Introduction

ISO PC 251 recently completed the third of its international meetings to develop a suite of asset management standards being:

  1. ISO 55000 Asset Management – Overview, principles and terminology
  2. ISO 55001 Asset Management – Management Systems – Requirements
  3. ISO 55002 Asset Management – Management Systems – Guidelines on the application of ISO 55001

Meeting Purpose

The purpose of the meeting was to:

  1. Produce revisions of the three documents (55000, 55001 and 55002) and address the comments made on Working Draft 2 of all three standards; and
  2. Issue new drafts (as Committee Drafts).

Membership

The Australian Members were:

  • Peter Kohler (Asset Management Council)
  • John Hardwick (Energy Networks Australia)
  • Peter Way (Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia)
  • Dave Daines (CRC Mining)
  • Melinda Hodkiewicz (University of Western Australia)
  • Danielle Roche (Water Services Association Australia)
  • Tom Carpenter (APESMA)

Other international Attendees included representatives from Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UAE and USA. In total over 35 people attended the meeting – see the image below for the full contingent:

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The Australian, US and UK delegates were the largest contingents at the meeting. The number of representatives from Australia ensured good representation in each forum with all playing lead roles in their working groups.  In particular, five of the Australian representatives are fulfilling the role of Task Group Leader in the nine task groups across all three standards.

Activities

Many of the points raised by the Australian delegation in comments made prior to the meeting were well received and included in the key issues listed for consideration in the initial open forum discussions. These were then reflected in subsequent amendments as the work progressed during the week.

The asset management principles proposed by Australia, alongside sets proposed by other countries, formed the basis of development of a new set.

The work of both developing each standard and collating all the comments was allocated to two working groups. Working Group 1 focussed upon the development of ISO 55000, including Definitions and an Introduction and sections on Asset Management and Asset Management Systems.  Four Task groups were created to continue that work.

Similarly Working Group 2 was created to further work on both 55001 and 55002.  Given that 55002 is the tailoring instructions for 55001, having both documents prepared by the same teams seamed a sensible approach.

Once WG2 got organised into sectional teams, work moved along quickly while there was considerable debate about the intent of the requirements statements. There were a number of new members who brought good experience and ideas. This resulted in a common understanding of the intent and hence made subsequent work on the text of the standard much easier.

The 50000 series of standards is the first to use the ISO Guide 83 template for a management system standard as the basis of its structure and content.  As a result, significant portions of text in Working Draft 2 was “streamlined” given that much of the text now includes the high level ISO Guide 83 text.

PC251 has become less Australian-UK centric with the addition of a substantial number of new US members and European and Indian members. There has been more active participation by non-English speaking countries which has improved the debate.

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Working Group 1