What is SALVO?
It’s a 3-year project to research and develop innovative approaches to decision-making about the management of aging physical assets. This includes determination of the optimal expenditure and timings for equipment inspection and maintenance as assets deteriorate, and life extension, modification, replacement and disposal options and their optimal timing. SALVO will incorporate appropriate elements of APT decision support tools and best practices from the European MACRO project www.MACROproject.org
Scope & Objectives
In line with guidance from the PAS 55 standard for optimized management of physical assets, there are three main levels of ’granularity’ required for improving life cycle decision-making :
A. Individual intervention decisions for individual assets (“shall I do this job on this asset and, if so, when?”)
B. Optimal combination of inspections, maintenance and renewal/modifications for specific assets or asset groups to deliver optimal whole life cycle value.
C.Total population/system investment plans, maintenance, resourcing and performance forecasting and ’what if?’ studies.
SALVO will improve our capability to address the first two of these in a quantified, risk-based manner, and enable much better linkages and contributions to the third (i.e. ‘bottom up’ justification and transparency for what needs to be spent, when and where).
For example, SALVO will enable the following questions to be answered individually and in combinations, with more robust, business case justification:
? “As assets age or degrade, what changes to inspection, condition monitoring, functional testing or planned maintenance should I make?”
? “When is the optimal time to replace (or decommission) an asset, and what are the cost/risk effects of delay?”
? “Should I replace with the same design (like-for-like), or with a technology change/ upgrade/alternative option?”
? “Is it worth refurbishing the current asset, to extend its life and, if so, by how much?”
? “Is a modification project worthwhile, with what changes to maintenance needs & residual life?”
? “What is the optimal capex/opex spend profile for a specific system, network or asset class?”
Many individual components of the SALVO scope are already available and successfully used in various industries (see www.decisionsupporttools.com). Risk-based methods, for example, exist for asset criticality analysis, for optimising inspection and maintenance plans, for life cycle costing and even for the optimal bundling of tasks into shutdown opportunities or total work programmes. SALVO will draw on all these capabilities and provide a path to their integration and embedding within asset management systems, so optimised decision-making is a normal business process rather than the job of special analysts or experts.
