SALVO Project launches asset management results 09 October 2013

Plants engineers challenged with ageing infrastructure, capital constraints, uncertain data and risks, while facing growing performance pressures, might now take solace from the publication of a report from the SALVO project (Strategic Assets: Lifecycle Value Optimisation).

Major organisations including London Underground, Sasol, Scottish Water, National Grid and Cambridge University, took part in the multi-national, multi-industry project, which has spent three years developing appropriate approaches.

John Woodhouse, SALVO programme director, explains that the SALVO process comprises six steps, covering sorting and prioritising of problems, understanding their nature, identifying options (including those that do not include expenditure or asset interventions), evaluating business value-for-money and programme assembly – with total cost, risk, performance and resource implications.

"We are delighted to announce that SALVO has broken some significant new ground in helping people to make better decisions about what to do, when, and why, in managing their aging assets," states Woodhouse.

"These techniques have now been field-proven and are delivering big cost savings, increased transparency and consistency in critical risk-based decisions, and are showing major improvements in whole life cycle asset value," he adds.

Woodhouse explains that the overall process is also supported by an "extensive toolbox" of recommended best practices, training, decision-support software tools, guidance and templates.

Most important, they also include methods for capturing and quantifying expert knowledge, quantifying risks and economic impact, and making better decisions – even when hard data is limited or unavailable.

The SALVO processes will be explained and illustrated in a Process Guidebook, due for publication in December 2013.

This provides practical and detailed storyboards for 42 decision types, ranging from optimal inspection intervals, to justifications for planned maintenance to extend asset life, and optimal replacement timing.

Such decisions provide the necessary material to construct and optimise a whole asset lifecycle management plan, says Woodhouse, who explains that the final module of the SALVO suite – the StAMP stage – represents a practical mechanism for constructing a strategic asset management plan, as required by the ISO 55001 standard for asset management.

"Our clients need processes like SALVO, which enable better decision-making through better analysis and a process approach, to determine the performance of those assets and the value to the business," comments Keith Hamer, vice president for global asset management at Sodexo.

And Christine Pretorius, industrial engineering leader at Sasol Synfuels, who has been implementing the SALVO processes in the second largest oil refinery in the world, adds: "We were facing the apparently urgent replacement of our obsolete control systems, at a cost of [£55million]. With SALVO, we were able to reduce this by 60% and renegotiate support arrangements for a further 20 years."

Brian Tinham

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