital projects
• Data standards
• How to best monitor older assets
• Training operators and maintainers to utilise the huge amount of machine data

A fitter and turner by trade, Brian is a Senior Manager with over 35 years’ experience in the Petrochemical industry. He was the Director of Manufacturing and executive sponsor of Global Maintenance Management Team Sponsor for Methanex, the world’s largest producer of Methanol.

The needs of the grid are rapidly evolving. This changes the context in which asset managers traditionally have operated. As a result, some asset classes will be progressively phased out while new ones are deployed and commissioned.

Traditional asset management techniques must adapt. Assets will have to meet new objectives. They will also need to operate and be maintained under new regimes. This calls for the development and implementation of more agile and effective risk-based methodologies to make prudent decisions around asset investment. Archana will share how some of these challenges are being addressed at Western Power.

Faced with high-cost Shutdowns looming, it was critical that OZ Minerals were able to estimate, plan and schedule accurately with the right costs, labor, and parts. We determined that our planned costs within SAP for Task Lists, Work Orders and major work were highly inaccurate; and continually relying on spreadsheets and other data sources to forecast costs. With limited resourcing & budget for consultants to remediate master data, we used tools to update preventative task lists as well as support the accurate and rapid build of corrective action task lists. Using these tools, we were able to get into a position to accurately understand the trend of materials & labour hours, which led to improved budgeting, and improved accuracy in our material and labour requirements.

• Our challenge with planning our high spend work
• Accepting the challenge to improve (e.g. Shutdown task lists didn’t have the necessary accuracy (e.g. materials) for successful execution)
• How we went about fixing it
• What was the benefits both in terms of planning and scheduling accuracy and time saved

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This interactive discussion will explore the reasons many organizations have not realized the promises of an asset performance management implementation, and position Integrated APM as an evolution of traditional approaches which drives the connection between current disparate data sets and supports asset performance improvement at scale.  

To gain control of asset performance there are key foundational elements required to support data-driven decision making. Process and associated trigger points are also essential to ensure that improvements are initiated, implemented, and leveraged across an entire asset base.  

Technology is also a key consideration, ensuring that it supports the process, doesn’t provide constraints, and drives productivity improvements in our shrinking maintenance and reliability workforce.

The next decade brings with it the greatest workforce challenge we’ve ever faced. Machines and automation are replacing human tasks. As we strategize for autonomous workers and the decarbonisation and electrification of everything, we need to think very carefully about how we build the foundation for this future workforce.

Many young engineers and trades who would usually enter the mining, energy or manufacturing sectors are being lured to other industries. There is also a massive shortage of highly skilled trades. Companies are having to make do with less capability. Gone are the days where up-and-coming trades spent 15 years learning from an experienced trade.

Join our panel for an interactive discussion about how companies are doing different and interesting things to both attract people; and also retain the necessary knowledge, skills and experience required for the Asset Management workforce of the future.

• Development plans for current employees whose jobs and skillsets will need to change
• Attracting people from outside of heavy industry
• Working with Schools, Universities and Tafe to attract young people
• How and why we need to employ neuro, gender, and class-diverse people
• Task qualifying our workforce for not only the current needs, but continuous training for the constantly evolving needs of the business
• Developing coaching and mentoring networks that go beyond your organisation

You wouldn’t commit to service dates the day you buy a car, but intricacies of Maintenance Plans often lead to just that. In this session you will learn how Maintenance Plans actually work and understand how some of the things you are currently doing are leading to both over-servicing and under-servicing. You’ll become aware of some common traps and learn how to mitigate them to optimize your servicing.

• Reduce Over-Servicing andUnder-Servicing
• Reduce Backlog
• See the hump coming
• Set yourself up to adapt to changes

CAPEX investment processes in asset-intensive industries are complex and span multiple years from concept to construction and commissioning, ranging from brownfield upgrades and extensions to existing plants through to new greenfield sites.

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SAP has solutions across this space, but organisations sometimes have difficulty getting a holistic solution. This session talks about forging that end-to-end process to bridge the gaps and the possibilities of using partner product extensions on the SAP BTP Cloud Platform to achieve business goals while addressing some of the issues such as design versions, evaluation of alternative designs and interaction with multiple different SAP objects over diverse timeframes.

• Scenarios for the Asset Investment Lifecycle
• SAP supports the Asset Investment Lifecycle scenarios across the portfolio, project, and construction
• What is the SAP BTP Cloud Platform and what’s in it for you?
• Partner product extensions to support the Asset Investment Lifecycle
• One example of the product extension from Rizing

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Many macro-factors confront our maintenance and reliability workforce – machines replacing jobs, upheaval in the energy sector, FIFO schedules, relentless organisational change, and even war. Having to endure a pandemic over the past three years has accentuated these issues to crisis levels. This is taking enormous toll on our wellbeing and mental health, and our capacity to be resilient is being eroded. This is a wake-up call.

• Resilience can be taught to leaders, managers, and workforces
• The convergence between people’s personal lives and their work lives
• The need to connect as human beings with emotions
• FIFO workforce at a higher risk than the general workforce of stress and depression
• Practical initiatives that combat the increase in mental health and wellbeing
• The impact of a positive workplace on performance
• How to build and shift workplace culture
• Practical takeaway leadership tools and practices to influence culture

Southern Ports Authority reviewed the rate of return and the reliability of their assets as part of the amalgamation to build a resilient business model with an asset centric focus. This vision was used to form a strategic development plan with a 10-year horizon. The board and CEO devised a comprehensive asset management vision and set an organization objective with to become ISO55000 certified and be fully digital by 2025.

Rob will explore the foundational elements of a SMART port and how it is mapped to a digitized AMS. You will explore the digital transformation of an integrated asset management framework by creating a data driven business model using an EMS implementation as a vehicle. The journey covers:

• Stakeholders’, events, challenges, selecting objectives, and building an acceptable Asset management system with all the required subsystems
• Training competency and change managements
• Doing the base line asset maturity assessments
• Re-inventing the maintainer of the future and creating agile high performance team members to provide customer centric solutions at pace, aligned with ISO55000
• A demo of the technology markers and the use of IOT, remote working and advanced digital engineering to move data from the field into an asset health analysis tool
• The AMS competency framework, engagement and creating digital online training, that can be done at the users own pace and meet the objectives of the asset management systems
• The sustainability elements developed and implemented through digital tracking and reporting with a view of moving from a SMART PORT to a FUTURE port

The Digital Twin Paradigm suggests an ideal scenario where some virtual model exactly reflects its physical asset counterpart. The reality, as always, may not be that simple. A constrained cost / time / resource budget generally does not allow the engineer to know everything about the physical asset. Data may be discretely sampled, incomplete, noisy, and messy. How can we target an exact virtual representation when our knowledge is uncertain?  

This fundamental mismatch between the ideals of the Digital Twin Paradigm, and the reality of the engineer’s experience, may be navigated with principled treatment of uncertainty in analysis. Probabilistic approaches allow engineers to quantify and propagate uncertainty. Surrogate models, computationally cheap emulations of complex virtual models, may be leveraged in to unlock such probabilistic approaches in practice. The goal moves from "What is the exact state of my physical asset?" towards "What is the risk my asset is unsafe?"

Reliability engineering is traditionally seen as the domain of technical experts, complex data sets and maintenance strategies often seen as equal part art and science. With all the pressure of Covid, an Australian-first model to delivering maintenance and CAPEX projects and a business wide SAP implementation, it was little surprise that reliability engineering was below the radar at Sydney Water.

Reliability engineers had been loaded with writing business cases, forecasting future renewals, and crunching data to feed board reports looking well into the future. For many this ‘strategic focus’ was a comfortable fit while it left others looking for a closer plant connection. Enter two production hub managers and two reliability engineers challenged with inspiring exhausted teams, divided by Covid, and frustrated by equipment failures.

The managers worked to ensure reliability engineers were placed at the at centre of a program which transformed employee engagement, improved reliability, and reduced maintenance costs.

• Design programs which engage shift production employees and maintenance team members in key reliability engineering activities
• Improve capture of key information to drive improved reliability
• Identify and onboard unconventional reliability engineering candidates
• Re-energise traditional reliability engineering teams

Of all the complexities within our modern workplaces driven by uncertainty, globalisation and technology, the most challenging factor in driving and sustaining performance remains leading people. There are few things that derail a project or expose an organisation to risk more than unmotivated or disengaged employees. Building high-performing teams require great strategies and engaging people leaders. Leaders who build trust, provide effective feedback, and are able to create a committed team focused on shared outcomes. The key to building these high-performing teams is empathic leadership.

Daniel will provide simple frameworks, practical tactics, and specific examples of how everyone can lead with empathy to drive performance. Empathy is a skill that people of any age, from any industry, can learn, develop and harness to improve their leadership and performance. This presentation will provide clear steps for implementing new ways to lead with empathy.

Four remote operations centres in WA managed 38% of global iron ore supply in 2019 and are projected to contribute A$64 billion to the Australian economy by 2025. All software systems have technical debt and while this is well-understood in software companies, there is little visibility of technical debt or its risks in remote operations centres (ROC).  

This study, based on interviews with technical and management personnel in a remote operations centre, identifies 7 elements that contribute positively or negatively to managing technical debt. David will describe how these elements were selected and the implications of their interactions. The use of a system dynamics causal diagram make visualisation of these elements accessible to operational and technology decision makers with a goal of creating greater awareness and open discussion on the creation and management of technical debt risk in ROCs.

Roy Hill is an innovative Iron Ore Miner based in Western Australia. They have been at the forefront of industry thought leadership around supply chain management and planning for many years, working closely with SAP. Roy Hill started the journey with SAP back in 2017 which led to an initial pilot project to implement an ambitious vision to optimize spare parts and inventory, for Maintenance and Repair operations. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite workout the way we planned. Changes within the business and some technical realities meant we had to take a step back with our EWM solution to move forward with a simpler, streamlined solution, that has worked a lot better given where our business focus is currently. In this presentation we will talk more about that journey, some of the challenges, key decisions, learnings, and successes that we have had along the way. SAP is a critical technology enabler to our supply system, and we look forward to some of the advances in technology that will help us to continue the journey to a more efficient and sustainable future.

• Sometimes even the best laid plans change
• Being able to adapt and re-focus is a critical element to success
• Success comes from partnership and having a clear focus on the outcome
• While we are excited about what we have achieved so far there is more to value we can extract

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As an AFL coach and mother, Michelle has an incredible story to tell. With a tenacious attitude and determination like no other, Michelle holds over 20 years’ experience in the AFL. At the age of 21, Michelle became the nation’s first female WAFL Assistant Coach. Michelle then spent three years at South Fremantle Football Club as Midfield Coach. Continuing her coaching career, Michelle Cowan took on a dual role at Melbourne Football Club as both the Senior Coach of their Women’s Team and Development Coach for the Men’s team.

In 2013, Michelle was awarded the AFL Football Woman of the Year and is currently Head of Women’s Football at West Coast Eagles. Michelle Cowan’s achievements have seen an impact on women in football, demonstrating that gender is no barrier. Michelle is passionate about team dynamics, leadership, empowering women and girls, perseverance, and passion.