Lansing Board of Water and Light Prepares for ISO 55000 Certification
Lansing Board of Water and Light Prepares for ISO 55000 Certification.pdf
The Lansing Board of Water & Light (BWL) is a municipally owned public utility providing drinking water, electricity, steam and related services to the Greater Lansing area in mid-Michigan. To accomplish its mission – providing safe, reliable, and affordable utility products and services – BWL embarked on a transformational journey to improve its operating performance by learning and adopting asset management best practices.
BWL was committed to developing an asset management system that would support its commitment to satisfy customer service needs and meet regulatory obligations as it provides affordable and sustainable service that optimizes financial returns. The asset management system would also help the organization provide a safe environment for employees, contractors and the community.
The Transformational Journey Starts with Assessing Current Practices
BWL identified the ISO 55000 series of Asset Management standards as the organizing principle for its transformational effort. These ISO standards enable organizations to achieve their objectives through the effective and efficient management of their assets. In their strategic plan, the BWL Board of Commissioners set a goal of achieving ISO 55000 certification by the end of 2020.
As a first step in their journey, BWL performed a gap analysis in early 2018 to compare current-state asset management practices with the requirements of ISO 55001. The results indicated that while they were making progress in some areas, their current practices did not comply with the standard in any of the standard’s seven domains. With knowledge of what they needed to accomplish, BWL needed an experienced partner to create an asset management system that would meet their organizational objectives and prepare them for certification.
Preparing for ISO 55000 Certification by Learning and Adopting Best Practices
In June 2018, Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) began helping BWL to prepare for ISO certification. LCE’s experts have helped them build the business processes and organizational change management activities to support success.
Early activities included a thorough internal and external stakeholder analysis to determine the context of the organization as required by ISO 55000. Once the stakeholder analysis was complete and the policy, strategy and objectives were confirmed, a masterplan of activities was created to detail the roadmap for certification. Among the first deliverables was delivery of PROSCI change management education to ensure the organization’s readiness for change.
In 2019, progress continued with development of the Leadership competencies, Materials Management processes, Work Management processes, and Reliability Engineering processes to address Risk-based Asset Management. Highlights include establishing the Root Cause Analysis and Management of Change processes, improving procedures for maintaining materials such as motors while in storage, and a large-scale effort to walk down all plant equipment and reconcile differences between as-built and as-is drawings.
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