How often should a plant review asset criticality?
Review criticality on a schedule the plant can maintain and whenever a significant change could alter the consequence of losing an asset’s function.
What to consider
A ranking reflects the plant’s operating context at the time of assessment. A change in production demand, standby capacity, operating mode, safety exposure or recovery time can make an old ranking misleading. Choose a review interval based on site risk and change frequency rather than treating a generic interval as a rule.
Practical steps
- Establish an owner and a recurring review date for each assessed system.
- Trigger an earlier review after significant equipment, process, operating or redundancy changes.
- Compare assumptions with current operating practice and evidence from failures or near misses.
- Record changes, the rationale and any effects on maintenance or spares decisions.
A practical example
A plant ranked its cooling pumps last year. Since then, one standby unit has been removed and production demand has increased. Rather than waiting for the next routine review, operations and maintenance reassess the affected system and record the new assumptions. The team also sets a review cycle it can maintain, with event triggers such as process changes, changed redundancy or an unexpected failure consequence.
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