A large electric utility had been formed by the amalgamation of several others. It was well down the list of utilities when measured by frequency and duration of power outages. They wanted to improve and cut costs due to pressures from their rate review board. They were exploring various methods. Reliability Centered Maintenance was being considered by some of their engineers as a potential cornerstone of their improvement initiative - but they were not sure of themselves. One of the legacy utilities that had merged into this company had a history with RCM. Several years earlier they explored a version of RCM that claimed to be based on risk and promised to deliver maximum "value" to the business. They had done some training and followed it up with a pilot project. Although the technical work had been done well, they could not show what "value" the analysis was providing if its results were implemented. The results were disappointing and the project stopped.
This experience had not been forgotten. It was clouding the current thinking about RCM's future in the merged utility. A frank and open discussion in a brief (2 hour initial consultation) helped them realize that there were indeed various RCM methods available and that they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. After a quick study of the pilot project and its results we were able to point out the flaws in the method they had used. Those flaws caused the utility to expend more effort than they really need to and it prevented them from showing value across the entire business without a huge additional investment of effort. As a result of this advice they explored other approaches and settled on RCM2. Over the next three years they carried out several hundred analyses, saved an average of more than 20% off their original maintenance budget for proactive work and improved system performance. They did this with an investment that was paid back more than 3 times in the first year.
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