2011 – If it ain’t broke don’t fix it – or should you? Lessons learned from relying on past performance of mechanical assets.

Stuart Richardson

The application of maintenance to mechanical assets is a mature and well understood discipline. Although techniques and methods differ from industry to industry, the experiences and knowledge of practitioners should be transferable, but are they?

A challenge faced by all engineers is finding the appropriate balance between obtaining detailed physical evidence of asset condition through invasive disassembly and inspection against assessing condition based on monitoring and past performance.

This paper describes the experiences of the author in applying mechanical maintenance skills in the dams environment and shares some important lessons learned along the way.

2011 – If it ain’t broke don’t fix it – or should you? Lessons learned from relying on past performance of mechanical assets.