In any Oil & Gas facility, reliability and maintenance data is collected by and exchanged with a large number of stakeholders. Even though the data is being prepared by one team, it is very likely to be used by other team/s. ISO 14224 serves as a standardized framework using which this data can be built and then used further. ISO 14224 is adapted widely by industries like petroleum, petrochemical, natural gas as well as other asset-heavy industries. 

In this article, we look at ISO 14224 from a data building and operations perspective. Typically, in any project, the data will be built either by the in-house team or a hired team of experts. Each of them has their own pros and cons. In one of our earlier articles, we looked in detail at why hiring external experts for building and managing the materials data helps. Whether the data is built in-house or externally, ISO 14224 serves as a robust framework to ensure one achieves the most out of their data. 

The diagram below summarises how adhering to ISO 14224 leads to a large number of positive outcomes:

The wide acceptance of this standard emphasises how well the industry is aware of the benefits out of well-structured data. Let us look at what all is involved in building data as per ISO 14224. 

The Scope of ISO 14224 

ISO 14224 is an exhaustive standard which lays out detailed guidelines for: 

1.      Developing and implementing an asset hierarchy standard for easy location, assigning work to the asset, better safety and wrench time. Better tracking of costs. Helps in identification of high cost assets. 

2.      Defining equipment class and associated equipment characteristics to define in CMMS the safe operating limit and integrity operating limit Using this to create a trigger based system to alert concerned personnel in case of a breach. 

3.      Categorization of maintenance activities will lead to more actionable maintenance data which can be used for reliability assessments. It will also help to answer questions like  how much of the maintenance happening is proactive vs reactive. 

4.      Defining and implementing maintainable item codes, failure codes and cause codes which will help to map and measure work order completion for each code. This  helps the reliability and engineering teams to generate more accurate and specific problem statements. The standard also highlights provisions for setting up data-driven decision making. 

5.      Developing integrated maintenance and reliability business processes - how information and data flow, how the maintenance work will be identified, planned, scheduled, executed and closed out, as well as, how reliability will consume the data, analyze it, validate it and provide recommendations.  

6.      Better enforcement of governance, change management and evaluation. 

Challenges in building the data as per ISO 14224: 

_A large number of factors prevent oil & gas companies from building their data as per ISO 14224. Here are the ones that are most commonly encountered: 

1. Lack of data ownership: When there is no single team responsible for ensuring the quality and integrity of the data, multiple teams will end up building the data in their own way. Such a fragmented approach to data building makes it very difficult to build data as per any standard. 
2. Lack of data build processes: Building data as per ISO 14224 requires setting up a well-defined process and then following it up meticulously. For instance, completing one item master has several steps like correctly documenting the item class, values of crucial characteristics for that particular class etc. This

also required referring to multiple documents, masters, technical literature etc. Lack of such processes will result in data not meeting the standard. 

1. Holistic roadmap: Most importantly, as ISO 14224 spans from data building to developing integrated reliability processes, it needs an end-to-end, holistic approach. The way data is built restricts the scope for its usage. One should be aware of all the end processes right when the data is getting built. Lack of this holistic vision and roadmap hinders successful adoption of ISO 14224.  
2. Unavailability of tech/tools: Using technology in form of data build tools is a must for building data as per any standard efficiently. Using a tool, data standards can be enforced when the data is being built. If these tools are not at disposal, enforcing any standard becomes challenging.

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