How to Justify Reliability Improvement Initiatives

Introduction

At the last (2017) API Inspection Summit, there was a presentation on Integrity Operating Windows (IOWs). At the end, one of the audience members asked, “How do you justify this to your manager?” The response from the presenter? “That’s a great question.”

In our industry, we deal with more initiatives than our plates can handle. Corrosion Control Documents (CCDs), Alarm Rationalization, Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) Programs, Risk-Based Inspection (RBI), Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), IOWs — the list goes on. How do we know which initiatives to implement, and further, which to do first? Even if you know which initiatives your facility should focus on, how do you convince leadership that something is worth investing in—especially if the initiative integrates across functions?

For example, what if you knew that using IOWs at your facility could create a return on investment that would show savings of $10MM per year for an investment of $1MM? Would anyone believe you? After all, these kinds of justifications are standard for most capital projects, and it only gets more complicated when trying to justify an integrated work practice. This article will cover an approach to cost-justification of initiatives – that integrate across functions and departments – to your facility’s management through three steps:

1. Identifying and scoping improvement opportunities,
2. Measuring opportunities, and
3. Planning initiatives and gaining buy in.